Wing Commander: The Secret Missions

Wing Commander: The Secret Missions is the first official expansion to the original Wing Commander from 1990 and came out a year later from Origin Systems, back then still as a standalone data disk that had to be bought in addition to the base game. It follows directly on from the end of the base game and offers a new series of missions that develop the struggle of the human Confederation against the Kilrathi race after the original campaign ended with their heavy defeat. The player once again takes the role of a fighter pilot aboard the carrier Tiger's Claw and plays through a campaign whose course branches depending on how successfully the individual missions are completed. The same dynamic-campaign principle that made the original game exceptional was kept in the expansion, including the possibility of promotion or, conversely, demotion based on performance in combat.

In terms of gameplay, it is still a space simulator with a cockpit view, where you have to watch your fighter's shields, fuel and weapons while also commanding a wing of other pilots with voice commands selected through a simple command menu. Secret Missions adds new types of enemy and allied craft and somewhat harder fights that follow on from the escalated conflict at the end of the base game and force the player to adapt their tactics to stronger opponents. The graphics run on the same engine as the original, that is, with pixel ship sprites against a starry background, and even on the XT or AT hardware of the time the game required a solid configuration with a VGA card and a sound card such as AdLib or Sound Blaster for the voice recordings and the musical accompaniment of the missions to really shine.

At the time of release, the expansion was seen as a welcome continuation of a beloved series, because it gave fans a reason to return to the Wing Commander universe before the full second instalment arrived, and it helped establish a model in which a successful game is extended through paid data disks instead of waiting for an entirely new sequel. Today Secret Missions is played more as a historical artefact of early space simulators, but for fans of the series and the genre it still has value as a demonstration of how Origin Systems was able to expand the story in smaller steps without having to change the already established and popular game system.