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Today marks 17 years since the launch of Wing Commander Arena for the Xbox 360! It was a small labor of love by a tiny New York studio called Gaia Industries with support from EA Vancouver. The game pioneered a new generation of digital releases for the Xbox Live Marketplace. Despite the many limitations created by this new mode of distribution, Arena was a stunning pioneer with 16-player multiplayer, high definition graphics and expansive lore packed in anywhere it would fit. And it's available for just THREE MORE DAYS!

Microsoft will be shuttering its Xbox 360 store on Monday, July 29. The game will remain playable on the 360 console after that, but you need to acquire your copy by then. Pick it up directly through the console or on the web here. It's only $0.99! Find more valuable info in LOAF's Arena End of Life FAQ here.

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Today we've got even more new material from Howard Day's Wing Leader project to share. In a pair of new videos, you can see several new special effects. The Firekkan fighter on display has some fancy reflection in place that shows off the cockpit glass. And it's refined a bit further in the second clip with additional haze. The look of the guns in action has also been amped up! You can watch the AI engage in space combat within the game's engine in real time here.

Here's a update to the Wingleader cockpit glass reflections - going far more graphic/streaky and subtle. Lemme know what you think!

Okay, here's a update to the Wingleader cockpit glass reflections - going far more graphic/streaky and subtle. Lemme know what you think! pic.twitter.com/qM4Q6bTibH

— Howie Day (@howieeday) July 20, 2024

  

I've started to add some gun SFX to Wingleader, and did add a little bit of glass haze to the cockpit

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Oh wow, I love this perspective! I post videos from time to time of people playing Wing Commander Prophecy for the Gameboy Advance, but they're usually screen captures. It's very cool to see someone playing it in real time. The white gloves and arctic white console are nice touches too. There's a lot of cutscene and talking head content for the bulk of the video, but the clip includes some solid space combat towards the end too. Note that this unit has a screen mod that makes it really pop. You'd ordinarily need an Advance SP or original Nintendo DS to get a naturally lit up screen.

Handheld gameplay recording of Wing Commander: Prophecy (released in 2003) on the Nintendo Game Boy Advance (with IPS screen mod) without commentary.

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I noticed a detail I’d never picked up on in Action Stations! The book is a prequel about the start of the Kilrathi war that’s strongly based on Pearl Harbor (and At Dawn We Slept in particular).

The Kilrathi are preparing to attack Confed’s major base at McAuliffe. Earth dispatches orders to Vega to go on a war footing, but a series of random occurrences delay them from getting there until the battle is joined.

The first of these is that the officer delivering the pouch to the courier ship misses the hand off as he’s trying to appease his angry date, Nancy.

Chapters and more delays later the pouch finally arrives with Admiral Long at McAuliffe… who ignores it because his wife is furious over gossip regarding her friend… Nancy!

So who is this woman who inadvertently doomed trillions to slavery and death? I have my suspicions.

(For the record my mom is also named Nancy and she would betray Earth to help

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SHARK MOUTHS! Although most famously applied to the Flying Tigers' Warhawks, pilots started painting fierce faces on their aircraft during the first World War... and it continues to this day! So today let's see how that tradition continues through the 27th (and 28th) Century...

Wing Commander's very first shark mouth isn't even human: Prince Thrakhath's Bloodfang fighter has one in both the Wing Commander II demo and when redesigned for Wing Commander II itself.

The first human shark mouth we see is the Arrow in Wing Commander Armada which soon after appeared with a similar livery in Wing Commander III...

Wing Commander IV drops them entirely but they return in Wing Commander Arena! All three Arrow types (Scout, Eclipse, Guardian) have them, which is some attention to detail given you can't really see them in a top down game.

Wing Commander III also gives us the Thunderbolt VII. We see an ensharkened

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In the Wing Commander I & II guide, Spirit ever so briefly mentions that all-women combat missions are normal… but that they weren’t allowed in 2638, sixteen years earlier. This probably seemed progressive in 1991 when the US military did not allow women to fly in combat at all. But by 2011, the USAF was flying all female combat missions a few centuries ahead of schedule!

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We've got two Wing Leader ships today for the price of one! Howard Day has made major refinements to both his Krant and Firekkan 'Valtar' design. Both have extremely spiffy new cockpit art for display in the project's rolling demo. Pay close attention to the Kilrathi fighter and you'll see specially designed kat claws and articulated legs, not to mention cockpit damage. There's now a very nice lineup of alien ships in the game!

Got the Kilrathi Wingleader cockpits with legs and dual joysticks hooked up! Looks pretty cool, IMHO. Enjoy!

Alriiiiighty! I have the Wingleader Krant all hooked up and flying. I *very* likey. also, there's another...slight addition that really helps. pic.twitter.com/1e3nCsSYq9

— Howie Day (@howieeday) July 19, 2024

Got the Kilrathi Wingleader cockpits with legs and dual joysticks hooked up! Looks pretty cool, IMHO. Enjoy! pic.twitter.com/DnzyQs9LBX

— Howie Day (@howieeday)

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Narrarrol is looking at making a Spanish language Wing Commander game in the M-Space RPG. There's not a ton of information available yet, but the base game looks like a pretty flexible framework that would allow for moddability with WC assets. There's also historically not been very many non-English role playing games out there, so we'd love to see some fans get together and figure this out! If this sounds like something up your alley, let Narrarrol know on Twitter.

Investing night hours in a space hunting card game with classic inspiration. KF-227 Salthi of the Kilrah Empire (or Kilrathi Empire) still under construction. #juegosderol #rol #ttrpg #mspace #wingcommander

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Mac is celebrating a new version of Blender with a fancy new render. He's taken Klavs' fantastic Excalibur model and infused it with some very complimentary lighting effects. It's even a good proxy for the Temblor strike aftermath!

Blender 4.2 is out! You know what means? New Eevee Rendering! Which means new ways for me to light stuff without having to go into Cycles! Yay!

Eevee? Autocorrect mishap or pet name for his favorite fighter? I'll leave that for you to decide!

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*Pilots' Federation ALERT*
Large quantities of construction shipments to support disaster recovery operations on Rhea 3 have been delivered to Ito Orbital.
The Federation is still treating and supporting survivors from the catastrophic earthquakes that destroyed many urban centres on the planet. A spokesperson from Federal Liberal Command, the Rhea system's controlling faction, said:
"This has been a beacon of hope and support for a planet besieged by misfortune, and these supplies will be of enormous help. Thank you. We have now authorised the delivery of rewards at Ito Orbital for all pilots who took part in this initiative."
President-elect Felicia Winters gave a statement to the press from a newly built medical facility outside the recovering capital city New Greenacre:
"I can find no words to describe the horror of what happened here. Nor can I fully express my gratitude to everyone who

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There's a lot of things on sale today at Amazon.com, but our pick of the day is the Wing Commander Academy television show on DVD. It's $10.99, which isn't a special sale price just for today, but it does match the lowest it's been at for the past year. Academy is a spectacular story that follows our favorite pilots across thirteen episodes at the academy and aboard the Tiger's Claw. Since it was delisted from Peacock last year, the DVD remains the top way to pick it up today. And for folks looking for the absolute best deal, Academy is on sale at Deep Discount as well. It starts at $9.62 and then coupon code "SUMMER" knocks it down to an impressive $8.18. However, shipping adds a couple bucks back and takes a bit longer than Amazon, so pick the best option for your situation!

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Howard Day has finished fully implementing a new ship into Wing Leader. Formerly available as an adversary, the game's first person rolling demo now has the ability to load a Salthi and play from the Kilrathi fighter's point of view. This even includes extensive cockpit damage! Catch a new video of it in action below.

Got the Wing Leader Salthi Cockpit all hooked up! Looking pretty awesome, very happy with the results. It's very much a glass cannon speedster. It came together quick, future Kilrathi cockpits should be as fast or faster. Enjoy!

Got the Wing Leader Salthi Cockpit all hooked up! Looking pretty awesome, very happy with the results. It's very much a glass cannon speedster. It came together quick, future Kilrathi cockpits should be as fast or faster.
Enjoy! pic.twitter.com/YuBupLeDA5

— Howie Day (@howieeday) July 14, 2024

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Time marches ever forward and that means Wing Commander Arena's delisting from the Xbox Marketplace store is fast approaching. Some 200 digital-only games for the Xbox 360 will no longer be available for purchase after July 29. This will leave the demo on the November 2007 OXM cover disc as the only circulating version out there. The good news is that Microsoft has slashed the price to just 99 cents in the game's final days. As it will continue to remain playable the Xbox 360 (not Xbox One or Series S/X) for the foreseeable future, there's no reason not to pick up a copy. Some people have reported hangups with the legacy website. The best workarounds we've seen are to first buy $1-2 worth of Xbox Gift Card currency or try to make a purchase directly from an Xbox 360 console. On the bright side, it is nice to see an uptick in people streaming games like Arena as we approach the cutoff. Check

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Earlier this week I mentioned that it was everyone's last chance to get discounted Wing Commander until the next GOG sale. And that next sale is here! The summer sale may be over, but the new Forever Great promo is ready to serve you cheap WC games. The details are pretty similar to last time with most titles marked down 50% to $2.99 each. Armada and Academy are boosted slightly to 66% off. Curiously, Privateer 2 is not part of the sale. It's almost always included along with the rest of the Wing Commander series, so I'll assume it was a simple oversight this time rather than some kind of intentional burn. Strike Commander is also omitted, but that's not uncommon.

A lot of retro and classic games are being lost to time. Our main goal is to preserve them, make them available for modern computers. Check out our discounted collection of Forever Great games.

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Last week we shared a fun assortment of European Hit Squad releases from Dennis Mull's collection. Now Conservatoire national du jeu vidéo or the French National Video Game Conservatory has posted an unusual triple-translation copy of WC1 that has English, French and Italian all in one. It's always fun to learn about a new version of Wing Commander! This is part of a delightful larger thread on the history of multilingual game packaging.

LOAF: Part of a fascinating thread on multi-language game boxes. English-French-Italian as on this Hit Squad copy of Wing Commander I is an unusual grouping!

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My brother recently sent me a pretty fascinating question: is there a Wing Commander TCTG card in Starship Troopers (1997). He included an image where you can see cards stick to the wall to the left of the viewscreen in the camp barracks.

It does, indeed, look very similar to a Wing Commander card! Compare it, for instance, to this Hellcat V. Did the art department maybe take one and replace the fighter with a Heinlein-era rocket?

That's not the craziest connection to make, either. Troopers' lead, Casper Van Dien, was in fact good friends with Wing Commander's Mark Hamill and his family. That's why he had a cameo in the Wing Commander IV intro! Confed Redshirt #3:

The timeline works out, too. The Wing Commander TCTG was developed by a company called Mag Force 7 and released in August 1995. It's based mostly on WC3. Meanwhile, Starship Troopers' principal shoot was over the summer in 1996.

But it's not a

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What happens when you dig really deep for Wing Commander stuff to share? You find some wild gems like these! Turn the clock back 20+ years for a time capsule of WC fan art that raeder made back in the 2003-2005 era. Apparently these were created in an old school program called Bryce. I would say the Galaxy model is actually very good for the time and it's mostly the textures that would benefit from a little more consistency. Of course, the background art and flame effects are pretty dated, but they still have a certain vintage charm!

Over a decade has passed since these ships first ran the starlanes of the Gemini Sector, and the improvements just keep coming. New B&S scanners, cannon and turret mounts, improvements in storage capacity, heavier generator mounts, and room for improved counter-tronic equipment has fast made them popular among the freighting community. While they will never be a true

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

*Pilots' Federation ALERT*
The Federation has requested shipments of supplies in the Rhea system to help rebuild critical infrastructure.
Intense seismic activity across Rhea 3's largest continent demolished entire cities and townships late last year, causing widespread death and injury. Rescue operations have saved over a million people, but local infrastructure has been compromised and vital construction supplies are running low.
President-Elect Felicia Winters spoke publicly for the first time since leaving for Rhea 3 to announce a support initiative:
"I know that there are individuals out there who have tried to use my absence from office to undermine the will of the Federation's people by calling for a re-election. Of course they have. To them I say simply this: to care for your home planet, for your people, is not a weakness."
"But unfortunately, I have now reached the limit of what I

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

GOG's Summer Sale is winding down, but you can still take advantage of the discount to get cheap Wing Commander games. The main entries in the series are 50% off or $2.99 each. Armada, Academy and Privateer 2 are a larger 66% off or just $2.03 each. Get your orders in before Wednesday evening (or wait until the next sale!).

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

As Titan Indra in the HIP 20567 system was attacked, Vox Galactica reporter Jade Sanderlyn published her eye-witness account.
"Watching the Thargoid mothership's last hours had my guts in knots. Caustic gas and debris spurted from its vents like blood from multiple wounds. Violent vibrations and bioluminescent pulses gave the impression of a creature shuddering its last. And our ship's sensors picked up horrific creaks and groans, part collapsing starship and part dying animal."
"The Titan appeared to begin building energy for its electromagnetic attack but it seemed to go out of control. I was half-blinded by a sudden flash that sent our ship spinning out into the black. It continued to explode with a series of increasingly intense releases of energy, and then the most intense blast I think I will ever bear witness to."
"This dragon, which had once carried off our people and destroyed our