Random Wing Commander reference(s)

MagicAlex

Spaceman
This is totally out of the blue, but I thought I'd ask on here and see if anyone else knows what I'm talking about. Remember Doug, the cartoon on Nickelodeon? In one of the episodes he gets a free video game system (a Super Pretendo) for being the millionth customer in some electronics store, and the rest of the episode is about him being obsessed with the game that it comes with. It's not quite the same as WC (the badguys are chipmunks), but it definitely looked like it'd been inspired by Wing Commander. Anyone else remember this, or know of any other random Wing Commander references?
 
I always liked how the enemy mothership was a giant nutcracker.

Also that Doug's fighter had a tape deck in it.
 
One of the ships in WC1 has a light next to the Auto Pilot light that just says Tape. I don't think I ever saw it turn on.
 
McGruff said:
Tapes in the 2600's?
There's a new kind of "VHS" tape that can record in HD. There's no law that says the storage media has to be in any specific form. Whatever works best at the moment is a function of more than whatever is newest.

Plus, nobody says they have to be magnetic, as far as I know. Might be some kind of superfuture magic.
 
Frosty said:
There's a new kind of "VHS" tape that can record in HD. There's no law that says the storage media has to be in any specific form. Whatever works best at the moment is a function of more than whatever is newest.

Plus, nobody says they have to be magnetic, as far as I know. Might be some kind of superfuture magic.

Another good one is the control column (joystick) in the spacecraft. We've been using them for like 100 years now. Add another 600.
Wing Commander seems to have a very realistic/modern approach. A good comparison is the fighters at the beginning of the Lost in Space movie (the new one). They have a very "interesting" cockpit.
 
Frosty said:
There's a new kind of "VHS" tape that can record in HD.

Heck, the film and television industry was using BETA tapes as editing masters until 2001. The quality is way above that of standard VHS tapes.
 
If I recall, the crappy Jonathan Taylor Thomas/ Chevy Chase movie "Man of the House"(sic?) had JTT's char or the char's brother playing WC1 on a computer, but of course it had some crappy 50s-serial "Aliens From Beyond" type name.
 
Action items:

* I actually have the VHS release of that Doug episode back home. I Amazon'd it the last time this thread came up; someday I'll divx it for the CIC - because getting busted for illegally hosting an episode of Doug would be the best possible way for me to go.

* The "TAPE" light wasn't ever active in the original game; the idea of an instant replay mode was something that was in the games original spec, but that was left out until Wing Commander II.

* Wing Commander IV did appear at the start of 'Rocket Man'. The geeky astronaut-to-be plays for several seconds with a special joystick chair. Do not ever rent or buy Rocket Man, it is an exceptionally bad movie.

* Another apperance - there was an Intel commercial in 1994 where a child studies the solar system with an Encarta-clone and then alt-tabs to Wing Commander Armada and says something about now he's in the *Kilrathi* system. Of course, Armada for Windows never actually made it out...
 
LeHah said:
Heck, the film and television industry was using BETA tapes as editing masters until 2001. The quality is way above that of standard VHS tapes.
Yeah, but Betacam is a lot different from Betamax which is the VHS competitor everyone is going to assume you're referring to.

Anyway, it's worth saying that a quality comparison between Betamax and VHS today would favor VHS. The features that made Beta an "enthusiast" choice in the 1980s are all part of VHS today.
 
Frosty said:
Yeah, but Betacam is a lot different from Betamax which is the VHS competitor everyone is going to assume you're referring to.

The basic BETA format is a cross pollination involving similar tech. Otherwise, they wouldn't have the same name.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
...Armada for Windows never actually made it out...

Are you saying that, Like wcp-dvd it was done and not released? or that it was planned and never really realized?
 
AD said:
Are you saying that, Like wcp-dvd it was done and not released? or that it was planned and never really realized?

It was done and not released; or, at least, the single player game worked in Windows -- there were supposedly complications with the multiplayer aspects.
 
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