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Today, we’re going to take a glimpse at the classic gem from Cinemaware that lets you become a fighter pilot during WWI. Wings was released in 1990 and quickly became a fan favorite thanks to its challenging gameplay and captivating war story.

Did you know?
· The Studio, Cinemaware, focuses on providing a unique cinematic vibe to all its games. For example, their hit game Defender of the Crown was inspired by classic swashbuckler films, while the main inspiration for Wings was a motion picture from 1927.
· Wings was originally released on Amiga computers, but its GOG version uses a special emulator created by Cinemaware. Back in 2014, Retro Gamer included the game in its TOP 10 list of best Amiga 500 titles ever created.
· The game features a stunning 230 challenging missions set between 1916 and 1918. Between these missions, you get to read the stories about the everyday life of your squadron filled with historical trivia about WWI.



Wings!™ Remastered Edition
The game’s cult status meant developing a Wings!™ Remastered Edition was almost guaranteed and only a matter of time. The project was funded on Kickstarter, earning $91,380 by the end of its 30-day run in November 2013.
I wish GOG had brought Cinemaware Anthology here. I really wanted to replay It Came from the Desert and Lords of the Rising Sun.
Link to remastered version doesn`t work!
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karnak1: I wish GOG had brought Cinemaware Anthology here. I really wanted to replay It Came from the Desert and Lords of the Rising Sun.
^So much this!!
Working link:
https://www.gog.com/game/wings_remastered
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GOG.com: Did you know?
Did you know that Cinemaware fucked your company and your customers over royally by making some super awesome deal with gog (or, as Cinemaware called it on their own website: a "one-of-a-kind Amiga & PC distribution agreement") that was widely publicised at the time where they'd gradually release their catalogue here for $5.99 per game and then, after a measly three releases, they released the Cinemaware Anthology on Steam, which included all these games (plus a bunch more) for a fraction of the price?

At the time Cinemaware (or at least a user claiming to represent them) said that they "are working on something that will seek to compensate all of those who have supported us on GOG". Of course, none of that ever materialised and the Anthology is nowhere to be found either, while the grotuesquely overpriced gog releases are still available.

As it stands, the Cinemaware debacle still stands proudly as arguably the most blatant fucking over of and just flat-out lying to gog customers.

And now you're doing advertising for these bastards. Why?

Frankly, this makes me sick.
Post edited July 30, 2021 by fronzelneekburm
high rated
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karnak1: I wish GOG had brought Cinemaware Anthology here. I really wanted to replay It Came from the Desert and Lords of the Rising Sun.
not to mention the price. The anthology on Steam is £8 for 13 games, so about £0.6 per game.
WIngs by itself here on gOg is £4.30, so more than half the cost of the whole anthology.

edit - basically, if you buy Wings and Defenders of the Crown here, you pay more than you would for the whole anthology, which contanies those two games + 11 more.
Post edited July 30, 2021 by amok
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GOG.com: Did you know?
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fronzelneekburm: Did you know that Cinemaware fucked your company and your customers over royally by making some super awesome deal with gog (or, as Cinemaware called it on their own website: a "one-of-a-kind Amiga & PC distribution agreement") that was widely publicised at the time where they'd gradually release their catalogue here for $5.99 per game and then, after a measly three releases, they released the Cinemaware Anthology on Steam, which included all these games (plus a bunch more) for a fraction of the price?

At the time Cinemaware (or at least a user claiming to represent them) said that they "are working on something that will seek to compensate all of those who have supported us on GOG". Of course, none of that ever materialised and the Anthology is nowhere to be found either, while the grotuesquely overpriced gog releases are still available.

As it stands, the Cinemaware debacle still stands proudly as arguably the most blatant fucking over of and just flat-out lying to gog customers.

And now you're doing advertising for these bastards. Why?

Frankly, this makes me sick.
Holy Moly, Gog do something please, stop letting these companies treat your own customers like 2nd class citizens. I knew of the numerous other incidents of 2nd class citizen treatments elsewhere, this one probably takes the cake. Sometimes I wonder if GoG is even in our corner. Trust me, we do not like this kind of treatment.

Why are the new wings ignoring the Wings Advance (Game boy advance) German campaign? The German campaign had better writing than the original allied campaign, but this is never in the new ports. Mostly because the German campaign, like in history, is written as a tragedy, where the war goes south quickly and the hero struggles against increasingly bleak odds. For the allies, it starts good, and rapidly get better as reinforcements and new technologies come in, while Germans lose their Red Baron hero and things go south.

Even the famous duel ending for both campaigns made more sense for the Germans. The allied campaign had you flying a sortie and acknowledging the humanity of the opponent?

"I waved to the single approaching Fokker, partly in greeting, partly to say goodbye. There probably wasn't a reason to risk our lives, yet what better way to say goodbye than one final man-to-man dogfight?"

I find it hard to believe people are volunteering to die when the war was about to be over.

German campaign is one of defiance where you deliberately sortie to prevent your plane being captured, you say goodbye to the ground crew, and you either get shot by the intercepting plane or you shoot him down and the implication is you trash your plane on landing afterwards to avoid handing it to the enemy in a act of defiance. Aka the country may have lost, the government in Berlin may have sold the armed forces out, but my squadron is undefeated. The German player here had to make that last sortie to prevent free war material to the enemy. I really enjoyed the fair two side perspective of it, and was clear the writer had done his homework.

With historical background the full extent of the tragedy is not even shown since the player Character probably cannot continue flying due to the Treaty of Versailles ban on powered aircraft.



TLDR German campaign from GBA please, it had terrific writing. Remasters should contain at least as much content as older versions.
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fronzelneekburm: snip
Thanks for sharing
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karnak1: I wish GOG had brought Cinemaware Anthology here. I really wanted to replay It Came from the Desert and Lords of the Rising Sun.
Hmm, it's still purchasable, I thought it had been removed. yeah, that would have been nice. :P
I bought the full Cinemaware Anthology on sale for 1,49€, obviously not here.
Post edited July 30, 2021 by Lobuno
I would buy the remastered/remake version of WINGS if it was properly patched on GoG.
Wait, wasn't "It came from the desert" on GOG once? I was almost certain I had bought it and that I have it in my library...
Older versions (Amiga, DOS, NES, GameBoy Advance, Amstrad, C64, Atari ST, TurboGrafx etc.) of the games in the Cinemaware Anthology: 1986-1991 plus The Three Stooges and TV Sports Hockey were released as freeware on the Cinemaware website from about 2002 until 2014-2016(?). I still have the files archived on an old HDD. They sold remastered versions of some of the games, e.g. a digitally remastered collector's edition of The Three Stooges. Starbreeze acquired Cinemaware and the licences of these games in 2016. I don't know what happened to the status of these games. However, these games were freeware for at least a decade.

To be more precise, several versions of these games were released as freeware:

Antheads: It Came from the Desert 2
Defender of the Crown
It Came From The Desert
The King of Chicago
Lords of the Rising Sun
Rocket Ranger
S.D.I
Sinbad and the Throne of the Falcon
The Three Stooges
TV Sports Baseball
TV Sports Basketball
TV Sports Boxing
TV Sports Football
TV Sports Hockey
Wings

They just shared the files of the games which you can use in emulators for DOS, Amiga, NES, etc.
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toma85: Older versions (Amiga, DOS, NES, GameBoy Advance, Amstrad, C64, Atari ST, TurboGrafx etc.) of the games in the Cinemaware Anthology: 1986-1991 plus The Three Stooges and TV Sports Hockey were released as freeware on the Cinemaware website from about 2002 until 2014-2016(?). I still have the files archived on an old HDD. They sold remastered versions of some of the games, e.g. a digitally remastered collector's edition of The Three Stooges. Starbreeze acquired Cinemaware and the licences of these games in 2016. I don't know what happened to the status of these games. However, these games were freeware for at least a decade.

To be more precise, several versions of these games were released as freeware:

Antheads: It Came from the Desert 2
Defender of the Crown
It Came From The Desert
The King of Chicago
Lords of the Rising Sun
Rocket Ranger
S.D.I
Sinbad and the Throne of the Falcon
The Three Stooges
TV Sports Baseball
TV Sports Basketball
TV Sports Boxing
TV Sports Football
TV Sports Hockey
Wings

They just shared the files of the games which you can use in emulators for DOS, Amiga, NES, etc.
Oh, that is interesting. Pity I didn't know about that back then. Several years ago I backed the remaster of Wings, given what fond memories of the game I had from my childhood. They indeed had some really good games, including the only basketball game I could enjoy back then, however clunky it was.