It's been almost 30 years since Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger was released. In addition to allowing users to kick some Kilrathi ass, the game also played an important role in testing Windows 95.
Wing Commander: The Kilrathi Saga – Wing Commander I – Introduction
Microsoft veteran Raymond Chen told a story on his New Old Thing blog this week about how a little "testing" with Wing Commander III resulted in a fix for how Windows 95 in development talked to the underlying MS-DOS.
It was important to ensure that Windows 95 compatibility was tested as much as possible before release. Back then, there was no army of helpful Windows Insiders. Instead, the replacement for Windows 3.x was hammered out in the traditional way – usually by staff.
An enterprising manager took his truck to the local computer store, picked a copy of every PC program on the shelves, and distributed them to the Windows 95 team. Each member could take up to two programs and was responsible for installing and running them as a normal end user. If something didn't work, a bug report was made.
