The flagship offering of those remasters is much, much higher-quality full-motion video sequences than have ever been available before, but other enhancements include 60 frames-per-second gameplay, a plethora of newly available .INI tweaks, and full controller support (though looking at the Steam forums for the games, some folks are having trouble with said controller support).
For Privateer 2—the little-remembered sequel to Wing Commander: Privateer—the crew couldn’t find the original, high-quality remasters of the FMV scenes, and ended up getting in touch with the game’s original cinematics director, Steve Hilliker, who had the tapes in his attic. Hilliker had always wanted to take a new color-grading pass, and he did just that, while also remastering and upscaling all of the cutscenes.
Similar updates were given to Wing Commander Prophecy. The blog post also details GOG’s involvement in restoring and remastering Prophecy and Road Rash. For the latter, EA re-licensed the entire original soundtrack for re-release.
The e collection is on sale on GOG and Steam right now; previous owners of the old versions of the games on GOG and the EA storefront get these remasters for free. None of the games cost more than $5 each.
One good story doesn’t undo a lot of bad news and questionable decisions from EA, but this shows that a few passionate people can do something remarkable for game preservation, even if some of the work was done on a volunteer basis outside normal working hours. (EA committed some resources to the restorations as the project progressed, though.)
While the remasters aren’t perfect, the gaming industry could use news like this. It’s worth reading the full story in the blog post for a journey down memory lane and a look at how involved a restoration process like this can be.
