EA producer Jim Vessella announced Wing Commander 3: Heart of the Tiger — 30th Anniversary Edition at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo. The kicker: they found 600 original FMV master tapes in EA's archives, and the Mark Hamill cutscenes are being fully restored.
The discovery
Vessella was digitizing EA's video archive when he unearthed roughly 600 source tapes from the 1994 production. That's the raw footage behind the game's two-plus hours of full-motion video — the stuff that made Wing Commander 3 famous as an “interactive movie.”
Here's why it matters: the original shipped with its FMV crushed down to 240p, heavily compressed. The tapes predate all of that. This is the first time anyone's had access to the uncompressed masters.
What's in the remaster
Per presentation slides shared by Video Game History Foundation board member Steve Lin: restored FMVs (both original-source and upscaled versions), 60 FPS gameplay, controller support, post-release community enhancement patches, and Kilrathi Saga integration — which likely means the earlier Wing Commander games bundled in. Planned for Steam, GOG, and the EA app. No release date or price yet.
Why Wing Commander 3
Released in 1994, Heart of the Tiger was a genuine big-budget event — Mark Hamill (fresh off Star Wars) played protagonist Christopher Blair, alongside Malcolm McDowell, John Rhys-Davies, and Tim Curry. Casting Luke Skywalker as the lead of a space combat sim was a genuine coup. Fans consider it the peak of the series, and they've wanted a proper remaster for decades — many feared the footage was lost forever.
KongMNG's take
Game preservation wins don't get much better than this. 600 tapes that could've rotted in a warehouse, now becoming the definitive version of a 90s classic. EA doing right by its back catalog — more of this, please.