Origin Systems, Inc. was an American video game developer based in Austin, Texas. It was founded on March 3, 1983, by Richard Garriott and his brother Robert. Origin is best known for their groundbreaking work in multiple genres of video games, such as the Ultima and Wing Commander series. The company was purchased by Electronic Arts in 1992.
Chris Roberts is a British-American video game designer, programmer, film producer and film director. He created the Wing Commander series while at Origin Systems and since 2010 has been working on the crowdfunded space simulator Star Citizen.
Tactical role-playing games, also known as strategy role-playing games and in Japan as simulation RPGs, are a video game genre that combines core elements of role-playing video games with those of tactical strategy video games. The formats of tactical RPGs are much like traditional tabletop role-playing games and strategy games in appearance, pacing, and rule structure. Likewise, early tabletop role-playing games are descended from skirmish wargames such as Chainmail, which were primarily concerned with combat.
IL-2 Sturmovik is a 2001 World War II combat flight simulator video game and is the first installment in the IL-2 Sturmovik series. The release focused on the air battles of the Eastern Front. It was named after the Soviet Ilyushin Il-2 ground-attack fighter, which played a prominent role in this theatre and is the single most produced military aircraft design to date. Along with its sequels, IL-2 Sturmovik is considered one of the leading World War II flight simulators.
Starlancer is a space-based science fiction flight simulator computer game, created by Erin and Chris Roberts, and developed by Warthog Games under the auspices of Digital Anvil.
Over one hundred video games based on the Star Wars franchise have been released, dating back to some of the earliest home consoles. Some are based directly on films while others rely heavily on the Star Wars Expanded Universe.
Star Wars: X-Wing is a space simulation video game, the first of the X-Wing combat flight simulation games series. The player's character flies starfighters, including the X-wing, for the Rebel Alliance. The narrative precedes and parallels the events of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.
Wing Commander is the first game in Chris Roberts' space flight simulation Wing Commander franchise by Origin Systems. The game was first released for MS-DOS on September 26, 1990 and was later ported to the Amiga, CD32 (256-color), Sega CD and the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and re-released for the PC as Wing Commander I in 1994. An enhanced remake Super Wing Commander was made for the 3DO in 1994, and later ported to the Macintosh.
Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger is the third main game in Chris Roberts' Wing Commander science fiction space combat simulation video game series, developed and released by Origin Systems in December 1994. It was a departure from previous games in the series in that it uses extensive live action full-motion video to add an interactive movie-style presentation to the space combat gameplay, emphasized by its advertising slogan, "Don't watch the game, play the movie!". The game's more than two hours of video featured a number of prominent movie stars including Mark Hamill as Colonel Christopher "Maverick" Blair, Malcolm McDowell as Admiral Tolwyn, John Rhys-Davies as James "Paladin" Taggart and Thrakhath nar Kiranka, and Tom Wilson as Todd "Maniac" Marshall.
Combat Flight Simulator 3: Battle for Europe (CFS3), is the latest installment of combat flight simulators from Microsoft Game Studios, released on October 24, 2002 in North America and on November 15, 2002 in Europe for the Microsoft Windows.
A space flight simulation is a genre of flight simulator video games that lets players experience space flight to varying degrees of realism. Common mechanics include space exploration, space trade and space combat.
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine is a third-person shooter hack-n-slash video game developed by Relic Entertainment and published by THQ. It was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on September 6, 2011, in North America, September 8, 2011, in Australia, and September 9, 2011, in Europe. It was later ported to Japan and published by CyberFront on October 27, 2011. The game takes place in Games Workshop's Warhammer 40,000 universe and features the Ultramarines chapter. Its gameplay focuses on a hybrid shooting and melee combat model.
Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars is a Lego-themed action-adventure video game developed by Traveller's Tales and published by LucasArts in March 2011 for the PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable, Xbox 360, Wii, Nintendo DS, Microsoft Windows and a launch title for the Nintendo 3DS. The game features missions and characters from the 2008 animated film Star Wars: The Clone Wars and its follow-up television series, as well as fan-favorites from the original Star Wars saga, in both single-player and multiplayer gameplay modes. The Mac OS X version of the game was released by Feral Interactive.
Star Raiders is a video game for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Microsoft Windows. Developed by Incinerator Studios, it was published in May 2011 by Atari SA. It is a re-imagining of 1979's Star Raiders which was the killer app for Atari, Inc.'s new Atari 8-bit family of home computers. The original was well received for expanding the space combat simulation genre with higher quality graphics and more complex gameplay. It inspired key games over a decade later such as Wing Commander and Star Wars: X-Wing.
Zeboyd Games is a Indie developer of 8-bit and 16-bit-style indie role-playing games. Zeboyd is most associated with its co-creators Robert Boyd and William Stiernberg who did the great majority of the work for their games. The studio got its start with Breath of Death VII and Cthulhu Saves the World; later made the third and fourth installments in the Penny Arcade Adventures series; and has since switched to the 16-bit style RPG Cosmic Star Heroine and Cthulhu Saves Christmas. Stiernberg left the studio in 2023, but it continues onward under Boyd.
War Thunder is a free-to-play vehicular combat multiplayer video game developed and published by Gaijin Entertainment. Announced in 2011, it was first released in November 2012 as an open beta with a worldwide release in January 2013; it had its official release on 21 December 2016. It has a cross-platform format for Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, Oculus, and Vive. A spinoff game called War Thunder Mobile was released in May 2023 for Android, with an iOS version released in August 2023.
