was intended to be - a straightforward space simulator with an arcade spin". History Development Wing Commander was originally titled Squadron and later renamed Wingleader. As development for Wing Commander came to a close, the game used would give an exception when the user exited the game. It would print out a message similar with additional information. The team could not isolate and fix the error and they needed to ship it as soon as possible. As a work-around, one of the game's programmers, Ken Demarest, hex-edited the memory manager so it displayed a different message. Instead of the error message, it printed "Thank you for playing Wing Commander". Release Wing Commander shipped in 1990 for PC/DOS as the initial platform and came with an instruction booklet styled as a shipboard magazine, Claw Marks. It provided tactical suggestions, statistics on fighters and weapons both Kilrathi and Terran, capsule biographies of notable pilots on both sides of the line, and general shipboard news (such as the discontinuation of the popular comic strip Hornet's Nest, due to the recent death of its artist, Lt. Larry "Tooner" Dibbles). Notable contributors to the Claw Marks magazine include Captain Aaron Allston, Major Warren Spector, and Col. Chris Roberts. The game also shipped with a set of blueprints for the game's four playable fighters, the Hornet, Scimitar, Rapier, and Raptor. Mission packs In November 1990, an add-on campaign, named Wing Commander: The Secret Missions, was released, adding new missions, new ships, a new storyline, and an increase in difficulty. Unlike the original game, The Secret Missions does not feature a branching mission tree; every player plays the same missions in the same order. However, if the player does not fulfill the mission requirements at any system, he immediately plays the two losing "retreat" missions that are not on the winning path. The Secret Missions was also released for the Super NES as a stand-alone cartridge. The second expansion pack for Wing Commander, Wing Commander: The Secret Missions 2: Crusade adds a new narrative, new ships, more difficult missions, and two new wingmen. It was released in March 1991. Ports and re-release Wing Commander was ported to the Super NES and Amiga in 1992, to the Amiga CD32 in 1993, and to the Sega CD system in 1994. A Sega Mega Drive version intended to use a custom ASIC graphics chip on the cartridge was planned but