Hero image: Road Rash: 30th Anniversary Edition. Image: Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts has released 25 of its older PC games on Steam — for the first time on that store, it says — and seven of them have been rebuilt from master tapes that turned up in a storeroom at its Redwood Shores campus.
The details are in Add 25 Restored and Classic Games to Your Library, posted on 5 November to the Steam page of Road Rash: 30th Anniversary Edition. EA says the 25 are also available on GOG and the EA app.
The seven restored Anniversary Editions are Road Rash, five Wing Commander games (the first four and Prophecy) and Privateer 2: The Darkening. The other 18 are described as “faithful ports”: three more Wing Commander spin-offs, Strike Commander, Theme Hospital, both Crusader games and eleven Ultima titles.
According to EA, the project began in March 2022, when senior producer Jim Vessella found “a vast physical media vault” — a room holding almost 20,000 archival assets, including master tapes for Wing Commander and Road Rash. EA says the team preserved an estimated 2,500 hours of footage.
That footage is the point of the restorations. For Wing Commander III and IV, EA says the tapes were “re-edited frame-by-frame to restore over 1000 FMV scenes” across both games, with optional upscaled versions. Privateer 2‘s tapes, found in 2024 by its original cinematics director, restore more than 100 scenes, and the same director has colour-corrected and re-edited each one for an alternate Director’s Cut.
Road Rash is the first digital release of the 1996 PC version. EA lists a relicensed soundtrack — Soundgarden, Paw, Hammerbox, Monster Magnet, Swervedriver and Therapy? — plus up to 60 FPS, native controller support, windowed mode and cloud saves.
The community gets real credit here. Patches built by Wing Commander fans, including Wcdx, WCAT and an Enhancement Patch, come bundled, and anyone who already owned a Wing Commander game on GOG or the EA app gets the Anniversary Edition upgrade at no cost.
EA says all 25 have “special pricing on Steam and GOG from November 5–19”. On Australian Steam, Road Rash: 30th Anniversary Edition is A$7.47, down 50% from A$14.95.
Vessella calls it “a passion project for everyone involved”, adding that “the vast majority of this work was done alongside our ongoing full-time projects.”
Source: Electronic Arts – Add 25 Restored and Classic Games to Your Library (Steam), Steam – Road Rash: 30th Anniversary Edition, Electronic Arts (YouTube) – Road Rash: 30th Anniversary Edition Launch Trailer