News Collection: On This Day in WC News

2023.139 (May 19, 2023)

Pcmania Delivers Their WC4 Take

We're going to wind down this week with another set of Spanish Pcmania scans from Maxi de Sokar. These compromise their preview, review and advertisement for Wing Commander 4. I like how their blue formatting matches the game's Confed uniform tones, but overall it's a lot less flashy than some of the magazine layouts from earlier in the decade. We've added translations again for folks who are curious about what they say, which is generally pretty positive with a 91% final score.

2022.139 (May 19, 2022)

Dragon and Banshee Leap off Drawing Board Into Physical World

We always like looking at little Wing Commander ships, and we thought you do too! Here's a couple of newbies that L.I.F.

2021.139 (May 19, 2021)

Learn About 'Wing People' in Helpful Guide

Here's a super retro magazine scan from the December 1993 issue of PC Review. Bear in mind that this was still the early 1990s, and the topic of the article is how space has become the "cluttered frontier." Apparently there were so many space combat and sci-fi games that people don't know where to start. In hindsight, it seems like Wing Commander, X-Wing, Elite, a couple Star Treks and a few more less popular titles was a navigable space, but they created a three page spread to help organize things.

2020.140 (May 19, 2020)

Video Experimentation Produces Dazzling Results

ODVS has another fantastic video sample to show off. After releasing his massive enhancement to WC4 and Prophecy video, he's continued to research and perfect the craft. This has produced some impressive results from the very low res WC3 footage, and even more advanced methods for manually improving video quality further have been discovered. The results from that testing have been amazing!

2019.139 (May 19, 2019)

Morningstars Light up the Night

Up tonight is a fantastic piece of art by tkdrobert. This one features a pair of Morningstars zooming away from the Concordia or another Confederation class dreadnought set against a colorful backdrop. Although the final results almost look like a painting, the scene was 3D rendered with Klavs' models as a starting point. tkdrobert has done some nice retouching to give it a cool stylized look.

2018.139 (May 19, 2018)

Classic Joystick Evokes Hardware Nostalgia

Dennis Mull came across a hardware setup from the mid '90s that's a pretty neat time capsule of the era. The Quickshot "Squadron Commander" QS-202 is a very early example of a Hands-On Throttle And Stick (HOTAS). Lots of joysticks at the time were sold as "compatible with Wing Commander," and this one includes pre-programmed controls for Wing Commander, Wing Commander 3 and Strike Commander. Given the rapid pace of PC advancement during that time, it's pretty cool that you could regularly find equipment that worked with all of these games.

Wing Commander Meme of the Day: Blank Nut Button

2017.139 (May 19, 2017)

Kilrathi Warrior Busts Some Skulls

The April 1994 issue of Electronic Entertainment has a short-but-interesting preview of Wing Commander III! It's fascinating to see an article that isn't especially focused on the addition of live action cutscenes... but this scan is most exciting because it includes two early concept sketches for the game: an Excalibur fighter and an initial, somewhat terrifying sketch of a Kilrathi!

2016.140 (May 19, 2016)

WC1 Live Viewer Reveals Programming Details In Real Time

UnnamedCharacter has made a neat little app that provides enhanced visibility of each WC1 object in space. It shows ships and their speed, of course, but the really cool aspect is that it reveals exactly what each of the enemies pilots/ships is "thinking." By tapping into the game's AI routines, you can see exactly which ships are patrolling a nav point, holding formation, wandering, chasing our hero and more! It only works with Kilrathi Saga WC1 at this time, but if you've got a Windows setup going and are curious, it's worth a look.

2015.139 (May 19, 2015)

Behind the Scenes of the WC2 Demo

Wing 2 director and script writer Stephen Beeman recently shared some interesting facts about the WC2 demo, now almost a quarter century old. The awesome, 'alternative' intro animation is embedded below, or you can download the demo and check it out for yourself. Mr. Beeman also fondly recalled their rudimentary motion capturing efforts and the ensuing hijinks in an old Escapist article.

2014.139 (May 19, 2014)

Together Retro Game Club Replays Wing Commander

This post is a bit out of date, but when it comes to sharing stories of Wing Commander enjoyment, 'better late than never' always applies! Together Retro Game Club chose Wing Commander for one of their group playthroughs last spring, and they even whipped up a nifty Arrow Scout graphic to kick things off. Their adventure was very much like the community replay that the CIC conducted a few years back, but in our case it took over a year to get through the main story games in the series! If you'd like to read about the fun that they had, check out the Racketboy forums here.

New Disc Option Added to Music Album Campaign

As often happens in crowd funding campaigns, George's Oldziey's Wing Commander Music Album Campaign has some late breaking changes in the last few days before the end. A new $60 physical disc option has been added. It lacks the autograph that the higher tier includes, but it does lower threshold for owning the real deal. Fans who pledged for the digital album in the Kickstarter earlier this year can also contribute the difference between their original amount and $60 if they'd like to upgrade here.

2013.139 (May 19, 2013)

Wing Commander Airing on HBO & On Demand

Blaster reports that the Wing Commander Movie has been added to HBO’s Video On Demand section on DirecTV. You can find the film listing here. It's also been recently airing in high definition on the HBO ZHD channel. The next showings are on May 21 & May 31 at 3:45 AM EDT.

WC Vet to Lead New UT Gaming Academy

The University of Texas at Austin has announced that Wing Commander producer Warren Spector will be leading a new gaming academy at the school. The program will also be directed by Blizzard COO Paul Sams. Twenty slots will open up for promising students in the fall of 2014, and the end result will be a distinguished post-baccalaureate certificate. Each participant will make a small scale game of their own over the course of twelve months.

2012.140 (May 19, 2012)

Fearsome Fralthra Filling In Fast

Red Baron has started to texture Cybot's Fralthra, and it's quickly turning into quite a work of art. The color scheme already does a great job of evoking Wing Commander 2. He's also scaled a Jalkehi as a point of reference and imagined what the entire fighter complement of the ship might look like. Let the baron know what you think at the CIC Forums.

2011.139 (May 19, 2011)

Empire's Factory Switches Into High Gear

Chris Carpenter has posted an update on the construction of his radio controlled Dralthi. Progress is great so far - the airframe is in the middle of being reinforced and the craft's engine and battery are starting to get installed. It sounds like a test flight might be possible soon. Find the full update here.

2010.139 (May 19, 2010)

Wing Commander Themes Available for Cheap

Wing Commander Arena themes for the XBox 360 have gotten a big price cut! They're available now for just 50 MS Points, which is down from 150 points originally. At the going conversion rates, this makes the price today just slightly more than 60 cents! That's an incredibly small price to pay for various Darket, Dralthi, Paktahn, Arrow, Rapier and Broadsword variants gracing your screen in beautiful 1080p resolution.

Asteroids Rage

This week's set of releases for Microsoft's Game Room include the 'space sim' that started it all: Asteroids. Released in 1979, Asteroids pitted a player's spaceship against increasingly dangerous waves of rocks and aliens. It quickly became one of the most popular early arcade games and still remains a cornerstone of video game culture.Wing Commander Arena payed homage to Asteroids with its addictive 'Meteor' mode.

2009.139 (May 19, 2009)

Gratha Graphical Glitches Gone

Michelle D has a revamped Gratha model. The structure of this new version is a little bit more in line with the original game design. Now that the main frame is complete, texturing will begin soon. Help provide feedback over at Crius.

Making the Game: Series L Overview

Series L is the Hellespont/Alcor missions, Wing Commander Prophecy's only exclusive losing set of missions (other than D-L). Very few people bother to fly these missions, which is a shame - where else can you see the Confederation starbase? (Well, the simulator... and Secret Ops...

2008.140 (May 19, 2008)

Wingnuts Hold on to Pembroke

The community replay of the Wing Commander series has made its way to the first WC2 addon, Special Operations 1. Although most players will now work on securing the gains made in Enigma, anyone can join the fun at any time. Each discussion is broken down by system at the bottom of this update. It's definitely not too late to start in at Wing Commander 1 and sync back up with everyone else later this spring.

Making the Game - Part 14

The plot thickens! On May 31, 1996 the project is in the very earliest stages of development and plans are focusing on things like the makeup of the team, sharing resources with other projects and who will be contracted to write and direct the game's story elements.There's a lot to read here - it confirms, for instance, that "Maniac Missions" was still a serious project with a planned development team at this point, and that Origin had some involvement in the Wing Commander Academy animated series. There is also a timeline attached, which shows individual deadlines for each element of the project's development.

2007.139 (May 19, 2007)

Quite an Achievement

Following good news with good, TeamXbox has posted a new preview of Wing Commander Arena. It gives descriptions for every game mode, talks about fighting 'bots and confirms what we've noticed in recent screenshots - that the game is a lot more polished than it was three months ago. Most importantly, it reveals for the first time all of the game's Achievements. For those unfamiliar with Xbox games, Achievements are special graphical awards unlocked for accomplishing various in-game feats, similar to winning medals in Wing Commander I...

The Game is First Rate

There are no small Wing Commander news articles, only small Wing Commanders: the German equivalent of the ESRB, the USK, has rated Wing Commander Arena. The verdict? "Freigegeben ab 12 Jahren gemäß § 14 JuSchG", meaning "restricted for those below the age of 12". This is a slightly higher rating than the game received in the United States, where the ESRB awarded it the 'E for Everyone' ranking.

2006.139 (May 19, 2006)

Many Options Out There For Desktop Redecoration

Our Wallpapers section has been updated to include all the great desktop images submitted to us in the last half year. You may have missed some of these new additions if you didn't visit the CIC every day. Most notable are the Stingray render by Sean Murphy and the new section for Pioneer wallpapers. Keep checking back for more fantastic wallpapers from Mr.

Wing Commander's Still The Space Sim Standard

Vance caught a neat little Wing Commander mention over at IGN. The article in question is an interview with the top developers at of Metroid Prime 3 for the Nintendo Wii. They discuss different abilities and features of the game, and at one point the interviewer asks about flying main character's ship.IGN Wii: The E3 demo of Prime 3 features a pretty spectacular Ridley fight in which Samus and the boss fall down a corridor in a scene right out of a Star Fox game.

2005.139 (May 19, 2005)

Alternate Origin Logo Extracted

While searching through files for his WCIV movie project, AD came across an alternate version of the Origin logo that plays at the beginning of WCIV. Here we give you both for comparison purposes. One is fiery, the other is less so. It's possible that one was used in different regions.

Super Wing Commander On The Big Screen

AD is doing well for noticing strange things. Apparently a film called Synthetic Pleasure was released in 1995. The strange part comes from the complete film credits listed on this site. Super Wing Commander was apparently featured in the film.

2004.140 (May 19, 2004)

Saga Shows Off New Excalibur & Fleet

We haven't featured any mod progress updates in a little while, so Tolwyn from WC Saga sent a batch of shots showing their latest updates. First is their updated Excalibur. It's shaping up quite nicely. The following shots show an assembled Kilrathi fleet.

The Big Question Returns

For a long time the CIC has watched people debate one of the important questions of our time: Who would win in a fight? Luke Skywalker or Christopher Blair. McGruff over at Crius.net found the battle once again at the ridiculous CrossoverUniverse.

Congratulations To Everything

Yesterday was something of a triple holiday for us at the CIC. Kris turned 23 and the alt.games.wing-commander newsgroup turned 9.

2002.139 (May 19, 2002)

Have You Seen My +1 Mass Driver?

"The Original Wing Commander RPG" is a recent addition to our Solsector.net family. Michael Coe is working on a pen-&-paper Wing Commander RPG, and he wants some feedback. If you like pen-&-paper games or if you've given his game a try, drop him a line.

Bear At The Movies

No, not Jason. TC has dug up this peculiar Wing Commander movie review. It's an odd little thing, but I like the way he sums it up: "Spaceships, explosions, battles and babes - what more could you ask for in a movie?".

Freespace Universe Invaded

Apparently this one hasn't been getting a lot of coverage around here. Nicolas "Venom" Clement reminds us that there is a Wing Commander Total Conversion for Freespace 2 under way. You can find out more about the project on their bulletin board.

2001.139 (May 19, 2001)

SWC Character of the Day: Spirit

She flew straight into that space station, like destroying it was more important than her life. All of her torpedoes exploded on impact... And I couldn't do anything to save her. I'll never forget the last words she said to me...

Invasion Moves

Can't find the Invasion Beta and Music? That's because it's been moved here and here respectively, to allow Netscape users to download it.

1999.139 (May 19, 1999)

Star Wars!

Every other form of press media mentioned Star Wars about eighty times today so why shouldn't we?

Withdrawal Symptoms Going Away..

Wow, it feels good to be back. My old P100 died last Friday and I've spent the past week shopping for a new system and staring at my blank old monitor. Having a P3 is great (after skipping the P166/200 step practically everyone took, we decided to splurge a bit), but it wasn't until after I got everything up and running that I realized I haven't really bought any games since WCP. So..