Reminder: #Wingnut Movie Night Tonight! Share on Bluesky Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

This is a reminder that we have another fun #Wingnut movie night planned on Discord this evening! The ongoing theme will be movies that are referenced by Wing Commander in some way. Tonight's film is Heaven's Gate (1980) and you can find details on why we're watching it in the announcement post here. The movie will start at 6 PM PST/9 PM EST but feel free to drop by and hang any time! Please note that the movie is starting one hour earlier than usual to accommodate its run time.

And don't forget our sixth Wing Commander Cartoon party is early tomorrow!

author avatar

After Action Report: The Gathering Share on Bluesky Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

The Gathering isn't a great movie... or even a good one. But it's FULL of heart and in spite of its meandering, confused mystery plot you can see the bones that will be used to create a pretty distinct television show down the line. It's also extremely easy to see why Chris Roberts and the Wing Commander III team were so impressed: it has exactly the same kind of 'we can do it ourselves without the money!' attitude that was behind their project. Babylon 5 will never look as flawless and magical as Star Trek, but it does constantly remind you that there are people with heart doing a lot with very little to make it work.

Here's the biggest Wing Commander connection at this point in the show, the famous establishing shot of the Babylon 5 space station and how it compares to 'Babylon 6' in Wing Commander III!

None of the shared actors we mentioned in the announcement post appeared in The Gathering... but I did take some time to go through the BluRays and find them in later episodes!

Sully is Earth's last, best hope for purrs.

author avatar

Better Call Salthi Share on Bluesky Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

A few weeks ago, we mentioned wanting to post about the history of the 'green Salthi'. Well, that just made me realize that there were a LOT of interesting appearances of Wing Commander I's slightest fighter across the Wing Commander canon… and it would be fun to gather them all in one place! So here's a brief history of the Salthi, from its original appearance in 1990 all the way to novels, cutscenes, spinoffs and movies! Did you know the little ship was so versatile?

The Original (1990)

The initial Salthi light fighter was designed by Origin Systems artist Glen Johnson and modeled by Mary Bellis and Steve Spear. It made its first appearance in the original Wing Commander rolling demo shown at CES that summer before serving throughout the original Wing Commander and both expansions. It's perhaps best remembered for being the fighter flown by Kilrathi ace Bhurak Starkiller (Bhurak nar Caxki).

It's not totally clear if there was one reference for the Salthi or not, but we think a good guess is that it may have been inspired by the Kzinti fighters that had recently begun appearing in Star Fleet Battles.

AI Slop (1990)

One of the first 'talking head' conversations in the original Wing Commander is about how Salthi always turn to the left:

Paladin: Och, laddy, take a seat an' tilt a glass with ol' Paladin. I recall once when I was just a lieutenant like yourself there... We were flyin' patrol o'er Accord, the fourth planet in the Alliance System. These four Kilrathi Salthi came zoomin' in with the sun at their backs...

Angel: What is the point, monsieur? There is one, oui?

Paladin: I was leadin' up ta it, lass. That day, we learned that a Salthi will always turn ta the left... It's got somethin' ta do with the way 'er engines an' ducts are arranged. So when you tail a Salthi, watch ta the left... That's where 'e'll go when 'e makes 'is break!

This has given rise to a Star Citizen troll conspiracy theory which claims that the Salthi is proof that Chris Roberts stole Wing Commander's engine from Lucasarts which had a Japanese dive bomber that only turned left. None of this is true: there's no left-turning dive bomber in Battlehawks and Wing Commander's AI is easy to study (it's even printed in the official guide, below)… it's quite clear the designers intentionally set the very simple values so that the Salthi's flight would match the conversation.

Learn to Fly (1991)

The Wing Commander I & II Ultimate Strategy Guide included a fair amount of new Salthi art, even using a front view as the cover for Carl LaFong's book!

These were further adapted for the Sega CD port...

... and even the Super Famicom port!

It is… Green (1992)

For the 1992 port of Wing Commander for the Super Nintendo, the team at Mindscape had to cut a great deal of material. Everything from entire ships to all the cutscene art was dropped from the game to help it fit into a small SNES cartridge. And one memory saving trick was that the Jalthi heavy fighter's unique art was dropped… and replaced with a green tinted Salthi! It made a little sense, given the similar names… maybe they were intended to be connected designs somehow?

The full color Japanese version of the map even had green Salthi art for the Jalthi! The US art simply does not show the Jalthi.

In Salthi Still Green (1993)

The Green Salthi/Jalthi naturally continued into the standalone release of The Secret Missions for the Super Nintendo… with a bit of extra flare! Artist Greg Winters was called upon to paint the box art and to indicate the difficulty of the campaign he pitted his interpretation of the weakest human ship, the Hornet, with the strongest Kilrathi one… the Jalthi, painted as a heavily armed green Salthi!

In the Novels (1992-1993)

Salthi are surprisingly rare in the Baen novels! In the initial trilogy they're mentioned only twice. In Freedom Flight, a young Jazz claims to have shot down a Salthi and a Dralthi:

“Right, right. You’re the piano player, aren’t you? I heard you play last week. You’re good. Damn good. Let’s see if you can fly that well. How many combat missions have you flown, Jazz?”

“Two. I iced a Salthi and a Dralthi.” There was pride on the young man’s face.

And then a single "old-style Salthi" appears at Vukar Tag in End Run and destroys one of the Tarawa's Sabres! That's quite a kill.

The Sabre detonated silently, a brief flair in the darkness of space. He closed the range, the first Kilrathi ship, an old-style Salthi starting into its turn to make good his escape. Jason punched in one last shot of afterburner, lined up on the ship’s bottom rear and fired off a quick succession of salvos. The enemy ship disintegrated, Round Top swinging about to make his second kill of the day, the third ship racing away to disappear around the far side of the moon.

Escort Duty? (1994)

Mark Minasi compares the Salthi to the Ford Escort in Secrets of the Wing Commander Universe: "Take a look at a Salthi's side view from your cockpit. It looks like a Ford Escort. Could it be that there's someone at Origin who doesn't like Escorts?" What do you think?

Bob further notes that the very next year the manual for one of Wing Commander's beloved cousins, Frontier: First Encounters, draws the same comparison for one of its hero ships:

In the 20th Century, as any history buff will know, a motor car company by the name of Ford came up with a car called an Escort, which was generally regarded to be their finest hour. The Cobra Mk III can only be described as the Ford Escort of the space lanes. It has the classic lines that millions of ships tried to emulate.

Secrets of the Wing Commander Universe also provided us with perhaps the first and best fan art of the Salthi:

Souped Up Super Salthi (1994)

For Super Wing Commander, Origin's internal artists created new 3D models for all of the Wing Commander ships. In many cases they did not reference the original designs at all, though the new rounded Salthi certainly looks like it was adapted from the classic design! The 3D mesh used in creating the game has survived and you can download it here.

Taste Righteous Fire! (1994)

Privateer: Righteous Fire's storyline involves a Kilrathi admiral supplying the Church of Man (Retros) with surplus spacecraft (which they eventually upgrade to an 'elite' model with replica Steltek guns) with which to wreak havoc. The Super Wing Commander Salthi model was used for these ships although they were only labeled as 'unknown' during gameplay. Were they intended to be old Salthi or some new ship? There's a smoking gun in the files: if you unpack Righteous Fire's TRE you find that the new ship's information is stored in SALTHI.IFF!

All the Myriad Armadas (1994)

Wing Commander Armada has (arguably) two surprising Salthi appearances. The first occurs in the lore manual, Voices of War, which includes a Kilrathi report about a recent battle. It makes the surprising claim that six Salthi torpedoed a Confederation carrier… certainly a capacity we didn't know they had! Note that the 'Feeding Colony', Bordrav, would later be referenced in the name of a Kilrathi destroyer on a Wing Commander CTCG card.

Notice: Action Report
Hard news has just arrived of losses on the front line, though our Navigation Leader cannot pinpoint the time of transmission. Our brother forces lost two light carriers in a battle near Omega Sector, along with seventy-four brave warriors. The message from the last remaining carrier indicates that the enemy task force was presumably attempting an attack on a Feeding Colony on Bordrav. Six Salthis torpedoed the Confederation carrier in time to prevent the attack.

The Armada intro even shows a Shok'lar in battle!

False Colors (1999)

The final Baen novel, False Colors, introduces a brand new variety of Salthi! It's the Hrakthi-class recon ship which is cloak capable… just like the Shok'lar! I love the idea of these various specialized ship variants that show up in the corners of stories.

Reconnaissance craft, Hrakthi-class, approximately one squadron in good condition. Unarmed and constructed from a modification of an older light fighter, the Salthi, the Hrakthi was intended purely as a scout craft. They possessed the ability to cloak, and were packed with sensors, but their combat worth was small. Still, the ability to study an enemy formation from close up without being detected appealed to Tolwyn.

Shhh! (1998)

There's even a casual reference to the Salthi in Wing Commander Secret Ops! One of the fiction articles is an academy transcript where the professor casually mentions the little ship…

As for the weapons, the Panther can pack a wallop. But be careful, the gun pool is not that much greater than other ship models. The panther usually has two types of guns. I think the current configurations the Confed Dev boys are playing with are the chain ion cannon and cloudburst guns. I've seen a few guys just hold down the trigger to watch the pretty light show the chain ions throw. Then they complain the guns couldn't strip the shields off a junked Salthi. The truth is: they're right, the chain ion guns really aren't that good at stripping shields, but they do a decent job at plinking away at armor. Personally, I think that the chain ion cannon is a crutch for aiming. Fire enough bolts at something and even an engineer flying in the simulator at lowest level can hit something. When I fire, I make certain that both the "cluds" and ion bolts fire at the same time. Time your shots and resist the urge to start the light show. You can only get off a few shots before draining your gun's energy pool, but there aren't many fighters that can take those few shots.

The Salthi (Doesn't) Goes Hollywood (1999)

And the Salthi was almost a movie star! The Wing Commander movie's script calls for three different Kilrathi fighter types to appear: Salthi, Dralthi and Krant. But the Salthi and Krant models were never finished so they don't appear in the finished film and instead the Dralthi mesh is used for everything. But they still get a package in the Confederation Handbook and they show up in the novelization! As scripted, the Salthi appear during the battle with the Kilrathi warships in act two; Blair and Maniac battle them just before the bombing run. We do get the slightest look at the design in the movie's storyboards for the sequence!

148 EXT. BROADSWORDS & THREE RAPIERS - MOVED: Now follows scene 141
The Broadswords are on a bombing run. Deveraux's Rapier leads them in...

Four Kilrathi fighters -- Salthi -- move to intercept. Deveraux shoots one out of the sky with a missile! Blair gets another with his lasers...

MANIAC
Hay! Save some for me...

Maniac shoots a Salthis' wing off. It spirals into the last Kilrathi fighter, both go up in a fireball!

MANIAC (CONT'D)
Buy one, get one free!
"Blair? How's our six?" Deveraux asked.

"Clear for the moment," he replied, not that his report really mattered. The radar display—a living, breathing thing—could change in a heartbeat. The proof lay in front of him as four Salthi light fighters broke from their box formation to intercept the bombers. Blair tracked their velocity at nearly one thousand KPS, their afterburners stoked. Forward-swept wings fixed to their broad, flat fuselages in an inverted V pattern gave the fighters a low profile while maintaining a respectable level of intimidation through design. One Salthi didn't pose a huge threat to a Rapier. But like killer bees, if you faced enough of them, they would drop you through attrition.

A Dumb-fire missile flared below Deveraux's starboard wing, then went from zero to 850 KPS in three seconds—enough time for the Salthi pilot she had targeted to curse her, beg for Sivar's forgiveness, then experience a more corporeal wrath.

As Deveraux's Salthi vanished in a short-lived conflagration, the fighter nearest it scissored across Blair's field of view. He dove after the Salthi, lined up on its six o'clock, then fixed his cross-hairs on the green circle leading the fighter. Target locked! He dished out a flurry of bolts from his rotating nose cannon. The first salvo struck the Salthi's shields, crooked fingers of energy scattering across a light blue hemisphere. Another volley stitched a pattern across the Salthi's cockpit, and the ship flipped into a barrel roll before bursting apart.

"Hey! Save some for me," Maniac said.

Pulling up from the Salthi's still-flashing rubble, Blair saw Maniac shoot off the third Salthi's wing. The cat inside fought for control but couldn't help spinning into the fourth Salthi flying toward it. A white-hot fireball enveloped both fighters.

Maniac howled with glee. "Buy one, get one free!"

Salthi go on to appear in the climax of Pilgrim Stars, when Blair and Maniac defend the Olympus from a Kilrathi battlegroup.

Meanwhile, the four Broadsword bombers below had come within torpedo range of the lead Fralthi, and while their fighter escorts warded off attacking Dralthi and a few Salthi light fighters that had joined the fray, the bombers each launched a pair of torpedoes at the foundering cruiser. Maniac could not help but watch for a second as the eight projectiles struck in succession, blasting apart the cap ship’s port bow, her superstructure, and tearing gaping breeches amidships. Four hundred and seventy-five meters of Kilrathi engineering began to break apart, illumined by the flickering light of her explosions. Nutrient gas streamed from at least a dozen ruptures in her hull and formed long, emerald pennons that trailed the devastation. Tattered pieces of plastisteel tumbled and glimmered, and a few of the Rapiers nearby narrowly avoided colliding with some of the larger rubble.

And they make a single appearance in Pilgrim Truth when Blair practices against them in the TrainSim... just like you can do in Wing Commander I!

Blair slid into the SIRE"s Rapier cockpit, still boiling over the fact that after training for six hours per day for four straight days, he had been instructed by Angel to endure a another six-hour marathon. She had told him he would train for “a few days” to test his reflexes--not a business week. Thus far Blair had gone up against nearly every Kilrathi adversary the computer could muster. He took on Dralthi, Salthi, Krants, Grathas, and Jalthi. He flew with the other pilots in his squadron against Ralari-class destroyers and Fralthi-class cruisers. He swooped down and strafed Snakeirclass superdreadnoughts and even single-handedly took out a Kilrathi ConCom ship by tricking its captain into lowering shields. Everything about the simulations was as real to him as his own flesh and blood.

Hail Britannia! (1999)

The last canonical appearance of the Salthi is a weird one: Ultima Online! For April Fools Day in 1999, the Ultima Online team posted a 'letter' from Samuel Mekings reporting on a Kilrathi attack on Britannia! Included was a screenshot of a Salthi apparently strafing the game. Britannia does appear on the Wing Commander Universe map but it's pretty deep inside Confederation territory!

Britannia is in a panic! Early this morning, the sky darkened as a group of steel like birds descended upon the land. Like huge, terrible, flying dragons, the huge birds shoot fire from their gaping mouths at humans, creatures, and buildings without discrimination.

I stood paralyzed when I first saw these mammoth beasts. I was minding my own affairs, handling my resources at the bank when the horrible monstrosity came near me. Some of the more veteran warriors and magicians near me charged towards the ferocious animal and attempted to use their high arts to conquer it. They thought this was nothing more than a new variety of monster, as yet undiscovered, and easily destroyed.

They were woefully mistaken. I watched in horror as the mighty ones fell all around me while the fire breathing steel bird still swooped about, doing damage to all in its path. Finally, my wits about me, I turned on heel and ran for the protection of my friend's house nearby, narrowly escaping the same fate of the fighters.

From the safety of the house, I quickly penned this report, and I hope to find eventually find a cryer to whom I can deliver the news, so that they might warn the other cities and villages of the attack. All seems in chaos, and I fear the worst. But if you are reading this, then perhaps my message has found its way into good hands. For this, I can only pray. And that we might have some brave souls who can defend us against this enemy.

Watch the skies! Beware! These huge birds may be those that are called Kilrathi, a mysterious race that only the wisest of sages are privy to. Written about in the ancient tomes, and prophesied of in the most secret of scrolls, the Kilrathi are said to be a race from beyond the skies, from between the stars. Most of the educated scholars who have heard of them, believed them to be fairy stories, conjured to frighten the young ones. But by the virtues, today I believe, and I warrant by the end of today, so shall all of you.

Go in peace, and may the virtues keep you safe.

Samuel Mekings

The Community (Infinity and Beyond)

Of course, the fans have created some wonderful representations of the Salthi over the years! The design has shown up in Unknown Enemy and Standoff and has been replicated virtually and as a 3D model over the years. One great example is Howard Day's 2005 Salthi model which features incredible style and attention to detail. You can get a copy here.

author avatar

RIP Dilbert Share on Bluesky Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Cartoonist Scott Adams, creator of the famous Dilbert comic strip, passed away earlier this week. Mr. Adams had become quite a crank over the years and precious few people are mourning his passing... but we can take the occasion to mourn our youth! No matter how we might want to deny it today, Dilbert was a massive part of the pop culture of the early 1990s that produced Wing Commander. And the comic inspired the development of the series several times!

Dilbert began in 1989 and reached the height of its popularity in the early 1990s. The strip lampooned white collar office work and was celebrated by tortured engineers and creatives around the world for capturing exactly how they felt about their pointy haired bosses. Fridges, cubicles and offices everywhere sported favorite Dilbert strips... and Origin Systems was not immune. Origin's Official Guide to Wing Commander III describes art director Chris Douglas' office's 1990s pop culture ephemra, complete with printed Dilbert comics on the door:

Chris has decked his door with "Dilbert” comic strips that he downloaded from the Internet, and his walls are hung with Maxfield Parrish posters. Compared to the other people on the Wing 3 team, however, the interior of his office is fairly uncluttered. Besides his PC and SGI there is only the black television that he uses to play tapes from his collection of Mystery Science Theater 3000, a comfortable chair, two strings of blue and purple origami cranes and thirty-four miniature Star Trek spaceships. "When I was a kid, I would have given anything for some of the toys they have out now,” he confides. "I’m pretty bitter about how empty my childhood was when today kids can get all sorts of neat stuff. . . now I just wish they’d come out with some Babylon 5 ships.”

The game itself confirms the inspiration by specifically listing Dilbert among the inspirations saved in its hidden quotes file!

TEAM INSPIRATION
X-Com; People On Fire; Two-Fisted John Woo Action; Doom II; Dilbert ; Simpsons; More Doom; Seinfeld; Net Doom; Star Trek (so sue us)

... and Wing Commander Armada, developed simultaneously, even has a star system named DILBURT! It's in Sector 6 of the campaign mode (DILBURT can also appear in randomly generated Armada maps).

And here's a copy of Wing Commander producer Warren Spector's 1996 bookmark file which includes, of course, the Dilbert Zone:

And the team's love of Dilbert continued through the development of Wing Commander Prophecy! When producers distributed the weekly component manager meeting notes (what we'd call a leads meeting today) he included a weekly Dilbert:

Finally: in 1997, Electronic Arts decided to eliminate Origin's crack creative services department, the part of the company responsible for published material like box designs and game manuals. The team, commanded by the great David Ladyman, opted to reform as an outside group offering its services to the entire industry... including the Wing Commander team. They would go on to develop the Wing Commander Prophecy guide and documentation, the Confederation Handbook for the movie and even manuals and subscriber magazines for Chris Roberts' Star Citizen! Ladyman and crew named their company Incan Monkey God Studios after a joke from a specific Dilbet strip. The company still maintains a website which includes the history of the name:

Our Name

And just what IS an Incan monkey god, you ask? What being has fostered our devotion? The force of which we speak emanated deep from within a delirious mind, when one of our own fell into the dreaded Stupor of Wordlessness. Finally, haggard and uninspired, he sought out ethereal counseling. With the help of the Incan Monkey God, he emerged victorious, manuscript in hand.

Imagine a cartoon below…

Panel 1

Dilbert greets Tim and comments on his haggard appearance.

Tim comments that he hasn’t slept for five days because he’s been trying to finish a manuscript.

Panel 2

Here, Tim confides that he overcame his mental block with the help of the Incan monkey god.

Panel 3

Lucky break, says Dilbert.

Now, says Tim, he has to translate the resulting material into something legible.

The above text summarizes the Dilbert cartoon that led to the name for Incan Monkey God Studios. Sadly, for legal reasons, we do not have permission to display the strip here. If you want to see the original strip, click here.

We are not actually aware that the Incans had any monkey gods; the only monkey god we’ve ever heard of was first imagined by Dilbert’s creator, Scott Adams. However, we certainly relate to Tim when we’re up against a deadline, especially at those times when the material has to be written before the game code we’re describing has been created.
author avatar

3D Armada Takes Shape on Discord Share on Bluesky Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Wing Commander Discord regular Justice recently acquired a 3D printer and over the past two weeks they've been sharing their progress putting together a fleet of Wing Commander ships for tabletop gaming! I've enjoyed following the little updates so much that I thought it would be good to post them in an update for everyone to see. Justice says "I intend to keep doing more ships, though I'll probably slow down a bit for now. Except for Voidfighters, the games I want to try with these are more capital ship oriented anyway, and for Voidfighters ideally I'd scale up the fighters and print them bigger." They are using 3D models available from Tyrel Lohr.

Came out not too bad considering how tiny these bits are, and considering that I still haven't installed a 0.2 nozzle. Gotta be more careful to not touch the teeny tiny fins on the Hornet. Or use a sturdier material. I only have sturdier filament in colors right now. And print a bunch of them. And then play Full Thrust or Voidfighters or Billion Suns. Something this small I should probably just do a multicolor print, though. Oh well, time to throw some primer on the Hornet. Haven't really painted any of my prints yet, so that'll be a test. Probably would work better in resin, These are a couple models from that user mentioned in the news article recently. I got a cheap fdm printer black Friday. If I was gonna print more Constitutions, I'd probably need to make the struts holding the nacelles either flare into them a bit or actually insert in, it's a little too flexy. Probably would print bigger fighters for Voidfighters, though, since it's a fighter-scale game. Full Thrust would be cool to do with Confed and Kilrathi fleets, though its focus is on capital ships. Fighter squadrons are in there too, though, and it looks like they're especially good for intercepting capship missiles, which tracks well with WC3.
A bit stronger material, but it made the supports stick more to the guns, and they got more bent. Fins intact though
Multicolor print in progress. Probably won't finish before I leave today.
Gotta go, but they're getting there.
Done, but I'm not home to try and remove them.
Not an amazing success, but they are definitely Confed Hornets. Well, plus one test print I used as a flush target. If I print bigger ones, they might separate from support better, or I could slice them in half to print the halves flush and glue them. Or just forget the bottom details and make it flat for tabletop gaming. Options.
A couple more prints. Sliced the Bengal, which is why it has the seam, but the underside looks much nicer that way. Did one scim each way; had to glue one of the guns back on the print-in-place one
A rough paint job for a rough print (my 5 year old did the Raptors). Gonna make some hex bases and print some cats once I have a base design I like. Have a basic one and a plug for ships too thin for a post hole roughed out in Freecad, needs some details like lines to make it easy to see fore/port/aft/stbd. Probably more scims (but printed in color) . Maybe try some at 3x scale too.
One flight-ready Hornet. Glue is drying on a wing of 4 Raptors.
Printer had a little oopsie.
Anyway, I'm getting there
Anyone hungry for some... pancakes?
Ships based, time for bed.
I think I've got enough ships to try a couple games. Now I just need sometime to do it.
Printing some asteroids to have a little space terrain.
Asteroids from last night
Reprinting the confed fighters in a larger size now in one big 6+ hour batch (probably do Kilrathi overnight) to hopefully be easier to see at Voidfighters scale. The others ought to be good for Billion Suns or Full Thrust. Maybe the day after the birthday party I'll get to try them out. Voidfighters doesn't do anything bigger than corvettes, but has a fair amount of fighter customization as well as different pilot skill levels and leadership traits. Billion Suns has recon fighters/fighters/bombers/stealth bombers up through a bunch of capital ship classes, but with no per-ship customization. It has the most interesting scenario setups, with ship purchasing per-round and trying to earn the most credits by completing contracts. Some faction-level customization and upgrades, though. Full Thrust only has fighters if you have carriers to launch and support them, and is more focused on capital ship combat, but the capital ships are super customizable with lots of different weapons and interesting movement options, and one thing fighters can do is intercept capship missiles, which is pretty Wing Commandery. (This is still only like 50 cents worth of filament for 10 fighters and a drayman)
Bigger fighters next to the smaller ones. Still fit nicely on that base size.
Since I'm stubbornly keeping 4 colors on the Kilrathi ships though, that's going to take... 11 hours to print. Maybe I should have combined the black or gray into one or the other. 6 dralthi, 4 gratha, and a few misc transports to absorb some of the filament that would get wasted when it flushes out extra for color changes.
Didn't get much done this week, but here's some Salthi.
author avatar

Wing Commander Movie Night: Heaven's Gate Share on Bluesky Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

It's time to bite the bullet and watch the longest and most controversial movie in our queue: Heaven's Gate (1980), Michael Cimino's deeply troubled, sprawling western. At the time of release, Heaven's Gate's massive budget, troubled production and hasty after-release recut earned it the title of the worst movie ever made… but today opinions differ greatly, with many critics now seeing it as a true masterpiece. We will be watching the commonly available Director's Cut, which is extremely similar to the original version of the film that was withdrawn from theaters. Because Heaven's Gate is a very long movie, 218 minutes, we will be starting an hour early at 9 PM Eastern this week. You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

Most Wing Commander fans will see the Heaven's Gate reference straight off: it's the name of Wing Commander II's fifth series' star system and the infamous captured starbase therein that Spirit kills herself destroying. (Although the notorious Heaven's Gate cult existed during the making of Wing Commander II, it was not widely known until 1994, three years later.)

Heaven's Gate also stars two of Privateer 2's leading men! Christopher Walken (Commander Hassan) plays Nate Champion and John Hurt (Joe the Bartender) is Billy Irvine.

Finally: the movie's director, Michael Cimino, gets a callout in the second of Wing Commander Prophecy's simulator missions. For our purposes, we'll count that separately like we do star systems named after directors and watch The Deer Hunter down the road!

Where can I find a copy of the movie for the watch party?

Heaven's Gate is available to purchase on the standard streaming services. We will be watching the commonly available Director's Cut which is the version that is 218 minutes long. If you are not able to locate a copy please stop by the Discord and ping a CIC staff member before Friday's showing.

How do we watch the movie together?

It's pretty low tech! Simply join the Wing Commander CIC Discord on Friday and we will be chatting (in text) along with the film in the main channel. Everyone who wants to join in should bring their own copy and we will count down to play them together at 9 PM EST. Everyone is welcome and we encourage you to join in the conversation; sharing your thoughts helps make the experience better for everyone! Note that this week's movie will start one hour earlier than the usual showing.

How can I help pick future movie club movies?

The movie club movies are voted on each week by the Wing Commander Discord. The poll is typically posted 24 hours before each week's screening and the next movie is announced at the end. The choices for the poll come from a master pool of Wing Commander-related movies. If you would like to suggest a film for inclusion in that pool you can post it to this thread.

author avatar

Wing Commander Cartoon Party VI: I'd Rather Be Playing Wing Commander! Share on Bluesky Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

No one wants it to be 2026 but the fact of the matter is that it is... and we're halfway through January! Which at least means we can get together for another Saturday morning cartoon marathon. Which, once again, will include no cartoons. We're watching two movies with big Wing Commander references in them, both of which seem to indicate that the characters would rather be playing Wing Commander. And the difference is the point here, we're going to be going from a poorly preserved 1990s Lifetime movie to a pixel perfect HD sci fi story about space Nazis. No, not Wing Commander IV. We're watching:

Children of the Sun (1994): The lineup starts up with a 1994 made-for-TV 'Lifetime' movie that's about the trials and tribulations of children born allergic to the sun. We haven't watched the full movie before but reviews online are almost exclusively from people who remember being absolutely terrified of it as children. Apparently it left a lot of kids anxious that THEY were going to die if exposed to sunlight. But whatever the case, it has a truly odd cameo from WING COMMANDER II. (Sadly, the only copy available is very low resolution... but being terrible has never stopped us from showing something at one of these!)

Iron Sky (2012): Iron Sky is a sci-fi comedy about a Nazi moon colony set up during World War II returning to conquer the Earth. It's a weird, clunky movie that's a mix of let's-put-on-a-show CG and edgy culture war jokes about a culture that doesn't really exist anymore. But one thing is certain: it has a pretty solid Wing Commander joke! And who could've known it was such an immediate prediction of our future?

So JOIN US on Saturday, January 17th at noon Eastern when we'll enjoy them all together! We recommend pajamas and cereal to accompany the chat.

We've also uploaded a zip of both together locally that you can grab in advance. You can get that here. Children of the Dark is available in YouTube and Iron Sky is available for purchase or rent digitally. Children of the Dark has been released on VHS internationally and Iron Sky has been released on Blu-ray. Iron Sky is currently streaming on Pluto TV and Amazon Prime in the United States.

How do we watch the shows together?

It's pretty low tech! Simply join the Wing Commander CIC Discord on Saturday and we will be chatting (in text) along with the shows in the main channel. Everyone who wants to join in should download their own copies from the CIC and we will count down to play them one at a time together starting with the short at noon EST on Saturday. Everyone is welcome and we encourage you to join in the conversation; sharing your thoughts helps make the experience better for everyone!

Will there be custom certificates made for the attendees this time?

Yes.

You still don't have ANY cartoons this time, why haven't you changed the name?

Shut up.

I love these events but want to do better long term planning. Do you have any others coming up?

We do but we're getting close to the end! Here's the upcoming schedule. And if you have any idea for a future lineup, please feel free to suggest it on the forums!

  • Marathon 7 - The Worst Parts of a Lot of Things - February 14
author avatar

The Secrets of Wing Commander Prophecy, Part 1 - Series B Share on Bluesky Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

We've been working on new, more comprehensive guide pages for WIng Commander Prophecy as part of the great WCPedia project. To try and better understand how missions work, I decided to try and learn more about how the game's mission data works… and once I'd done that, I made some pretty shocking discoveries: Wing Commander Prophecy is full of undocumented nav points with hidden enemy ships!

Over the next few weeks, we're going to premiere the new guide pages one series at a time alongside a news post that points out some of the interesting discoveries. This first update covers the game's first series, the H'rekkah missions. You will play only four missions in H'rekkah but there are a total of six; Wing Commander Prophecy's mission tree is actually very complex!

You can find the individual pages for the first series missions below. Each guide now contains a complete object index, links to the relevant scripts and cutscenes and all the information in Origin's Official Guide to Wing Commander Prophecy and the CIC's previous game guide… plus lots of ever-expanding extras! We're pretty happy with the current design but are also eager to add more so structural feedback is more than welcome… and of course, you can help us expand the WCPedia!

You can also track all the individual ship spawns with my notes using this spreadsheet.

B1: H'rekkah - Kilrathi Distress Call

The game's first mission in the game doesn't have any hidden Nephilim but it DOES have an in-flight cutscene that was dropped very late in the process… so late that the audio is still stored in the final game! This scene was cut from the game because the shader for the cloak effect wasn't working correctly at ship time.

Stiletto: Just stay cloaked until we figure out if they're friendly.
Maestro: Um... they're shooting at me. Guess they're not friendly.
Stiletto: Activate your cloaking device, Maestro!
Maestro: I am using my cloaking device!
Stiletto: Hey! They're shooting at me, too! Watch it, kids! They can see through our cloaking somehow!

There are also several unused comms referring to another wing, Charlie, which is encountering alien ships elsewhere.

B2: H'rekkah - Black Widow Rescue

This is the discovery that truly startled me: the second mission in the game has FOUR hidden NAV points which make it possible to score over 100 kills if flown in the correct order! During the briefing, the CAG notes that your nav map has been set up to limit enemy encounters… and it turns out if you try to change it you can spawn up to four additional nav points of Morays!

B3a: H'rekkah - Sweep and Rendezvous

After discovering all the hidden, undocumented encounters in B2 I was reminded that Wing Commander Prophecy producer Billy Cain once mentioned exactly this, that the game was designed to reward you for rearranging your flight path. I thought he was talking about some half forgotten idea at the time and didn't pay much attention to it… but it turns out that that is how many missions in the game work! In B3a, if you try to skip the nav points and go directly to the Midway's jump then you'll encounter an additional formation of Moray and Manta.

B3b: H'rekkah - Patrol and Rendezvous

B3b has the same hidden NAV point as B3a… with a greater number of enemies and more of the practically indistinguishable Wild Weasel variants of Mantas!

author avatar

Welcome to Ultima 101 Share on Bluesky Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

WingNuts, are you curious about how the other half lives? Well, for the past two years a YouTuber named Majuular has been putting together spectacularly detailed histories and playthroughs of the entire Ultima series, starting with Akalabeth and recently reaching 1993's Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds. These videos are well researched, well produced and thoroughly entertaining… even though each one is hours long! You can find the complete playlist here. Here are a few options that might be of special interest to Wing Commander fans... though it's really worth starting from the beginning as the story of Ultima is significantly the story of Origin Systems itself!

Ultima VII: The Black Gate includes what is probably the most famous Wing Commander crossover, a side quest which includes an appearance by Prince Thrakhath's Bloodfang starfighter trapped in a cornfield!

Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss has a smaller Wing Commander Easter egg: the phrase "you cannot defeat the Drakhri" (sic) scrawled on the wall of the game's deepest dungeon.

Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds has a race of cat people it says are descended from the Kilrathi!

Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny has a cameo from Chris Roberts, who helped develop the game before he created Wing Commander!

Ultima VII Part 2: Serpent Isle was intended to feature an area called Cat Island featuring a storyline that tied in to Wing Commander, but it was largely cut during development.

Ultima VI: The False Prophet features the universe-hopping Segallion, initially created by Todd Michael Porter and featured in Knights of Legend. Segallion shows up in Wing Commander I as a Tiger's Claw redshirt and the name of a star system!

Seggallion also shows up in Ultima V and Worlds of Ultima: The Savage Empire.

author avatar

Reminder: #Wingnut Movie Night Tonight! Share on Bluesky Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

This is a reminder that we have another fun #Wingnut movie night planned on Discord this evening! The ongoing theme will be movies that are referenced by Wing Commander in some way. Tonight's film is The Gathering (1993), the pilot film that kicked off Babylon 5, and you can find details on why we're watching it in the announcement post here. The movie will start at 7 PM PST/10 PM EST but feel free to drop by and hang any time!

author avatar

After Action Report: Class of Beverly Hills Share on Bluesky Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Class of Beverly Hills certainly was not high art but we had a great time revisiting 1990. The Beverly Hills 90210 pilot aired roughly two weeks after Wing Commander shipped and it had a massive cultural impact. Its embrace of California culture helped define America around the world to a generation of kids that wanted to be Brandon or Brenda. It was also shockingly tame compared to anything on television today; crazy to think that this was once the razor's edge of the generation gap!

The Wing Commander connection, "Brain 90210" on the Super Wing Commander trainsim board, remains elusive. But here it is compared to the series' titles!

... so let's look at the OTHER TrainSim pilot names! They change from port to port. We'll try to identify which developer each represents where known!

Wing Commander (Original)

  • Dibber - Chris Roberts
  • Gryphon
  • Potshot
  • Seggallion
  • Sutek - Paul Isaacs
  • Zoro - Ken Demarest III

Wing Commander (Kilrathi Saga)

  • Bishop
  • Mongo
  • Goblin
  • Mangler - Chris Douglas
  • Jefftep - Jeff Grills
  • The Man

Super Wing Commander

  • Faustus
  • Slammer
  • Lightspeed - Jeff Everett
  • Bat
  • Brain 90210
  • Buster

And here's Ian Ziering, future star of Freelancer, as Steve Sanders! Turns out Luke Perry isn't even in the pilot movie... he was added in the first episode when the show went to series. No Sub Zero screenshot for us!

Sully is a New York City cat so he doesn't have much use for Los Angeles.

author avatar

Flight of the Intruder Share on Bluesky Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Here's a pretty insignificant but also interesting little behind-the-screens detail I only just noticed: the 1993 Origin catalog lists the yet-to-be-released second Wing Commander novel as "Intruder/End Run". It looks like the Christopher Stasheff novella that kicks off the book was at one point named Intruder instead of Milk Run! The name certainly fits the story just as well. The idea behind End Run was that Stasheff's story would set up the scenario and Dr. Forstchen's novel would bring in Bear and company to explore that setup. We're betting that the title was changed late in the process to better connect the two stories which do seem to end up further apart than the original idea just on account of their very different writing styles.

Wing Commander: Intruder/End Run (April) $4.99
by Christopher Stasheff and Bill Forstchen
What are the Kilrathi protecting on the remote world of Vukar Tag? Mission Specialist Ramona Chekhova and the crew of the Johnny Greene must go where no human has gone before to discover their secret, even at the cost of their lives. And once it is revealed, how can Jason "Bear" Bondarevsky, former mutineer and now commander of the Tarawa's ragtag fighter wings, exploit it when the Confederation is most desperately in need of a miracle?
author avatar

Follow or Contact Us

All Wings Considered

Episode 37 - Back to Gemini!
Archived video streams

Forums: Recent Posts

  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  

Current Poll

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Where to Buy

WCPedia: Recent Contributions

  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  

Site Staff