Wing Commander III Changed Windows Forever

Fix A Bug, Keep Your Game

There was a wonderful time in the past, where Microsoft did their beta testing internally instead of forcing their paying customers to do it for them.  In those days of  yore, a manager at Microsoft came up with a very bright idea.  They went to a store, as games were sold in physical stores back then, and bought a copy of every piece of software they had.  The software was then offered to team members, two pieces each, with the challenge of determining if it ran properly on Windows 95 or to submit a bug report if it didn’t.  If you did a good job, you got to keep the software and could ask for more.

One lucky tech was handed Wing Commander III, and sure enough they found a bug when running in Windows 95.  The cloaking device in the game worked perfectly if run from DOS, but when run within Win95 the device could not be activated.  The problem was that the cloak was enabled when you hit CTRL+C, which is a gesture we are all very familiar with now.  The bug was fixed, and the tech got to keep their copy of Wing Commander III.

You can read more about the hero who ensured one of the best games of the 90’s ran properly over at The Register.