More Arena Previews

Never-ending single-player defensive missions like Meteor Storm, where you defend a space station from rocks and the occasional bandit, seem to be great time killers. And scores from all missions, except Proving Grounds (a very basic never-ending bot fight), will be posted to the leaderboards. Part of EA's summer line-up, Arena seems to provide some decent fun, whether you're a Wing Commander fan or not.

I didn’t play this title for very long since I was quite annoyed with the different direction this game took. I thought it was a dud.

Blast Off With Another New Video

The internet's gone Arena video crazy since EA showed the game off at their Summer Preview 2007. Yet another new video has been released, and this time it comes from GameVideos.com. "Blasto" reveals the well-armored F-27 Arrow Guardian participating in a coordinated defense/assault. A Terran pilot takes a few pot shots at a Kilrathi battlecruiser before pulling back to defend against incoming Dralthi and Paktahn. You can stream the new clip here or download the medium res clip in two formats.

• .WMV - 25.6 MB
• .MOV - 19.8 MB

Analysis: Gaia Concept Art

It's certainly been an exciting twenty four hours - if you haven't been following the news, we now have over a gigabyte of Wing Commander Arena preview videos in our archive! Today we're looking back at some other exciting news from the past week - the Arena concept art seen at the Gaia Industries office.

First of all, GamerTag Radio has posted a YouTube video of the Street Trace: NYC preview event. It includes a few seconds of the 'Arena board', which we've cut out and put online here (584k, AVI). It's blurry, but you get an impression of how the artwork is layed out.

Next, we've put together a speculative list of everything on the board - you can identify individual pieces using the numbers attached to the first image.

1. Arrow upgrades concept art.
2. Confederation pilot concept art.
3. Kilrathi pilot concept art.
4. Rapier blueprint rendering.
5. Sketches: Paktahn, Gothri, Darket, Centurion, Dralthi, Rapier, Broadsword.
6. Firekkan pilot concept art.
7. Mercenary pilot concept art.
8. Award icons concept.
9. Paktahn early rendering.
10. Rapier early rendering.
11. 3D head test renderings.
12. Gun blast artwork.
13. Gaia website printout.
14. In-game screenshot.
15. Pre-Renderd Artwork.
16. In-game screenshot.
17. In-game screenshot.
18. Award icons concept.
19. WC2-style cockpit cutscene test rendering.
20. F-27 Arrow final rendering.
21. F-44 Rapier II final rendering.
22. A-17 Broadsword final rendering.
23. Darket final rendering.
24. Dralthi IX final rendering.
25. Paktahn final rendering.
26. Terran Battlecruiser final rendering.
Unnumbered: Electronic Arts logo.
Unnumbered: Wing Commander Arena logo.
Unnumbered: Gaia Industries logo.