Watch the WC Series Evolve Before Your Eyes Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Eryx Channel has posted a video about the "Evolution of Wing Commander Games." It's a simple clip with edits of the games as they appeared in the franchise, but a few things caught my eye. Games like Academy, Armada, Righteous Fire, Super Wing Commander, Kilrathi Saga and Arena are included, which is always really great to see. It's kind of odd they added in WC Saga at the end, because the rundown should really just go through 2007. Fan projects like WC Saga are wonderful, but there are a bunch of awesome ones that could warrant their own complete video. Also, that's a Star Citizen/Squadron 42 screenshot in the thumbnail, which is extra weird because it's not even in the clip!
Oh, the other thing that caught my eye is this stellar comment:
I liked this series because my dad would always be on top of the newest release in the series. Those were the good 'ol days!
That's where we are now, folks. :)

Retro Alcove Restores Pentium for WC3 Glory Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Maiden Ariana has posted a fun video about her journey to getting Wing Commander 3 running on a vintage computer. There have been similar videos in the past that have emphasized things like the config.sys and autoexec.bat type configuration, but she goes on an entire quest that ends up involving both CD-ROM and sound card replacement. While WC3 is not the most speed-sensitive Wing Commander game, it can still produce some quirky results with higher end Pentium era hardware, which led to some issues. But with enough time, effort and retro hardware, it's possible to get the game working smoothly! Check out the video to see how she did it:
I take you on a bit of my troubleshooting journey to get Wing Commander 3 hopefully running flawlessly on actual vintage/retro hardware (no DosBox cheating here).

This is my first full length Retro Alcove video. Many more to come in this series. If you like what you see, please let me know below. If you spied a particular item in the partial glimpse my Retro collection that you want to see a video on, let me know that too. I have a huge collection and I am dedicated to sharing regular retro pc content here on this channel.

Russian Fans Record New Voiceover of WC3 Movies Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

EG1918 tipped us off about an impressive Russian effort to dub over Wing Commander 3. The team used ODVS' fancy AI-upscaled HD clips, so everything looks super slick, and they had a host of Russian speakers voice each of the roles. It's great to see such dedication around the world! Everything has been packaged up into this YouTube video below. For an extra meta layer, you can use the auto-translate feature for real time English (or other language) captions of the Russian speech!
While those are just the FMV clips, the team also recently streamed a full playthrough of the 3DO version of the game. This one shakes up the combat slightly to better fit the console. The 3DO port adds some fun gameplay elements and even adds back in movie clips missing from the PC version. You can find their four-part series on that below:

'Slightly Used' 3D Models Up For Grabs Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Cybot is back with some fancy Wing Commander kitbashes. Back in the day, he was well known for experimenting with quirky designs based on familiar WC influences. He's got several new objects to share now, and these are largely based around Privateer-themed elements. This includes Steltek ships and Gemini Sector bases. You can check them out and grab the .objs for yourself at the CIC Forums!
Just some 3d model bashing mostly

Catch Up on Classic Episodes of All Wings Considered Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

I listened to the full 90 minute episode of this week's MK Podquest, which was all about the Mortal Kombat/Wing Commander Academy crossover involving the Warrior King. Hearing all that Wing Commander banter made me think about the CIC's own streaming web show, All Wings Considered. Although production has been suspended due to the pandemic, all 37 episodes of LOAF and Dundradal's epic tribute to Wing Commander are still available online. That's over a hundred hours of prime WC content! Everything is available on Youtube, but a few choice selections are available below. If you missed these during their first run, you're in for a treat!

Royal Marines 'Beat' Wing Commander Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

The Bands of Her Majesty's Royal Marines has just released a thrilling clip of their massed band conducting a field performance of the Wing Commander Theme. It's possible that this is a recording of the same Beating Retreat performance that was released on their 2018 album, but the video was not widely available until this week. This is just a treat - don't miss it!
The TV theme Wing Commander composed by Kevin Kiner & David Arnold, arranged by WO1 Ivan Hutchinson RM and performed at Beating Retreat at Horse Guards Parade.
The UK has it right, we should dedicate less of our military spending to endless foreign wars and more of it to fantastic performances of the Wing Commander movie score.

MK Podcast Explores The Saga of the Warrior King Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

The MK Podquest is an undertaking after our own heart. They're a dedicated podcast founded to focus on the 22-episode 1998 television show Mortal Kombat Conquest. They've also branched out to other elements of the franchise, which led them to the Mortal Kombat cartoon, Defenders of the Realm. You know where this is going: the Saga of the Warrior King.

In 1996 Michael Dorn voiced a space viking that chases after an orb across the Street Fighter, Savage Dragon, Mortal Kombat and then Wing Commander Academy universes in an epic and inexplicable crossover event. The MK Podquest duo have spent the past month examining every chapter in this story, and Wing Commander is their finale event. They went in with low expectations and zero experience with the WC series, and the team was pleasantly surprised. It's their overwhelming favorite, and it's entertaining to hear them learn about and explore the WC franchise. The episode is an hour and a half long, so buckle down for the ride! Check out the podcast on Spotify, Google, Apple or Stitcher.

It's time! Part 4 of The Warrior King Crossover is here and honestly it kicked ass. #ORB
We've reached the end of ORB MONTH and the Warrior King's journey this week with Wing Commander Academy Episode 8: Recreation, easily the best episode of the crossover hands down. Neal is now fully a Wing Commander guy. Also we messed around with a soundboard on this one so expect a ton of airhorns.
If this makes you want to go back and rewatch Academy yourself, check it out on Peacock or DVD.

Prophecy Port Profiled in Portable Presentation Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Bransfield has made a video about 10 ‘Impossible’ Game Boy Advance Ports. I don't agree with all of the points being made, but they do a really good job of shedding light on some sorely under appreciated releases (as well as non-released games). They highlight Wing Commander Prophecy Advance at the 5:44 mark. Their initial complaints are about how the story was cut down into talking head blurbs and the controls were challenging, which were unfortunately limitations of the platform. The reviewer is quite impressed at Raylight's technical accomplishments though in getting the 3D spaceflight working on the handheld. I would have pointed out that the GBA port also added four-person multiplayer, which is a very nice treat.

Impressive Bengal and Exeter Join the Lego Fleet Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

st3lt3k spotted some long lost Lego ships that we're very excited to share. Somehow we missed them for a full decade since Primus posted the designs over at Brick Commander. He's got digital mockups in the traditional WC1 color scheme, but his actual builds use an artsy crimson and gray. I love that the Claw even has its "07" on the flight deck. They're certainly some of the best Lego WC capships we've ever seen!

Welcome! Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Welcome to the CIC's 23rd Birthday Party! When we opened our doors here at WCNews.com in August 1998, we never imagined we'd still be here now. The pandemic still looms and did directly affect a few items we had planned. This has not been the year of recovery that we'd envisioned, but I'm happy that we managed to still pull together a few fun things to share. Like you all, we're still making the best of it and having a blast hanging out (digitally, per social distancing guidelines) with friends. If you're not already there, stop by Wingnut and join the party!

The Ships of Privateer 3 Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Form up, Wing Commander fans! Tonight we're taking a look at some spaceships that never were: the ones that were being built for Privateer 3 when it was cancelled in 1998. Thanks to years of game archaeology, we know quite a bit about them!

The CRUSADER (sometimes called FURY) was shaping up to be the big hero ship, equivalent to the Centurion: Here's a shot of the Crusader in the game engine (a development of Prophecy's Vision technology): The Crusader is actually 'canon' since EA reused its artwork for a recruiting ad in Star*Soldier. The concept artist, Ruben Garza, also submitted it to an art book called Spectrum 6 where it was printed as "Privateer--Black Star". (Available on Amazon!) I should also mention the origin of the name! Privateer 3 was being developed by Origin's Loose Cannon team which had previously develoed the Crusader series of games. Next up we have the VAKTOTH which is slotted here as a Kilrathi light fighter. This ship was by Art Wong and the final render with the planets is called "Space Odyssey". It's certainly different from the Vaktoth heavy fighter from Wing Commander III, though! Part of that is the fact that the playable ships were intended to visibly change as you customized their equipment (something the first two Privateers did not do). Here are a pair of concepts for a modular Border Worlds fighter by Ruben Garza. You can see how different sections could be easily changed out. Speaking of the Border Worlds, here's their ALTAIR class light fighter. You know I love the twin cockpits and you can really see the Banshee influence. This bulk freighter is alternatively called the DRAYMAN or the SARTHORI in different drafts. It wouldn't be the first time Wing Commander redesigned the Drayman, though! KERPOW! Here's the NEMESIS heavy fighter which would've been roughly equivalent to the Crusader seen earlier. Some of the potential customization options for the Nemesis, including different liveries! And what were those Nemeses attacking? The mighty Confederation MANOWAR battle carrier! (Fans would have absolutely been obsessing over whether or not this was 'Omega' from Fleet Action...) Here's HYPERION, one of the game's space stations. That's the last ship we have lore for but we have surviving concept art of several others... Here's the Kilrathi DEMON fighter along with livery and weapon customization options. And here's how the mesh would change based on what type of engines you have installed (ion, pulsar and SD pulsar in these examples). A single render survives of the DRALTHI V, which would've joined probably the most storied series of ships in Wing Commander history. We don't have space for every previous Dralthi here but you can find them all in this post. Rounding out the Kilrathi fighter force, this is the TRAKET heavy fighter: The furballs also get a carrier/battleship called HADES which would've been part of the game's story missions. This Kilrathi science station, KRONOS, would've been central to the game's plot as it was (sigh) where a Kilrathi warlord was trying to use a Steltek time machine to resurrect Kilrah. You can spot this one in the background of several of the other renders. It's called the AURORA and it seems to be a light freighter similar to the Galaxy from the original game. Finally, the ships here under attack by Trakets in this in--engine shot remain unidentified. Some sort of nimble light fighter, by the looks of things! I lied! The smaller transorts in this composition (two astride the center Drayman) also haven't been identified. You can see they were also reusing the Piranha mesh from Wing Commander Prophecy. That's the post! If I could leave you with one closing thought it would be: Privateer 3 looked amazing and I hope the jerks that cancelled it get eaten by birds. I leave you with one crazy Drayman render:
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Sporting a Little Style Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Here's another slate of fantastic ships (and more!). These originated the Wing Commander Movie's conceptual style book. It was sent out to merchandisers potentially developing WCM-related products. We've pulled out a few of these images here and there over the years, but here's the full book!

Summary and background:

"Good Guys" cast: Patches, weapons and Pilgrim Cross: Kilrathi armor, bodies and equipment: The Rapier (model and sketch): The Diligent (model and sketch): The Broadsword (model and sketch): The Tiger Claw (model and sketch) and missile sketch: The Dralthi (model and sketch): The Snakeir (model and sketch): Ship identification chart:

CIC Gets a Big Server Upgrade Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

One of the less visible - but perhaps most important - updates we have this year is a massive server upgrade. The previously dedicated hardware and connection date back to early 2014 and were starting to show their age. KrisV has been laboring nonstop over the past couple weeks to get the CIC moved over to a brand new host and system. Individual elements have been briefly brought down and restored nightly, and the disruption has probably gone unnoticed by almost everyone.

The highlights are listed below, but the net effect is that the end user capability is some ten times as powerful in the areas that count hardware-wise. The operating system side has also seen a nice boost, which supports general web browsing plus services like the Forums and Wiki. It's hard to convey just how critical this kind of maintenance is, but we couldn't keep the CIC going without all of Kris' technical expertise in this area!

    Hardware:
  • NVMe storage (was SATA HDD)
  • 32GB memory (was 4GB)
  • 1Gb/s uplink (was 100Mbit/s)
  • Improved CPU
    Software:
  • A fresh OS install with a long support horizon
  • HTTP/2 should make for faster pageloads
  • IPv6 (soon)

Just Coasting From Here On Out Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

It's not often that we make a new piece of CIC merchandise, but birthday parties give us a good opportunity to finally pull something like this together. It only took us four or five years to make these finally happen. We'll be giving some out at the party tonight, so we wanted to share the link for anyone that might want a set. We make no money whatsoever on these or any other items. They're just presented here as a novelty for folks who want a set of their own.

The photo on the left is from a pre production batch that was testing out sizing. The actual size is depicted on the right (picture courtesy of DaveO!). The coasters are available on Zazzle here for about $25. There is a 20% off coupon code ("AUGUSTSAVING") good for this weekend that brings the price down to $20 plus shipping. And thanks again to DefianceIndustries for the graphics!

New Poll: Still With Us? Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

And now it's time for our annual poll! Our history in the Wing Commander news business stretches back some 25 years, with 23 of them here at WCNews.com, and looking at all those date ranges is pretty mind boggling. How long have you been with us?

The old poll asked which ship had your favorite briefing room. The Tiger's Claw was the unsurprising winner, but the Victory came in a very strong second. All of the options managed to pull in a pretty decent minority of the votes this time around!

Thanks Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

And that's a wrap! It's a bit on the lighter side as far as front page updates go, we know, but we're having a great time in the party happening in #Wingnut right now and hope you are too! In prep for today's festivities, we talked with a number of talented Wing Commander fans and they have lots of fun stuff in the pipeline that just wasn't quite ready to share today. Lots of folks are still dealing with the direct impacts from the pandemic, and our thoughts continue to be with everyone on that front. But stay tuned for a great year going forward into the future. We're optimistic that we'll finally start to shake off Covid, and we'll be here to bring you the Wing Commander news along the way!

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CIC

You Are Cordially Invited... Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

To the Wing Commander Combat Information Center's 23rd birthday celebration! TONIGHT at 7:00 PM Eastern US (4:00 PM Pacific and 11:00 PM GMT) in #Wingnut on Discord!

Featuring...

  • Lots of ships that don't exist!
  • Some ships that sort of exist!
  • Real-life never before seen giveaways!
  • The latest and greatest hardware!
  • Making the most of our second year in self isolation!
  • Trivia - from Ayer's Rock to Zarmaks!
  • Cake... and more!
So point your browser to Discord, channel #WingNut! You can stop by any time to join the fun!

Lego Creation Makes a Convincing Lt. (JG) Blair Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Today we've got a spot-on Lego Minifig by JR. There guys are so much more detailed and varied than I remember from the '80s and '90s, so you can really get some accurate depictions of well known characters going. He's even got the oversized Confed C-244 handgun. It's a pretty great approximation given the options available!

I've seen some older posts on how to put together a Lego Rapier or other fighters from the Wing Commander series. But I don't think you've seen this before. It's simply a Lego pilot I made to resemble the pilots from the film. Body is from one of the two versions of the Lego Star Wars Skyhopper Pilot, and helmet is from the Lego Star Wars female Sandspeeder Pilot.

It's not an exact match but it's the closest outfit I could find from legit Lego products.

Jeff

This one's certainly up there with some of the best minifigs we've seen over the years!

Looking Back at the Taliban Sighting in the Kilrah Sector Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

The Taliban have unfortunately been all over the news this past week, and it's our duty to bring you the Wing Commander angle on all topics. Today's connection links to the G'wriss System in Wing Commander Prophecy. As the crew of the TCS Midway escapes from their initial encounters with the Nephilim in the H'rekkah System, they escape to G'wriss and find themselves low on supplies. The solution is to rendezvous with a Confed convoy en route to "the Taliban colony." Of course, the line carried no significance when it was first written back in '96/'97, but it seemed increasingly anachronistic when they were overthrown in the early 2000s. And now? Maybe not so much.

That's not where the story ends, though! When Prophecy was ported to the Gameboy Advance by Daylight back in 2003, the line really stood out! "Taliban" was replaced by "Eielitian" at the time.

LOAF: There’s a throwaway line in Wing Commander Prophecy about intercepting a supply convoy bound for “the Taliban colony”. No one thought about it in 1997 but in 2003 when we did the GBA port we were aghast and changed the name. Sad to think the original is possible again!

The replacement line for the Gameboy version was “the Eielitian colony” which I believe had the virtue of not referencing anything at all.

And that poor convoy? Quickly taken out by the bugs. Only the TCS Redeemer supply shuttle survived to rearm and refuel Lance Casey and his buddies. Here's a playthrough by BCSBuster if you'd like to see the whole mission:

Discoid Funk Machine and Rigakh... Separated at Birth? Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

LOAF stumbled across an interesting album cover here. It's the 1978 Voyage (A Journey Into Discoid Funk) by Brian Bennett and it features a pretty stellar - and familiar - space ship. Something about the six nacelles, narrow central neck and orange/red/silver color scheme makes me think Prince Thrakhath would have found this to be a perfectly adequate flagship in the 2660s.
I can’t speak to the music but this is an EXTREMELY handsome spaceship.
Here's a handful of other Rigakh sightings to compare: from WC2, Last Line of Defense, Klavs' Models and Standoff. Oh, and what did A Discoid Funk sound like? Here's a sample! I could totally imagine this playing in the Concordia rec room.

One Week to Party Time! Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

We didn't give folks a lot of lead time this year, so this is another reminder that the 23rd CIC Birthday Party will be held next weekend! Plans are starting to come together, and I'm really looking forward to our big annual gathering. We'll have a few cool Wing Commander things to share, and it'll be wonderful to catch up with everyone after yet another challenging year in the world. Discord #Wingnut is the place. Formal festivities kick off Saturday evening at 7:00 pm EDT (4:00 pm PDT and 11:00 pm GMT), but we expect things will be happening all day. The channel is a bustling place - stop by any time and join the fun!

Where's the Wing Commander? Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Here's a fun drawing that includes a little Wing Commander treat. A Brazilian magazine published this collage of characters from a wide range of famous '90s-'00s video game series. Admiral Tolwyn is poking through in the bottom right. It comes from the Brazilian comic Monica's Gang by cartoonist Mauricio de Sousa. LOAF did some digging and zeroed in on its exact origin dating to a July 2012 "Cinema Classics" spinoff issue. That's a pretty fantastic reference, because even at that point WC4 was a 16 year old game. Thanks to Romy for highlighting this!

Enjoy Good Times With the GT Interactive WC1 Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Today we're sharing a fairly rare budget release of Wing Commander. LOAF picked this one up a while back and we're finally getting around to sharing it with you! Most of the WC series was repackaged into numerous rereleases, compilations and bundles, but it's not that often that we come across new and unknown variants - especially in English-speaking regions. This one appears to be from a small 1993 run in the US cross-published by GT Interactive. It comes in a smaller box with a different form factor than most. While it's outwardly quite similar to the original WC1 design, the back features several differences such as more round corners on the screenshots and the removal of several lower images. Speaking as someone who owns at least 15 or so variations of WC1, you can never have too many!

Here’s a eBay mystery! This copy of Wing Commander I came in a smaller, single piece box... a budget edition published under license by GT Interactive?! I had never seen this before. It sounds like this was a budget version published under license in 1993 that everyone just forgot about. There’s an Ultima VI, too... but I’d never seen a Wing Commander! I wonder what else might exist...

Lights Out for Amiga WC in Vintage Review Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Coffeehound RetroSharka has a new mag scan today that highlights an interesting piece of Amiga history. Rather than just a review of Wing Commander, the magazine Amiga Power reviewed a compilation called 'Space Legends' in August 1993. This includes Wing Commander, Megatraveller 1 and Elite Plus. It's a pretty hilarious review because the author is just not a fan of any of these games and never was. Maybe he wasn't the best choice to put on this assignment - even his editor appeared incredulous. Despite high marks for each when they were reviewed individually, these three legends of space eeked out a 79% combined. At least it makes for some amusing reading today!
The AmigaMini has been announced, so that feels like a fine time to sneak in some more Amiga themed #GameMagNibbles.

Wot, only 79% for one of the best compilations on Amiga? A scandal! This compi was my gateway to classic Elite, Wing Commander, and the first proper sci-fi RPG I ever played.

Happy Birthday CIC! Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

On this day in 1998, we flipped the switch on WCNews.com and the Wing Commander CIC was born! It's been quite a ride full of fun, friends and fandom. Our first mission was to support the ongoing launch of Wing Commander Secret Ops, and then that transitioned over to lots of activity for the Wing Commander Movie. Although new products got more sparse in the 2000s, the community has filled the gap with all of their own incredible undertakings. The results have made the franchise better than ever. On our new platforms today (such as Discord) we're seeing record levels of activity and new Wingnuts are appearing all the time.
LOAF: Another birthday already?! That’s right, 23 years ago today ChrisReid and I started a fan site for our favorite game and it’s still running strong today thanks to an incredible team who are also my dearest friends. Hurray!
Next week we'll be officially celebrating our 23rd Birthday during a big bash in #Wingnut. The formal party is on August 21, Saturday evening, at 7:00 pm EDT (4:00 pm PDT and 11:00 pm GMT), but festivities will be ongoing all day. Come and join the fun!

Wing Commander CIC Party Balloons

Hardcover 'Moongate' Books Prepare to Ship Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Andrea Contato has another exciting update for backers who have a copy of Through the Moongate, from Wing Commander and Ultima VII to Portalarium coming to them. All of the various rewards - not to mention the books themselves - have steadily arrived over the past few months and Andrea is now in the process of boxing up packages to fans. There's a lot of nifty stuff in there for Origin fans! On top of a trove of Ultima-themed goodies, the cloth artwork includes Wing Commander themes and there is a collectible bookmark designed by WC1/2 chief artist Denis Loubet. Hopefully this means the wait will be coming to an end soon! You can find more pictures here.
I'm working on shipping the rewards with HC books. Since I'm alone and I have to package 230+ books, it will take all this week and probably a fair amount of next week to complete the process. I'll post an update as soon as shipping will be over.

Here are some nice pictures of what you are going to receive. I hope you'll like it.

Let me say again "Thank you" for your support, your trust, and everything. You are awesome. For those who are asking, I have future plans, but I'll talk about them when everyone will have their rewards for supporting this crowdfunding.

Andrea

Arcade Attack Interviews The Fat Man Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Arcade Attack has conducted an extensive interview with Wing Commander composer and video game music legend George Sanger (The Fat Man). They initially reached out for a text Q&A, but George replied in a full hourlong video. As we've seen time and again, he loves to talk about his nearly-forty years in game audio and he's a very engaging speaker. At one point he talks about his sci-fi inspirations and working with Chris Roberts (at the 13:00 point) - with plenty of credit to Dave Govett. You may have heard aspects of the story before, but it's still fun to hear about what went into development during the Wild West days of game development!
I asked the VGM legend George Sanger for a text interview for Arcade Attack. George went above and beyond and recorded his answers in video form. George is a really funny guy and gave some great answers! Enjoy.

George Sanger is an American musician who has composed music for computer and video games. Some of his best-known works include The 7th Guest, Wing Commander, Hard Nova, Maniac Mansion (NES version), Loom, Tux Racer, and Zombies Ate My Neighbors.

Ultima Underworld 1+2 and Syndicate Wars/Plus Return to GOG Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

In an interesting reversal of fortunes, GOG has added back Ultima Underworld 1+2 and the Syndicate games to their catalog. These packages were delisted back on June 28, at the "publisher's request." The games reappeared yesterday, and as a bonus to celebrate their return, they're being made available for free until September 3. If you missed them earlier, now's your chance! The price is right too.

This isn't the first time that there were puzzling contractual misunderstandings between Electronic Arts and GOG. When Privateer was added in June 2011 and WC1+2 in August of that year, they were missing the expansions. Despite conversations to add them looking promising in the summer of 2011, they didn't actually appear on the service until December 2012.

Check Out the Lobby Cards Produced for the US Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Yesterday we got a peek at the awesome French lobby cards designed to promote the Wing Commander Movie, and I mentioned that there were several also available in North America. I looked a bit through our archives, and pics of these cards are few and far between. We didn't want to deprive anyone of our heroes' retinal signatures or flight (school) records, so here are updated photos of each one! You also get bonus pilot nose art and shots of the back this time. The backs differ by calling out the actor shown on the front. I wonder if anyone has ever mailed one before?

French Promotional Material Highlights Movie Release Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Dennis Mull is having a fantastic year collecting Wing Commander memorabilia, and he's had especially good luck hunting down European-centric items. Today's haul is a set of artifacts meant to promote the movie. I've got the North American equivalent of these items, but not the awesome French editions! They got more "lobby cards" to choose from, and the poster is just great. Another awesome find!
Today some cool Wing Commander stuff arrived from France: A set of cinema Lobby Cards including the envelope, a brochure and 3 cinema posters.

Fan Briefings Go Head to Head Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

It's the battle of the mission briefings! Both Plywood Fiend and Real Admiral Tarsus have recently mocked up their own takes on these classic WC1 interludes. They both have their own distinctive art styles while paying homage to elements we love like Colonel Halcyon and the nav map.
Greetings all and Merry weekend. I've been trying to hone my skills with pixel art, animations and the like and have made the following scene, a reasonably elaborate mission briefing in the WC1 style.

The story here is of an Exeter, the TCS Tengu fleeing from a pursuing Kilrathi strike force. If they can link up with the TCS Vigil, another Exeter, they might just be able to overcome the pursuing fighters and possibly even strike back against their carrier.

Which one's better? It doesn't matter! It's just awesome that fans are still tinkering around and experimenting creatively like this, so if you like either one, let them know!

Vintage Wolfenstein Ad Gets Personal Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

LazyGameReviews posted this image of a teaser for Wolfenstein 3D. It's from the February 1992 digital Apogee catalog advertising the pending launch of the iconic first person shooter. It's a cool little artifact unto itself, but wow, check out that smack talk (plus spelling mistakes) in the footnote!
This is very first ever "texture-mapped" three dimensional (3D) game with REAL-TIME scrolling and panning! Most 3D games use the polygon fill method, such as the flight simulators available commercially. Wolfenstein 3D uses a 3D technology that has NEVER been seen commercially. (The Wing Commander games tried to fake tuxture-mapped 3D graphics, but the results didn't work very well.)
LOAF observes, "Odd, the only Wing Commander games at the time used the exact same solution as Wolfenstein: a 3D environment with 2D sprites for enemies that scale and rotate!" Whatever the underlying tech was, Wolf 3D was released between the WC2 expansions and Privateer, which certainly did work quite well from both a graphical and narrative perspective! The first Wing Commander game to feature fully three dimensional ship models in its space engine was 1994's Wing Commander Armada, followed shortly thereafter by Wing Commander 3. deater adds this paper advert that throws some similar shade at Origin's earlier first person adventure, The Stygian Abyss.

Escort Carrier Takes Another Lap Around the System Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Here's a few more shots of the glorious Tarawa model that Mac has been experimenting with lately. It's good to see people still putting Klavs' design to good use! The main purpose seems to pretty much be setting up for some prime B-roll in future lore videos on YouTube, but it still makes for gorgeous still imagery in the mean time.
Oof, looks like I'm gonna have to get back to work on getting the Tarawa fully working!

Something that I didn't mention was that my work with the Tarawa, was actually based on the work of someone named littel_ludi on the Hard Light Production boards who imported Klav's models into Freespace/WCSaga and made it public on their forums here. At the moment all I've done is the retexturing, the glow points, and the bump maps, with the full intention of making the Tarawa into a fully working CapShip (It's missing a lot of functionality atm). Although I might end up abandoning that model and try bringing the original 3d file from Klav's pack into the game myself.

Technically that's overkill for my video making purposes, but hey why not?

And since I'm here, here's a few more screenshots I took of our girl.

Challenge Coin Design Looks Promising Update ID Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

ZOmegaZ mocked up something pretty cool here. Challenge coins are collectible items with a strong connection to the military, so he figured they'd make a perfect WC tie-in. As custom build-to-print options have grown online, it's become increasingly possible for people to design and manufacture their own. ZOmegaZ's first cut at what a Wing Commander style coin would look like is pretty a sharp. It features the Confed star on one side while the reverse includes the Tiger's Claw. What do you think? Let him know if this might be something you'd be interested in if he manages to get a batch made.
So I've just become interested in challenge coins. I don't usually like random trinkets, but these are pretty neat. I have this crazy idea of making a kickstarter to get some Wing Commander challenge coins made, Vega Campaign design or something. Anyone else interested?

First pass design is below. I think it looks pretty great! I think perhaps it needs a Hornet below the Claw, or something? Any other suggestions?

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Episode 37 - Back to Gemini!
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