With the release of Tom Clancy's HAWX looming on the horizon (much to my eager anticipation), I have been thinking a lot lately about what's become of the space combat sim genre. It seems like it hit it's peak in the late 90s / early 2000s with games like X-Wing Alliance, Freespace 2, and Freelancer, but now it's all but dried up. There were a few "eh, they're okay" attempts on the PS2 and Xbox like Star Wars Starfighter and Battlestar Galactica, but it seems like a good space shooter is hard to find these days-- or more specifically, the space shooters we all remember fondly and love, like Wing Commander and X-Wing. So where the heck are they?

EA has been sitting on one of my favorite game franchises for years (Wing Commander) and yet they've hardly done crap with it since the release of Wing Commander Prophecy. They did a crappy port of Prophecy on the GBA (that should tell you something about how long it's been since a proper Wing Commander game was released), and recently, the even crappier "Wing Commander Arena" for Xbox 360. Seriously, WTF was up with Arena? It had absolutely nothing to do with the real Wing Commander games at all! Did the useless tools who made it even PLAY a Wing Commander game, or did they just watch the crappy Freddy Prinze Jr. movie and call it a day? Nice try EA, but I'm offended that you'd even think such a horrid turd of a game would satasfy fans of the Wing Commander series. The Wing Commander was all about combining the thrills of between-mission cinematics with tight space combat simulation, and that's why no-one bought Wing Commander Arena-- it was just a cheesey Geometry Wars knockoff!

It's high time the space combat sim genre got a massive shot in the arm, and the two franchises I think would be best to do it with would be Wing Commander and X-Wing. Lucas Arts has already made it clear that they have little interest in reviving X-Wing, even though the original X-Wing team is quite enthusiastic about the possibility, so what about Wing Commander? Is EA just going to keep squatting on it in hopes that we forget it ever existed? I certainly hope not.

Footage of the original Wing Commander

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=GbzioZBTUIU

Footage of Wing Commander Prophecy (the last "proper" Wing Commander title)

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=OKnAOYo6Jz4

When oh when is EA going to take a look at this overlooked, but cla.ssic franchise and give it a modern-day makeover?