Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
We have one more interesting thing that you can 'play' today: a set of five custom Wing Commander Academy missions… created by the Wing Commander Academy team as a demo for how users can create and share missions. The missions are titled Rescuemission, Mission 2, Protectbase, Ferretmission, Badguymission and they do present a bit of a challenge! It's not as exciting as an entirely new game but there's something thrilling about getting five new missions that were designed by the people that made the game. The missions were created immediately after the game was finished on August 30 and 31, 1992 (that's right, someone was working on Sunday).
Where did these come from? They're a recently rediscovered echo of Origin Systems' BBS! Origin established their BBS in 1988 to support Omega, a tank-fighting game that included 'play by mail' components. Users could call an Austin, Texas number to access message boards and file downloads. In an era before the internet had been widely adopted, Origin would post patches, demos and other material to their BBS which users would download and then disseminate to other systems. In 1995, Electronic Arts' FTP site began to replace the BBS for this purpose although it did not mirror most earlier content. By 1997, Origin no longer advertised the BBS number and it, like most BBSes, faded from history. Sadly, there no archives of the BBS have ever been discovered, only individual files saved by users. The mission pack, WCAMISSN.ZIP, has actually been preserved for years in multiple BBS archives… but because of a typo no one came across it! The file description identifies the set as being from "WING ACADAMY" which of course doesn't show up if you're searching for Wing Commander or Academy.
You can download the missions here (.ZIP, 3,834 bytes); you can access them by adding the files to Wing Commander Academy's 'MISSIONS' folder (they will replace your first five saved missions; be sure to back them up first if wanted!).
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Original update published on August 18, 2024