Electronic Arts recently released 25 classic games at once on PC across Steam, GOG, and the EA App. A senior producer from the EA Partners team shared details about his unexpected discovery that helped bring back games from the Wing Commander franchise with enhancements.
In March 2022, Jim Vessella discovered a physical media vault at EA’s Redwood Shores campus:
“Imagine a massive storage room housing nearly 20,000 archival media assets: Betacam, VHS, and D1 tapes, as well as film reels, CD-ROMs, and much more. Back in 2019, while working on Command & Conquer: Remastered Collection, I stumbled upon a much smaller stash of similar materials and realized how valuable they were. So I was determined to find out what was stored on these media.”
In 2023, his colleague organized the materials in chronological order, and Jim began preparing a proposal to start digitizing the vault. In 2024, they acquired Betacam players and began “loading tapes into the decks in shifts for about 17 hours a day over the next eight weeks.” By April 2026, they had digitized a total of 6,000 media assets and archived around 2,500 hours of footage. Among these materials were the master tapes for two iconic franchises — Wing Commander and Road Rash, as well as several other projects.
Seven of the 25 games received “Anniversary Edition” releases with various enhancements. The developers collaborated with fans of the franchises.
- Theme Hospital — players are invited to design, maintain, and manage a high-tech hospital, “making the most of limited resources and turning cures into cash.”
- Road Rash: 30th Anniversary Edition — motorcycle combat racing. This edition includes a fully relicensed soundtrack, higher-resolution cinematics, gameplay at up to 60 FPS, and other improvements
- Action games Crusader: No Remorse and Crusader: No Regret
- Strike Commander — a game about an elite squadron of mercenary pilots
Space combat simulators:
- 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: Privateer
- Wing Commander: Academy
- Wing Commander: Armada
- Wing Commander Prophecy: 30th Anniversary Edition
- Privateer 2: The Darkening: 30th Anniversary Edition
The fantasy RPG series:
- Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness
- Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress
- Ultima III: Exodus
- Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar
- Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny
- Ultima VI: The False Prophet
- Ultima VII: The Complete Edition
- Ultima VIII Gold Edition
- Ultima IX: Ascension
- Ultima Underworld 1
- Ultima Underworld II