EA brings Wing Commander and Ultima to Steam, with cutscenes restored from the original master tapes

EA has brought 25 classic video games from its back catalog to Steam, including restored cutscenes from the original master tapes. The restoration includes Wing Commander III's Mark Hamill cutscenes, which had aged poorly due to heavy compression in 1994. The games feature both Anniversary Editions with restored cutscenes and original versions at a lower price.

Most of the games are straight ports, including Ultima RPGs and Crusader titles, while seven are new Anniversary Editions with enhanced graphics and sound. This collection, comprising 25 classics, debuted on Steam and GOG on March 2022. The master tapes for Wing Commander and Road Rash were discovered in a storage room at EA's Redwood Shores campus, leading to the digitization of about 6,000 archival items.

The Anniversary Editions of Wing Commander games and Road Rash are priced at $9.99 each, while the rest are available for $4.99. For a limited time, everything is half off on both Steam and GOG. Owners of GOG or EA app versions of Wing Commander games can upgrade to the Anniversary Edition for free. Privateer 2's cutscenes were the only missing piece in the vault, but its original cinematics director found the full set of master tapes in his attic.

EA then re-edited over 1,000 cutscenes frame by frame from those tapes. Both Wing Commander III and IV also ship with the Enhancement Patch, adding 60 fps gameplay and controller support. The first two Wing Commander games have fan-made patches to tackle speed issues on modern CPUs, while GOG's engineers fixed Wing Commander Prophecy.

Road Rash received its first-ever digital release, with EA relicensing all 14 songs on its soundtrack. The Ultima ports arrive just months before Richard Garriott, the creator, takes back the copyright from EA in 2027, while still retaining the Ultima trademark.