Happy New Year's Eve! (A Look Back at 2023)

We've come to the end of another year, but before we say our last goodbyes to 2023, it's time to take a look back at the highlights from the past twelve months!

The year began, as many do, with lots of glorious fan art and beautiful creations. Mac and Klavs had another very prolific year with a steady stream of gorgeous sights. Many of Klavs' designs were later released as 3D models while Mac took his renders all the way to multiple full fledged lore videos on YouTube.

It didn't take long to get our first "official," WC release when Google finally added Freedom Flight to their digital bookstore in January. Although it's been available for years on competing platforms, having this one title missing from such a major outlet was a constant annoyance to completionists.

Fan projects like WC4 Remastered and many different impressive Lego builds were frequently in the news through the (northern) spring. Dominus of Exult uncovered some very cool vintage Origin patch disks and DaveO put his massive video archive back online. An especially impressive new release was Destro's Wing Loader, which added official Sega CD speech to DOS Wing Commander. It was subsequently updated multiple times to add features to later games as well.

In May we got Van Burnham's campaign to create a vinyl album of George Oldziey's music. It failed to meet the necessary fundraising goal, but we'll continue to press on this one in 2024. On the brighter side, May also saw the first peek at AllTinker's massive WC1 overhaul, Confederation. While work continues on that project, it's already spun off a very useful tool called Originator that modders and curious fans are already using to great effect.

On the delisting front, Wing Commander Academy was removed from Peacock in July, although it remains readily available on DVD. We also got the sad news that Wing Commander Arena will be coming down from Xbox Live Arcade when that store is sunset next July. Buy your copies now! However, we also learned about WC products that we never even knew existed, such as official South Korean translations of both Academy on TV and a localized WC3.

There was plenty of artistic muscle flexing this year. Alexis made a glorious Wing Commander tote for LOAF's birthday and we finally brought back CIC glasses at our 25th birthday party. EmuMusicFan completed the full first chapter of his Freedom Flight comic and we found the source of the iconic SNES Secret Missions box art. And that wasn't even the only artist find! The true origins of the End Run cover art were also revealed in 2023.

There was lots of crafty 3D printing, as usual, headlined by LYP's amazing Centurion and Cpt. Streets' intricate Tarsus. Knight26-77 also made a really cool time lapse of an Excalibur being made.

AD once again did great things via exploration of the Wing Commander Movie's deleted scenes. This includes highlighting the movie's crazy console effect, exploring relationship context, analyzing the evolving cockpit, discovering the Dorkir and more. He and LOAF also GREATLY expanded the CIC's Holovids video archive for Privateer 2, Prophecy and Secret Ops. LOAF also brought back the streaming show in trial form with live steams featuring the Confederation Handbook, Voices of War, lost Academy missions and for the CIC's 25th Birthday.

Lastly, but certainly not least, LOAF had an absolutely banner year in terms of Wing Commander research. Here's a list of some of the topics he (with a few articles peppered in by others) explored in 2023!

• All WC4 flight deck damage models side by side
• Gemini Sector changes from Privateer to Righteous Fire
• Academy fighters next to their in-game counterparts
• Explaining the disappearance of Steltek Guns in later Privateer releases
• Tcheky Karyo exploration
• Gemini's unique ship dealers
• Top shelf Privateer bar easter egg
• WC Movie supertitles
• Academy logo evolution
• All Armada systems and planets
• PC Gamer's Kilrathi art
• Privateer's unused noses
• All the Privateer landing pads with all the ships docked
• Early Privateer build comparisons
• Merlin's holographic emitter
• New ship discovered at Perry Naval Base
• Privateer's secret Test Bed System
• WC1 copy protection rundown
• Fleet Museum thought experiment
• Origin FX overview
• Privateer damage state mystery solved!
• Righteous Fire changes to the Quine 4000
• Privateer wiki expanded
• Origin of the Righteous Fire intro
• More Steltek Artifact revealed!
• Japanese art appreciation
• Privateer manual cover art surprise
• The OTHER Armada manual
• A new look behind the scenes of Privateer
• Mystery ships of Privateer 2 previews
• The Wing Commander Discography
• ESK rating explained!
• WC3 Kilrathi concepts
• Seether vs Blair's ribbons
• System Shock's WC connection
• Explosions in Origin FX versus Privateer
• Privateer mission series gap explained
• Exploring Lt. Anderson's backstory
• WC1&2 cockpits all lined up
• Wing Commander development timelines
• Examining early Academy development
• Four unique Playstation loading scenes
• Rostov vs Rostov
• All of the Privateer 2 background plates
• Confed's data classification system,
• Origin FX fireworks examined
• Privateer commodity naming quirks
• Discussing different Deathstrokes
• WC2's extensive tuckerizations
• Planned Sega Saturn port of WC4
• Kilrathi Imperial Palace sketches
• On the topic of the war-ending bomb
• WC1&2 Ultimate Strategy Guide appreciation
• Tarsus' aft end easter egg
• Love for the WC1 cover
• Life on the frontier
• Development team sizes compared
• 1994 shopping guide
• Huge Prophecy production archive
• European vs American Privateer 2 manuals
• Origin CD design aesthetic
• Discovering new dimensions to WC radar
• What's up with Platolum?
• Smudo autographs
• Alternate Armada editions
• Big map appreciation
• Academy press kit exploration
• Early timeline points of interest
• WC3 cutscene resolution versus 4K
• Debunking the "Thank you for playing Wing Commander" myth
• Stunning Japanese WC3 ad
• Single engine fighters
• Cool knife stuff
• Border Worlds poetry
• French WC ad
• Origin catalog planet reappears
• Cut P2 story sequence
• CR talks canceled WC products
• Confed HQ investigation
• Digitizing the big Origin Museum rescue
• Privateer repair values
• Peek at the Privateer 2 transport balloons
• Missing WCP cutscenes
• WC Movie's fuel/repair truck
• Cockpit Artpiece mystery
• More WC3 magazine Kilrathi art
• Vintage WC3 wireframes
• The Kyoto Rose
• Privateer has 27 base types!
• Claw Marks
• WC3 transport points of interest
• Making the Victory's Gunnery Control
• Moray, Moray, Moray
• Privateer equipment
• Early 1992 Privateer screenshots
• WC3 Official Guide comparison
• Exotic WC3 bug
• Gorgeous Midway shots