Prophecy, Armada & Academy Included in Unusual Weekend Sale
This is a reminder that we have another fun #Wingnut movie night planned on Discord this evening! The ongoing theme will be movies that inspired Wing Commander in some way. Tonight's film is Star Trek: The Motion Picture which inspired the music in the original Wing Commander. You can find details on that as well as how to watch along with us in the announcement post here. The movie will start about 7 PM PST/10 PM EST but feel free to drop by and hang any time!
Greetings WingNuts,
Epic war movies haven't fared great with the Wing Commander movie club so far; a lot of classic air combat movies have come off as either extremely slow (The Dambusters, Battle of Britain) or kind of silly (Midway). Surprisingly, Tora! Tora! Tora! didn't share that fate. It's an incredibly literal telling of Pearl Harbor that abandons any pretense of character drama but it still reads as an impressive spectacle and a story that feels worth telling. The fact that it was so significantly a Japanese and American co-production also makes the film itself an interesting part of the event itself!
The Wing Commander movie references Tora! Tora! Tora! Immediately as it starts, basing the Pegasus attack on the Pearl Harbor bombing. Here's how some of the angles of the attack compare. The movie was actually intended to reference Pearl Harbor even more by opening with a 'fake out' that would've had sailors relaxing on a beach only to reveal that it was buried deep inside an asteroid base.
The name of the movie, Tora! Tora! Tora! refers to the code phrase the Japanese used to begin the attack. Tora translates literally to tiger but it's actually an abbreviation of 'lightning attack'. Action Stations uses "Jak-ta Ga!", derived from the Kilrathi word Jak-tu which also refers to a surprise attack. This is even used as the prose extract from the start of the book!
"Jak-ta Ga! Jak-ta Ga! Jak-ta Ga!"
The triumphal cry, announcing the destruction of the reactors and the lowering of the main base shields, erupted from the speakers on the bridge, greeted an instant later by wild shrieks and roars of unspeakable joy as those around the Crown Prince broke into a mad demonstration. Fists were raised to the heavens, talons extended, some of the warriors turning the talons on themselves, slicing open their own veins so that they might smell blood and then drink it.
Speaking of Action Stations, it would take more space than we have to point out how the book borrows scene after scene from the movie. From the Japanese torpedo tests to the machine that decodes enemy communications to the letter to the Pentagon outlining the state of the war, it's shameless (and wonderful). But since Action Stations is based on the real story of Pearl Harbor there's a little plausible deniability… until we get to the famous scene in which Admiral Yamamoto says the attack has simply 'awakened the sleeping giant'. The line itself first appears in the film, not in any of the actual history. Dr. Forstchen puts it in the mouth of Harga, the young Jukaga's mentor:
Harga closed his eyes and Jukaga realized just how old his father's friend really was. His mane had gone nearly to white, the ripples of muscle on his limbs were melting away into nothingness.
Harga opened his eyes and looked back at Jukaga and his voice suddenly sounded distant and old, as if already whispering from the beyond.
"I fear that all that the Crown Prince shall succeed in doing is awakening the sleeping giant."
Pilgim Truth also references this quote at one point, referring to a mysterious Pilgrim fleet:
“This is but a small representation of the fleet that's headed our way,” Space Marshal Gregarov said, coming forward to gaze threateningly at Bellegarde. “If we begin the bombing, then it's safe to assume that we'll awaken this sleeping giant.”
Another piece of trivia is that the Japanese portions of the film had been scheduled to be directed by famed filmmaker Akira Kurosawa. Kurosawa was famously credited with a star system in the original Wing Commander… and Action Stations, appropriately, has a little tuckerization that surely exists because of the connection to Tora! Tora! Tora!:
"Nothing to sink our teeth into," Joshua replied. "You saw my report on what happened to the Beta team?"
Skip nodded and sighed. Of course their deaths would be listed as a training accident, bodies unrecoverable. They'd been nailed trying to slip into Kilrathi space near the Ingraya system in order to set up a listening post.
"That's the third team in as many months," Joshua said bitterly, looking into his mug of coffee. "One of them is Akiko Kurosawa's daughter, captain of Gibraltar. We've lost thirty good men and women for nothing."
If you want to experience the battle yourself in a Wing Commander engine, Origin's Pacific Strike opens with a mission in which you and your wingman join the desperate flight to defend the base. You can even change history by saving the USS Nevada, prompting it to follow your carrier like the William Tell in Wing Commander II!
And this item is more history than the film itself, but those pre-war Navy flag officer uniforms certainly inspired the one worn by Admiral Terrell in Privateer!
Sully did not return his copy of Pacific Strike.
Here's a neat discovery courtesy of a brief memory someone mentioned on BlueSky. A documentary where Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven played Wing Commander? It sounded too specific not to be real and sure enough, a quick search revealed that the pair appeared in the second episode ("To The Brink of Eternity") of a 1992 British documentary called Pandora's Box.
The documentary itself is about much heavier things than Wing Commander and Pournelle and Niven are appearing not as science fiction authors but because of their involvement in proposing the Strategic Defense Initiative (aka "Star Wars") to the Reagan administration. But as part of their interview, the film crew captured Pournelle very eagerly playing Wing Commander to use as coverage. Here's that clip:
It's worth noting that based on the ship flown (Rapier), the skybox objects (red nebula, blue planet) and the progression of enemy ships (a Gratha followed by Salthi with a Fralthi) that he is clearly playing the second mission in the Venice series… approaching the last mission of the game! That's because in addition to his writing and his work on SDI, Jerry Pournelle was a very early advocate for Wing Commander. He repeatedly mentioned his love of the game in his BYTE column, Tales from Chaos Manor. He was at one time assigned to co-author the third Wing Commander novel which was intended to be a story about the destruction of the Tiger's Claw. Pournelle died in 2017. And here's Larry Niven, namesake of Wing Commander II's Niven System and the ostensible creator of the Kilrathi, who seems to have been watching his friend and co-author play the original Wing Commander between takes.
The entire episode has been posted on YouTube or if you are in the UK it is available on iPlayer. We've archived a copy here (714 meg).
The main new feature is a controller setup utility which you can access in-game by pressing Alt+J on the Victory, via the Main Terminal under controls\joystick calibration or during space flight using the Alt+O menu\calibrate. This is the visual part of a general controller overhaul replacing the old Multimedia Joystick API with the newer Windows Gaming Input. It looks a little complicated but I hope it's fairly intuitive to use. You should be able to setup multiple controllers, peddles and such. You can also save your configurations as presets which can be shared with others, I'd be happy to include some of these in future releases of the patch for common joysticks\controllers.I've added linear filtering when scaling GUI and Cockpit/Hud elements to make things look a bit smoother especially a lower resolutions. If you hate the look you can always disable it in the ini.
We recently posted a guide to where to find all of the 'named' Kilrathi aces across the first three Wing Commander games. Once it was published I was immediately inspired to expand the guide to include all of the 'Drakhai' pilots that appear in the first two games. Drakhai are the Kilrathi Imperial Guards, ace pilots that must have killed eight Confederation ships in order to receive the assignment. The Drakhai are introduced in Secret Missions 2 (replacing the named aces for that campaign) and then appear throughout Wing Commander II and its addons. In Wing Commander II they have distinct pilot profiles but they aren't labeled as Drakhai on your VDU–making it more difficult to know where to find them all!
Firekka System Mission 1 Alpha Wing
Firekka System Mission 2 Kappa Wing
Firekka System Mission 3 Epsilon Wing
Firekka System Mission 5 Delta Wing
Firekka System Mission 6 Chi Wing
Corsair System Mission 1 Beta Wing
Corsair System Mission 2 Gamma Wing
Near Firekka Mission 1 Psi Wing
Near Firekka Mission 2 Theta Wing
Corsair System Mission 1 Sigma Wing
Corsair System Mission 2 Mu Wing
Corsair System Mission 3 Omicron Wing
Corsair System Mission 4 Omega Wing
Border Zone Mission 1 Iota Wing
Border Zone Mission 2 Upsilon Wing
Wing Commander II
Gwynedd System Series 1 Mission 3
Niven System Series 2 Mission 2
Niven System Series 2 Mission 3
Enigma System Series 7 Mission 2
K'tithrak Mang Series 8 Mission 1
K'tithrak Mang Series 8 Mission 2
K'tithrak Mang Series 8 Mission 4
Novaya Kiev System Series 10 Mission 1
Tesla System Series 11 Mission 2
Tesla System Series 11 Mission 3
Gwynedd System Series 12 Mission 4
Special Operations 1
Pembroke System Series 1 Mission 1
Pembroke System Series 1 Mission 3
Ghorah Khar System Series 3 Mission 1
Ghorah Khar System Series 3 Mission 2
Ghorah Khar System Series 3 Mission 4
Pembroke System Series 5 Mission 1
Special Operations 2
Canewdon System Series 1 Mission 1
Canewdon System Series 2 Mission 3
Canewdon System Series 3 Mission 2
Canewdon System Series 3 Mission 4
Canewdon System Series 5 Mission 1
Canewdon System Series 5 Mission 2
Against all odds, we enjoyed Tora! Tora! Tora! Which makes the score Wing Commander movie club one, war movies fifty. This week we've voted to travel back to the future with Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979). ST:tMP is a sometimes-misunderstood masterpiece that we've found has improved greatly with age… and we're eager to see if that remains the case today! You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.
Star Trek: The Motion Picture is full of spectacular effects and incredible spaceships… but the connection to Wing Commander is the music. Back when Chris Roberts was developing the original Wing Commander he told composer George Sanger (The Fatman) that he wanted the game to have an epic score similar to Jerry Goldsmith's work on Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Here it is mentioned in a recent recent interview with The Fatman!
We had the creative brief that was that we should do something that's sort of like Star Wars and sort of like Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Chris Roberts was a very cinema oriented guy and this was the first time to my knowledge that anybody asked a game audio person to imitate John Williams or to do a movie like soundtrack. Before that nobody kind of bothered with that. It was like video, it's got to sound like a video game or just put music in it.
A sample of the original Wing Commander score from the Origin Audio CD:
Where can I find a copy of the movie for the watch party?
We will be watching the recently restored "Director's Edition" of Star Trek: The Motion Picture which is available for streaming in the United States on Paramount+. It is also available for rent or purchase on all the standard services. If you would like a physical copy, the movie was released on UHD in 2022 and remains in print around the world. If you are not able to locate a copy please stop by the Discord and ping a CIC staff member before Friday's showing.
How do we watch the movie together?
It's pretty low tech! Simply join the Wing Commander CIC Discord on Friday and we will be chatting (in text) along with the film in the main channel. Everyone who wants to join in should bring their own copy and we will count down to play them together at 10 PM EST. Everyone is welcome and we encourage you to join in the conversation; sharing your thoughts helps make the experience better for everyone!
Archive sites have recently preserved a new swath of gaming magazines. I found a pretty interesting general Origin preview in this issue of Computer Games Strategy Plus (February 1993)... but as I went to post about it, I got to thinking: just how much of this issue is covering games from Origin? The answer surprised me!
The issue's cover story is a preview of Origin's Pacific Strike, a game that ended up not having the simplest birth. It's all sunlight here, though, as the game promises to be a followup to Strike Commander that actually lets you drool over the textured aircraft in longer gunnery-based dogfights.
This is the preview itself which covers Origin's entire lineup at the time. Some of these projects, like Bioforge and Wings of Glory, would end up being over a year away! The fact that they intended to have a disk-based SKU for Bioforge is itself fascinating but Wing Commander fans will be most interested in Chris Roberts' early descriptions of the Wing Commander III interaction system and of Wing Commander Academy. There's also a great shot of the Super Wing Commander shuttle as it appears in Bioforge!
The 1993 Strategy Plus Game Awards give Simulation of the Year (General) to X-Wing with Privateer and Wing Commander Academy as runners up. Strike Commander loses out in Simulations (Flight) to Tornado... and Serpent Isle loses the CRPG award to Betrayal at Krondor. Always a bridesmaid!
There's also a pretty positive review of Shadowcaster, a game developed by Raven but published and supported by Origin:
There's also a multi-page strategy guide for Privateer! Unfortunately, every copy online seems to be missing the last page.
Origin advertised heavily, too, with THREE full page slots! The three Ps, Privateer, Pagan and Pacific Strike:
Finally, I tbought it would be fun to list out the Origin games that appear in the standard issue six-page Chips & Bits advertisement. Chips & Bits was known for running these 'list' ads in countless magazines... and for taking preorders for games sometimes before they were even announced! Still waiting for my copy of Ultima X...
Quarterdeck Game Bund $62 (included Privateer)
Ultima Trilogy $39
Ultima Trilogy 2 $48
Wing Com 1 Dlx or CD $48
Shadow Caster $45
System Shock $54
System Shock CD $54
Ultima 9 or 10 CD $54
Ultima Underworld 1 $ 2 CD $59
Wing Commander 3 CD $54
Wing Command Ultima 6 CD $57
Wing Command Ult UW CD $55
Martian Dreams Hint Book $15
Quest Clues 2, 3 or 4 ea $21
Quest Clues 5 Bk Orbs $16
Qust Clue 6 Man Swrds $16
Savage Empire Hint Book $10
Shadow Caster Hint Book $18
Strike Commander Of Bk $15
Ultima 4-6 Hint Book ea $10
Ultima 7 Hint Book $12
Ultima 7 & Underworld Bk $16
Ultima 7.5 Blnce Scales Hint Book $16
Ultima Avatar Advs Book $16
Ultima U Stygian Abyss $12
Martian Dreams $37
Savage Empire $34
Ultima 4 Quest of Avatar $35
Ultima 5 Warriors Dest. $35
Ultima 5 Warriors Dest. $38
Ultima 6 False Prophet $19
Ultima 7 Black Gat $48
Ultima 7 Forge of Virtue $18
Ultima 7.5 Part 2 Silv Sd $20
Ult 7.5 Serp Isle Spc Pk $18
Ultima 7.5 Serpent Isle $48
Ultima 8: Pagan $48
Ult 8: Pagan Spc Acc Pk $17
Ultima 9: Ascension $52
Ult. Uworld 2 Labyrinth $46
Pacific Strike $52
Pacific Strike Spch Pak $18
Privateer $47
Privateer Special Op $22
Privateer Speech Pack $17
Strike Commander $41
Strike Comnd Spec Op1 $20
Strke Cmnd Spch Pk $16
W C 2 Operation 1 $22
W C 2 Operation 2 $22
W C 2 Speech Mod $13
W C Secrt Mission $20
W C Sec Mis1&2 Bundle $20
W C Secret Mis 2 HD $20
Wing Armada $54
Wing Commander $19
Wing Commander 2 $29
Wing Commander 3 $52
Wing Command Acad $32
Today we're taking a new look at some unusual 3DO magazine advertisements from Electronic Arts. These 'high concept' pieces ran in magazines in the UK in the first half of 1995 and they are... something. But underneath that something there are some interesting Wing Commander stories! This one, "Moist Mullet," is especially interesting because it seems to be the only source of an unusual 'bullshot' of a Super Wing Commander Cockpit which doesn't match anything in the game (aside from the Rapiers, which are renderings from the intro!).
The second one, "EA Lard," doesn't include any Wing Commander but we're including it for posterity.
The third one features Wing Commander III, showing a Hellcat V cockpit from the PC version...
... which is likely why it got this running change, swapping the Hellcat cockpit for the Emperor!
Electronic Arts also used the 'EA Lard' version to present their physical 3DO catalog in 3DO. These booklets were included with 3DO games and include a page for each of Electronic Arts' current titles. You can download a PDF of the complete booklet here.
Finally, here's an early 1995 magazine advertisement from 3DO themselves that also includes screenshots from Super Wing Commander (available now) and Wing Commander III (coming soon). Look closely at this one, too: the Super Wing Commander screenshot is from a pre-release build! Note the original Hornet graphic on the right VDU.
Bonus! Here's a 1994 Goldstar ad for their 3DO system... with Super Wing Commander visible!
This is a reminder that we have another fun #Wingnut movie night planned on Discord this evening! The ongoing theme will be movies that inspired Wing Commander in some way. Tonight's film is Tora! Tora! Tora! which informed Chris Roberts' vision for the Wing Commander movie… and which was essentially the first draft of Action Stations! You can find details on that as well as how to watch along with us in the announcement post here. The movie will start about 7 PM PST/10 PM EST but feel free to drop by and hang any time!
Greetings WingNuts,
The Wing Commander movie club certainly enjoyed Return of the Jedi! It was great to see the original version (with the original songs!) again after so many years and it's just a tremendously fun, well made movie that continues to impact pretty much every space opera to this day in some way. There's always an argument that Empire Strikes Back is the 'smart' Star Wars sequel and that Return of the Jedi is somehow tainted because it feels more commercial… and it's hard to maintain that when you're actually watching the movie. It's a stunning piece of work that has as much artistry and thought as anything else in the Star Wars saga and I think it's particularly telling that Chris Roberts seems to come down on the Return of the Jedi side.
As we noted in the introduction post, Chris Roberts has credited the space battles in Return of the Jedi as inspiring combat in both the original Wing Commander and in the 1999 movie. And there's little question that that's true: Return of the Jedi's frantic third act fleet action was the gold standard for space combat for many, many years (and some would argue remains so). He had asked production designer Peter Lamont to consider Return of the Jedi's space battles alongside various World War II references and you can certainly see that in the work!
Wing Commander II takes two of its animated explosion from Return of the Jedi. The first one, which the game plays when a capital ship is destroyed, is taken from the shot where the Death Star first destroys a rebel ship. The Origin artist responsible for the theft mirrored the original shot. This explosion was then reused in Wing Commander Privateer as the 'player ship destroyed' explosion.
Here are 'sprite sheets' comparing all three explosions. The additional frames for the Privateer version were likely added by hand later and were not based on the original Return of the Jedi sequence.
The second explosion comes from a later shot where a TIE fighter crashes into the bridge tower of a Star Destroyer. This was used as the fighter explosion in Wing Commander II and then reused in Origin FX's 'Armageddon' module... and once again for Privateer's "big" explosion!
Here are the sprite sheets which remain pretty consistent from game to game:
Of course, those two explosions aren't the only thing the Wing Commander franchise borrowed from Star Wars…
Your Jedi mind tricks don't work on Sully. But treats do!
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