SWC Ship of the Day: Spikeri

And the very last SWC Ship of the Day is... the Spikeri class corvette! This ship was originally cut from Wing Commander 1... and it never appears in SWC, either! It's a secret lost ship...

A Bit of Wire for a Mod

The Wing Commander Invasion mod for ST:Armada's beta release has been delayed a few days... so that the team can update it with new wireframe models of the various ships... here's the new version of the Midway!

Cannon Still Loose

According to a press release at FragLand, UbiSoft has purchased the Digital Anvil's Conquest: Frontier Wars and Loose Cannon. Both games were dropped by Microsoft several months ago.

PARIS, France – May 14, 2001 – Ubi Soft Entertainment has signed a deal with Digital Anvil Holdings to publish Loose Cannon and Conquest: Frontier Wars worldwide. With this agreement Ubi Soft acquires the rights to publish Loose Cannon on all platforms, and the rights to publish Conquest: Frontier Wars on PC. Ubi Soft’s objective will be to expand the Loose Cannon brand by developing it on next generation consoles.

The two projects were originally handled by Digital Anvil, an Austin, Texas based company founded by Chris Roberts. Roberts is one of the stars of the development world, best known for the wildly successful Wing Commander series. Eric Peterson, the original producer of the game, has opened his own development house called Fever Pitch Studios, Inc., to finish work on Conquest: Frontier Wars, which is slated for release in the 3rd Quarter of 2001. Sinister Games, Ubi Soft’s highly talented studio in Raleigh, North Carolina, will finish development on Loose Cannon, which is slated for release in the 1st Quarter of 2002.

Loose Cannon, created by Tony Zurovec, is pure action-adventure that combines an intense mercenary-style driving game with a shooting game. The year is 2016, and players take the role of bounty hunters in a country plagued by crime. Driving around cities from San Francisco to New York in a car equipped with weapons, players will hear police calls on the radio and choose whether to intervene in bank robberies, muggings and other crimes in progress. Two years of development and five million dollars have already been spent on the game. Loose Cannon uses the very latest technology to give players a unique gaming experience.

Conquest: Frontier Wars is a 3D real-time strategy game that takes place in solar systems around the galaxy. Aimed at RTS players aged 18 to 35, the game-play is reminiscent of tactical situations faced by the U.S. and Japan in the Pacific theater of World War II – but now those events are played out on the modern battleground of space.

Both games are in line with Ubi Soft’s strategy of acquiring strong brands. They expand the group’s adult offerings. “With these product acquisitions, Ubi Soft solidifies its strong commitment to the PC market,” said Ubi Soft President and CEO Yves Guillemot. “Loose Cannon and Conquest: Frontier Wars are both incredible games that are going to revolutionize their respective genres.”

By the Skin of Our Hornets

That's a Mass

"Work done by Gerard O'Neill and teams of students to build a mass driver -- an electromagnetic accelerator -- is soon to be reactivated, said Valentine. Several versions of a mass driver were pursued in years past -- a concept originally developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, under the direction of Henry Kolm and O'Neill."