Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger

Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger is a space combat game that arrived on the 3DO in 1995, bringing to console one of the most expensive productions of its era. Between cockpit flights unfolds an extensive live-action story shot with real actors, in which Colonel Blair faces the final phase of a long war against the feline Kilrathi. The player walks the decks of the carrier, talks with the crew, and his choices affect how relationships and the whole campaign play out. The conversations aren't just filler between missions — they're the main reason you want to fly the next one at all.

The gameplay itself is a classic space simulator simplified for a gamepad: pick a fighter and loadout, get briefed, jump into a sector, dogfight maneuvering enemies, and return to the carrier. Missions link together and their outcomes shape the campaign, so failure doesn't necessarily mean the end, just a worse starting position for what comes next. Flying is fast and readable, objectives simple — escort a convoy, scout, defend — and the tension comes less from the combat itself than from who makes it back to the squadron and who you won't be waiting for at the next briefing. Losing a wingman isn't just a statistic, because you'd been talking to them for a long time beforehand.

Technically this was a demanding port: the game originally shipped across several discs for computers, and bringing the live-action footage to console demanded compromises in image quality. Still, the essentials survived — the alternation of film and action at a pace that had no equal at the time. At the time, the third installment was seen as the high point of efforts to merge games and film, and also as the moment when live-action content in games reached a decent craft level. Today it's noticeable that the story scenes take up a lot of the runtime and that the dogfights themselves are simple compared to later simulators. As a period piece, though, Wing Commander III still works, and on the 3DO it ranks among the library's most lavish productions.