EA Officially Brings Back 25 PC Classics With Huge Sale

Electronic Arts is not in players’ good graces right now. On Oct. 21, the publisher announced that it was closing BioWare, the beloved studio behind games like Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. The news came just a few months after EA was purchased by the Saudi Arabian government’s Public Investment Fund, Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners, and private equity firm Silver Lake. Despite these dismal circumstances, including the fact that EA is now owned by a government responsible for numerous human rights abuses, a small group of EA developers just finished an unexpected feel-good preservation project.

EA released restored versions of 25 classic games on Steam and GOG, including five Wing Commander titles, Ultima 1 through 9, Crusader: No Remorse, and Theme Hospital. Seven are full remasters, including all the Wing Commander games, Road Rash, and Privateer 2: The Darkening. While GOG already has the 18 non-remastered games, all of these titles are new to Steam.

How were these games remastered?

Producer Jim Vessella led the project and explained the work in a blog post. In March 2022, Vessella found a physical media vault at the EA Redwood Shores campus that contained nearly 20,000 archival media assets. He and a small team pored over these tapes and eventually discovered original footage for the Wing Commander games.

From there, they used the game’s original FMV footage to transfer high-resolution versions to the remaster. They also made other quality-of-life improvements, like 60 FPS support. While early Steam reviewers are impressed by the transfer work, some players are reporting problems with controller support.

How did the internet respond?

On social media, these re-releases were mostly met with continued anger over BioWare's recent closure. "Are you serious? You're seriously choosing to make a post like this just two weeks after BioWare's closure, after everything the community has already done to make sure you don't put the IP on the back burner? ARE YOU SERIOUS?!" reads an angry X post. Meanwhile, a petition calling for the revival of BioWare and the studio’s in-progress Mass Effect: Universe continues to gain traction, with over 300,000 signatures. These sorts of online petitions don’t usually bear fruit, but some are hopeful the Canadian government may step in after the leader of the country's New Democratic Party proposed a plan to save the company.

The full list of remastered and re-released EA games is as follows:

- 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

- Wing Commander: Privateer

- Wing Commander: Academy

- Wing Commander: Armada

- Strike Commander