Unfortunately, I can't answer your last question, but I have some questions for you. Did you raise the bus speed on your new mobo to 50? If you did, how did your system (video cards, and also IO card) cope? Also, did you have a write-through or write-back CPU?

No I never had luck with 50 MHz on any 486 board that I've had. I used 40 MHz FSB.

The VLB board that I upgraded to back then was a MTI R407e. It was cheap but worked well enough. It didn't officially support write back L1 caching so it had the floppy drive issue when I used write back with the AMD 5x86 that I got later. But aside from the floppy malfunction it worked adequately stable with write back.

I loved Wing Commander 3, however originally how I played and beat it was on 3DO, which at the time, was stated to provide the superior experience of the game. Maniac was such a dick.

The 3DO version has more and better quality video but the gameplay is much lower resolution than PC SVGA.

I picked up a 3DO early this year, mostly to play Super Wing Commander. But the gamepad with its 3 buttons drives me insane with the impossible to remember button combos. 😀

I still play Wing Commander III once in a while nowadays. I play it in my P133 machine. It has the S3 Virge DX in it. Most of the time though, I just look in wonder the tech advancements this game achieved those days, the dream game Chris Roberts had in mind when designing this, rather than actually playing it. But when started to engage in the dogfights, it just pulls me in to continue with the story and looking forward to the next dogfight.

I still remember Chris Roberts notes in the Wing Commander II manual, mentioning how he predicts the CD-ROM will be the medium of games in the future and it's capabilities. He really made it true with not one but 4 CD-ROMs in his next game, Wing Commander III : Heart of the Tiger.

Yeah I hear you. I followed Chris Roberts' crazy ambitions closely back then too. I liked WC3 a lot. It was a technological marvel and was an improvement over WC2 in every way IMO.

On the other hand, WC4 was too much movie and very little gameplay improvement. I think he lost sight of interactive storytelling like so many other people did in the FMV craze days.