A Look Back At 2016

The past year has been another exciting adventure for Wing Commander fans. With 366 days of material to go through, it can be hard to remember all of the significant things that happened in the past twelve months, so that's why we did it for you!

On the digital archeology front, some really cool concept images from famous sci-fi futurist Ron Cobb were unearthed. Chris Roberts did not end up choosing this direction for the Movie's visual style, but they're very neat nonetheless. February also marked the 20th anniversary of Wing Commander 4, which was just one of many major milestones during the year. The CCG, Academy TV show, Kilrathi Saga and Privateer 2 also hit the two-decade mark.

Modding got another shot in the arm with a very useful Vision Engine Tutorial by DefianceIndustries, and UnnamedCharacter posted several similarly useful updates for people curious about editing the WC1 engine.

Also in the springtime, LOAF and friends were able to professionally digitize the massive universe map seen in the WC Movie's intro. Fans helped straighten it and the results are amazing! Around this same time, George Oldziey began working on a sequel to the reorchestrated Wing Commander music album. Although his fall Kickstarter didn't meet its funding goal, he continues to work on some of the preliminary elements necessary to keep the project alive and could relaunch the project this year.

A huge summertime bombshell was the arrival of the first official Wing Commander ebook! Baen released Freedom Flight in July and went on to follow it up with Fleet Action and Heart of the Tiger. The Price of Freedom and Action Stations are confirmed for 2017! Speaking of novels, some Russian translations also surfaced, which doesn't happen every day.

The CIC celebrated its 18th birthday in August, and among a great many awesome fan creations, Joe discovered some cool unused art assets which are thought to possibly have been intended for the WC2 intro. The timing also segued nicely into the 25th anniversary of Wing Commander 2 at the end of summer. We celebrated with a rock in' livestream that successfully pushed the Kilrathi out of the Enigma Sector!

In October LOAF launched his first personal Kickstarter with a plea to save dozens of boxes of priceless material created during the development of the Academy television show. Fans response was very strong, and the target necessary to purchase everything from a distributor was achieved in just ten days! There's a lot to go through, and figuring out just where to begin is a challenge in itself, but we look forward to seeing some of this cool content in 2017. On the subject of saving classics, GOG surprised everyone with a new Origin space sim for its lineup in November. Space Rogue shows off the state of the art from just a couple years before Wing Commander made its epic debut.

Wingnuts got a few final treats right at the end of the year. Senior Origin artist Denis Loubet chose a Wing Commander scene as the setting for his annual Christmas card. Supporters on his Patreon account got a very cool momento featuring Hobbes for the holidays! Fans also got their first chance to try out the long-awaited Secret Ops Model Upgrade Pack!

It's been another incredible year, and we're looking forward to everything 2017 has in store!