News Collection: On This Day in WC News

2024.194 (July 12, 2024)

Exotic Hit Squad Box Showcases WC1 in Three Languages

Last week we shared a fun assortment of European Hit Squad releases from Dennis Mull's collection. Now Conservatoire national du jeu vidéo or the French National Video Game Conservatory has posted an unusual triple-translation copy of WC1 that has English, French and Italian all in one. It's always fun to learn about a new version of Wing Commander! This is part of a delightful larger thread on the history of multilingual game packaging.

2023.193 (July 12, 2023)

All Tuckered Out From Playing Wing Commander 2

Wing Commander II has some excellent tuckerizations! This is from Special Operations 1. Denis Loubet is the famous Origin artist, and the Miller is Craig Miller, who designed the Wing Commander II box. General Snell of Niven Colony was Wing Commander II's executive producer Dallas Snell (who is likely well known to many Origin Systems fans)!

2022.193 (July 12, 2022)

Academy and Armada Get Some Streaming Love

Milquetoast Gaming has been steadily progressing through the WC series in a livestreaming adventure dubbed 'Wing Commander-thon'. There's lots of people out there broadcasting playthroughs of WC1, WC3 or even Privateer, but Milquetoast has been hitting them all. This includes games like Academy and Armada. These titles are often overlooked - people today may consider them too simplistic to take up - but they were both quite revolutionary in their own way at the time they were released.

2021.193 (July 12, 2021)

Catch Wing Leader Ships From Every Angle

Howard Day has been putting together lots of pretty ships for his Wing Leader project. We've seen them in action in some slick videos, but here's a different way to view them. As most are aware, the original Wing Commander used a series of rotating sprites to imitation three dimensions. Howard has prepped the sprite sheets below to show off his 3D models can be cut up similarly to great effect.

2020.194 (July 12, 2020)

Machine Learning Advances Could Lead to Enhancement Pack 4.0

We're leaning into a new week with a couple of amazing new test clips from ODVS. He's not intending to reinvent the wheel each month, but there have been even better AI techniques discovered that further improve the quality of his enhanced video. Due to the exciting potential of this upgrade, he's made another WC4 example to gather feedback and see if he should release a new iteration of his footage overhaul. I wasn't planning on posting anything again so soon - but then I got my hands on a new AI model!

2019.193 (July 12, 2019)

Starflight's Not Like Wing Commander

Drunken and Gaming has posted a video about Starflight for the Sega Genesis as a part of their One Minute(ish) Review series. It all goes by so fast, but one thing's clear - the reviewer thinks Starflight is amazing and deserves as much credit as Wing Commander. I'm not sure how the Wing Commander Movie plays in, but that's also referenced somehow. There isn't any gameplay shown from either, so I found another video by Friday Night Arcade that shows off what it's like.

2018.193 (July 12, 2018)

Decipher SciFi Discusses Wing Commander

Back in 2016, the Decipher SciFi podcast devoted an entire episode to the Wing Commander movie. The show starts off with an overview of the Wing Commander computer game series with a focus on Wing Commander 3 as a revolutionary interactive movie and the ever increasing production values and development budget up to Wing Commander 4. The show runners are all familiar with the franchise, having played the originals back in the 1990s on DOS PC or Amiga, and they even went to see the film when it was playing in theaters. The movie segment of the show touches on a wide range of topics, including unlikely fraternization, the traitor subplot getting axed, production challenges as a first time director with a limited budget, and Pilgrim pick-up lines.

2017.193 (July 12, 2017)

Cheat Sheet: WC3 Turrets

It's easy to find 'mistakes' in the ship stats published in Wing Commander manuals. The biggest reason for this is that physical manuals needed to be locked down for print before the final testing and balancing of the games would have been finished. Changes to ship stats to better balance gameplay are common, meaning that a booklet like Victory Streak gives a better look at how the team thought the game would work rather than how it actually does. Case in point are the GIF listings for capital ships.

2016.194 (July 12, 2016)

Basic Functions Restored To Kilrathi & Confed In Homeworld Mod

L.I.F. continues to doggedly hack away at the Homeworld Remastered mod with some significant results.

2015.193 (July 12, 2015)

Secret Missions 1.5 Tweaked To Run With Kilrathi Saga

WingOver has created a modified version of delMar and UnnamedCharacter's Secret Missions 1.5 package that is designed to run with Kilrathi Saga. DOS versions of the early games have seen a huge resurgence over the last several years with the popularity of GOG and DOSBox, but many pilots prefer the enhancements that came along with the Windows editions released in 1996. Now these players have a chance to try out the extra missions that are included with Super Wing Commander (back ported to the original game engine).

2014.193 (July 12, 2014)

Hakaga Work In Progress Shown Off

Wing Commander fans have seen quite a few of Klavs' ship renderings over the years, but they don't often get to see behind the scenes before the images are complete. Here's a peek at the Hakaga while it's still being assembled in MODO. It's overlaid with the Fleet Action cover in order to get the proportions right. "Blocking some things out, beefing up some areas.

2013.193 (July 12, 2013)

Green Arrows Line Up for Sol Defense

Fans have been clamoring for new skins, and Klavs has obliged with a Wing Commander 4 variant of his popular Arrow 3D print. This ship joins versions of the design based on both Wing Commander 3 and Armada. It's a beautiful ship that's all set to represent the Strategic Readiness Agency on your behalf. Find it at Terran Fleet Supply!

2012.194 (July 12, 2012)

BREAKING NEWS: EA Announces Ultima Forever

Bioware Mythic's Ultima forever website has been updated with the first details about the expected Ultima Forever game. Further information is expected later today. The first great Western RPG has been lovingly restored in Ultima Forever - return to the Ultima series in BioWare's new cross-platform action RPG. Accept the challenge from Lady British and save the land of Britannia.

2011.193 (July 12, 2011)

Trojan IV Naval Yard Gets Busy

Malcolm Reynolds has started an awesome paper model project. These first pictures show off the flight deck runway of his new Tiger's Claw design. It's looking fairly large for a physical model. The source art comes from bits and pieces of Howard Day's gorgeous 3D Bengal.

EA Makes Big Casual Gaming Purchase

Electronic Arts announced a major acquisition today. They are currently in the process of buying PopCap Games for some $750 million. PopCap is known for many recent hit puzzle and social games, and this combination fits well within the EA Interactive division, which specializes emerging online and mobile games. PopCap issued a tongue-in-cheek open letter to its fans describing what this means next.

2010.193 (July 12, 2010)

These Cockpits Deserve Close Inspection

AD found a very cool image in the gallery of Craig Halverson, an artist that worked on Wing Commander 3. The two cockpit shots in the first image below show off some very unique perspectives on the Thunderbolt and Excalibur. The TBolt picture is cropped back from a wider angle, which reveals the full upper strut and more of the dashboard. In the second frame, the Excalibur display is presented with new colors in many of the electrical elements.

2009.193 (July 12, 2009)

Standoff Development Entering Final Phase

Standoff is now one month away from the scheduled release of Episode 5. It should come as no surprise that the team behind the game is entering crunch mode as they try to hit the remaining development milestones. Eder's latest status report has some interesting stats. Can you believe the finished project will feature more than 3,000 lines of recorded speech?

Making the Game: UNITS

This text file sets the rules for units in Wing Commander Prophecy. In order to scale everything properly, the designers sat down and decided on constants invisible to the player -- distances are measured in meters, speeds are measured in tenths of a meter and so forth. What actually interests me the most, though, is a little notice at the top of the document: "NOTE: This document is currently a text file as some members of the team have Office 97, and others have Word for Windows 95. Once everyone has switch to the same version of Word, this document will be converted to Word format.

2008.194 (July 12, 2008)

Flight Commander Mission Contest In Progress

Iceblade and eddieb are kicking off a fun summer modding contest! Wingnuts have the opportunity to create a short campaign in the Flight Commander engine. FC1.5 is a great framework to create short Prophecy-style missions and adventures like this.

Making the Game - Part 68

This is the big prize for anyone interested in Wing Commander Prophecy's early visuals: an early version of the TCS Midway designed by Chris Douglas early on in the game's development. The evolution from Wing Commander III and IV is a lot more clear here!

2007.193 (July 12, 2007)

Digital Badge of Courage

The folks over at XBLArcade have written an article on their thoughts about upcoming Xbox Live Arcade achievements... featuring comments on those in Wing Commander Arena! They say: A nicely varied and level distribution of points here. Paladin (Shoot down 1000 pilots on Xbox LIVE) will take some time but anyone can do it with enough perseverance.

The Night They Drove Old Digital Anvil Down

BrynS has found an interesting item at FiringSquad. It's a mention of Chris Roberts in an article titled What's Killing Game Development? which suggests that back-room dealings lead to his departure from Digital Anvil in 2000: With the exception of Will Wright, few of the any old, great designers have done much lately. Sid Meier's name is on a bunch of games, but it's not actually Sid in charge of development or design.

2006.193 (July 12, 2006)

Advertising Gets Real

Rounding out his recent trilogy of classic Wing Commander advertisements (here, here and here), Alkarion has provided us with three scans relating to other amazing Origin games. In this case, it's Origin's three RealSpace engine flight games. The RealSpace 3D engine was also used on three Wing Commander games: Armada, Heart of the Tiger and The Price of Freedom. First is Strike Commander, Chris Roberts' 'other' big interactive movie.

All For Against the Odds

Cam has asked that we post an announcement from the Wing Commander: Against All Odds. We're always interested in promoting Wing Commander fan groups online, and this is no exception. If you're interested in internet role-playing in a Wing Commander universe, give them a shot! News From the Front: It is a time of great trials in Gemini and Enigma Sectors.

2005.193 (July 12, 2005)

DragonCon Ticket Rates Going Up Friday

The year has gone by fast and it's almost time for our annual meet-up again. The final opportunity to get discounted Dragon*Con passes expires on July 15. They're $70 now and $85 at the door. If you live near Atlanta and might just be dropping by for a day or two, discounted single day passes will be available at the show.

Shuttle Discovery Launching Wednesday

The Space Shuttle Discovery is expected to launch Wednesday afternoon around 4:00 pm from the US East Coast. Some of us in #Wingnut will be watching the live webcast if you'd like to join in. Hopefully everything goes smoothly.

2004.194 (July 12, 2004)

WC Unreal Mod Texturing Ships

Dishwasher has put out a progress update for the WC Unreal Mod. In the first shot below you can see some Hellcats on a flight deck. He has begun trying out some textures on them, but for now their placeholder bodies are available to see. It should be fun to run around a ship like that.

Morone Auctions Ending Tomorrow

The exclusive Wing Commander items being auctioned off by former Origin developer Tony Morone are ending tomorrow. If you haven't been following them, you've got a little time left to check out the items and bid.

Trivia Replies Sent, Glitch Holds Up Some Submissions

TC has scored the submissions to this week's trivia game, but there was a glitch in some of the email submissions. If you have not received an email acknowledging receipt of your answers, you should send them in immediately. New questions will be posted tomorrow, though we're giving you an extra day or two to resubmit your answers because of the problem.

2003.193 (July 12, 2003)

First New Fleet Action Shot In A While

NewCommanderOnDaBlock has published a few new shots with a Ralatha model for Fleet Action, the Homeworld Wing Commander mod. It's been a little while since we've seen anything new for this one, so some activity is welcome. You can find more informatio on Fleet Action here. In the second shot the Ralatha is behind and left of the Fralthi.

I Reckon It's A Galaxy

Stannum has published phots of his Galaxy model for the upcoming Freelancing The Reckoning Wing Commander mod. Apparently he's got even sharper versions of the Dralthi, Paradigm and others in the works. A few days ago we posted some other great Privateer shots from Vega Strike. Lots of beautiful ships this week.

2001.193 (July 12, 2001)

Vegastrike 0.0.6 Released

The latest version of Vegastrike has been released -- version 0.0.6 is now available! VS is an all-new Wing Commander engine which will form the basis for a number of other fan projects.

Space Kittens & Such

LumTheMad has posted an article titled Angry Space Kittens and The Original G(Bob)... which is commentary on JumpGate from its former-Origin PR man GBob. It makes ample references to the Wing Commander series...

HotT Water

Here's some more... ah... aquatic HotT art. Call me crazy, but I absolutely love the Cerberus one.

Correction: UE Screenshots

I need to take a moment to apologize to the Unknown Enemy team for posting the wrong screenshot yesterday -- Pedro asked me not to post the intro shot in the package he sent me... which I assumed was a scene of a Bengal with some text. Apparently that was the wrong picture, to clarify the misunderstanding.

From: Military Emergency Control HQ

We have had a distress message from some ships that have been caught in the middle of a fight between two rival pirate clans. The area is also very busy with other space traffic and as word of the fight spreads, more pirates will come to join in. You have the unenviable task of taking out the pirates. It is a very challenging task, but the reward will be a large sum.

1999.193 (July 12, 1999)

Holland Correction

Raoul sent a correction to that previous report about Holland... thanks!And on the site, I see that it says that there are posters in cinemas, but that's not true.. 'de Megasfestatie' is an event for a week where's also a cinema.

Poster on Track!

Well, here's some great news! The previously reported Tiger's Claw cutaway poster in the works from SciPubTech is now in 'final color work'. It should be ready by September!

Joined the Fleet!

As you may or may not have noticed, the logo on our right sidebar means that we're now part of A Talent for War's Infinite Fleet! Keen, non?

Not for Sale... Yet!

Just a bit of clarification -- I'm not selling Wing Commander Prophecy & KS DVDs... just taking a poll to see who's interested in the hopes that it will be able to convince a company to do just that. Erm, but I got a bunch of offers to buy them from me, so I just thought people should know...

Coming to Holland

Raoul reports that movie theaters in Holland now have up the Wing Commander movie posters... the movie must be coming there after all.

Meet Peter Telep

Peter Telep will be holding a book signing on Sunday, August 28th (just in time for Pilgrim Stars!) from 12 noon to 6 pm at Barnes & Noble in Ovideo, Florida! For more information go here. You can also now check out The Official Wing Commander Site Of Peter Telep here!

Threshference

Edward Pang reports a small mention of the Wing Commander movie's failure to perform at the IMDb in Thresh's Firing Squad's Freespace 2 review. Check it out here.

Obutu Confusion

While watching the VHS version of Wing Commander, John Casey noticed that after the Skipper missile scene Obutu's line "The Kilrathi ships are closing" doesn't match his lips. I looked up the line in the movie's script, which doesn't even have Obutu in the scene... the same line is said by Radar Officer Falk! Very unusual...