EA discovered a vault containing nearly 20,000 archival media assets at its Redwood Shores office in 2022. Senior Producer Jim Vessella found the storage room while cleaning up materials from the Command & Conquer Remastered Collection project. The company has now released 25 classic games from that vault on Steam and GOG, including Wing Commander and the Ultima series. Seven games received enhanced releases with improvements, while 18 ports bring original experiences to modern platforms.
The project took four years from discovery to release. Vessella's team cataloged and digitized the materials, then built a business case to EA leadership for commercial re-release. For Wing Commander III, Vessella collaborated with the existing fan community for two years through a Slack channel. A community member named Matt iterated on an Enhancement Patch starting in spring 2025, with Vessella playtesting builds and providing feedback.
Restoration presented specific challenges. Wing Commander games rely heavily on FMVs and cinematics that required painstaking reassembly. For Road Rash's 30th Anniversary Edition, EA's team contacted every band whose music appeared in the game to clear licensing. One band member could not be found for months. "After months of searching we still could not find one of the members for a specific band. No contact equals no license," Vessella wrote. The team located the final contact in mid-September 2026, days before needing to remove the music entirely.
GOG's game preservation team engineers assisted with the technical work. The full 25-game collection is available at over 50 percent off on both platforms.