EA Brings 25 Classic Games to Steam, Including Seven Remastered Wing Commander and Road Rash Anniversary Editions
EA has brought 25 classic games to Steam for the first time, bundled together under the banner EA Classics. Seven of them, spanning the Wing Commander, Road Rash and Privateer franchises, have been fully remastered as Anniversary Editions, built from master tapes that sat forgotten in an EA archive for decades. The launch follows up on an earlier report that a Wing Commander III remaster was in development, and pairs well with Gamersuniverse’s own Wing Commander story explained guide for anyone catching up on the Kilrathi War before diving in.
Seven Anniversary Editions Built From Rediscovered Master Tapes
The restoration project traces back to March 2022, when EA senior producer Jim Vessella discovered a physical media vault at the company’s Redwood Shores campus packed floor to ceiling with close to 20,000 archival assets, including master tapes for the Wing Commander and Road Rash franchises. Vessella and a small team spent years digitizing the find, preserving an estimated 2,500 hours of footage and recovering long-lost Full-Motion Video sequences that have now been re-edited frame by frame and reintegrated into the games. Vessella says the goal throughout was simply to honor the legacy of the developers who created these iconic games, while leaning on the Wing Commander modding community for additional quality-of-life patches bundled into each release.
Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger returns with over 1,000 restored FMV scenes pulled from its original source tapes.
The Full EA Classics Lineup
The seven restored Anniversary Editions are:
- Road Rash: 30th Anniversary Edition
- Wing Commander: 35th Anniversary Edition
- Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi: 35th Anniversary Edition
- Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger: 30th Anniversary Edition
- Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom: 30th Anniversary Edition
- Wing Commander Prophecy: 30th Anniversary Edition
- Privateer 2: The Darkening: 30th Anniversary Edition
The remaining 18 games are faithful ports rather than remasters, rounding out the collection with Wing Commander: Privateer, Wing Commander: Academy, Wing Commander: Armada, Strike Commander, Theme Hospital, Crusader: No Remorse, Crusader: No Regret, and the full run of Ultima titles from Ultima I through Ultima IX, plus both Ultima Underworld games.
Price, Availability and Free Upgrades
All 25 games are available now on Steam and the EA App, with special pricing running from November 5 through November 19. The seven Anniversary Editions are also coming to GOG, which already carried the original releases of the other 18 games. Anyone who previously bought a Wing Commander game digitally on GOG or the EA App will receive its Anniversary Edition upgrade at no extra cost.
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Picture Source: EA
