Making the Games: Confederation Cruiser

Our next series of daily updates features a treasure trove of Wing Commander artifacts from former designer John "Captain Johnny" Guentzel. Johnny worked on Privateer 2, Wing Commander Prophecy and Secret Ops... along with several of the final projects attempted by the original Maverick team. More importantly, he has always been incredibly kind to Wing Commander fans - and for these updates he has dug up two CDs filled with amazing images, documents and data from his years at Origin. You'll see new images, documents and data from familiar games... as well as stunning material from projects sadly cancelled before their time. We will begin the series with several updates of unreleased artwork...

Following the release of Secret Ops in mid-1998, the development team at Origin put serious work into at least three projects which were ultimately cancelled: Strike Team, Shadow Force and Wing Commander Online. Since there was a good amount of overlap, it is unclear which project most of these ships were first designed for. What is known is their artist: Feng Zhu, who has since made a name for himself as a world-class concept designer. Today's update features several takes on a Confederation cruiser drawn in July, 1998: