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This is also the time of year when we refresh our

Background

and

Development Archive

sections. These pages try to encapsulate all the useful or remarkable artifacts and bits of knowledge that we report on in our daily news updates, but can be difficult to keep track of over time. We hope these sections can be a good starting-off point for anyone just now wanting to learn about a classic Wing Commander game they found on GOG, or a more seasoned player wanting to research a certain topic in-depth. With the Wing Commander 3 anniversary coming up, this year's efforts focus on that title. Below you can find a birds eye overview of the new additions.

• Background: Essential (fan-created) tools and patches, noteworthy articles, manuals, Saturn and Jaguar port information.
• Game Design: Storyboards, the production book, the ESRB tape.
• Artwork: Various props you'll recognize, many sketches, mysterious ships

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We’re pleased to announce the return of the Research and Development Weekend! This event will run from Thursday, December 5th at 8AM PT to Monday, December 9th at 10AM PST, and features several bonuses throughout STO that will give Captains of all levels a leg up advancing their rank in the Research and Development school(s) of their choice. For those Captains looking specifically for extra help with their projects, all R&D packs throughout the game will give out an extra 25% of the items they currently disperse for the duration of this event. Queue R&D Material Reward Packages (Normal, Advanced and Elite) will reward 25% more R&D Materials and have a chance to reward a Catalyst. Alternatively, Captains wanting to advance through Research and Development schools as fast as possible should seek out Harvest Nodes, located in mission maps throughout STO, which will not only disperse 2 extra R&D

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General: Resolved an issue that was causing PvP matches to award negative experience points. Resolved an issue that would sometimes prevent the game from launching. Clicking on the Into the Breach Welcome Screen now opens the Event Window, instead of launching the TFO. Systems: Resolved an error that was preventing players from receiving Bonus Event Dilithium if they progressed using the Voth Patrols. Resolved an issue that caused the Shield Mastery skill to make the player immune to all Critical Hits, instead of only one per 20 seconds. Resolved an issue that prevented the Discovery Class C Shuttlecraft hangar pets from being available after purchasing Earhart Strike Wing Escort [T6] Updated Zen Store description for the Sech Strike wing Escort [T6] and Earhart Strike wing Escort [T6] to correctly state 5 fore weapons. Kobayashi Maru Resupply Beacon can no longer be used in social

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The Khitomer Alliance has begun a brand new initiative in the wake of new technological advances across the galaxy. They’ve noticed no surplus of young, ready Captains looking to explore the final frontier, but there is a surplus of older model ships, perfectly capable, but waiting for the right Captain to take them up. With that in mind, we’re making a change to all Tier 1 through Tier 4 ships in the Ship Requisition Store. These ships will no longer require Zen to requisition. Instead, they will all be requisitioned through a modest donation of Dilithium. Here’s how this will break down: TIER New Price for Ships that previously cost Dilithium New Price for Ships that previously cost Zen 1 1,000 15,000 2 2,500 37,500 3 5,000 75,000 4 10,000 150,000 This is a huge price discount – following

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EpytronOmega has been diligently working on rendering Wing Commander ships over the last few months, and he's got several sharp models to show for it. His first two designs exist at opposite ends of the Confed spectrum: a Behemoth class dreadnought and Arrow light fighter. I used to love flying around the interior of that giant gun, so the angle that looks down the Behemoth's maw brings back some fond memories. The Arrow is also quite respectable, and his new Bearcat is coming along quite well. Epytron's main goal is to try to build assets for games like Sins of a Solar Empire, so it'll be interesting to see where these pop up!

• Here is my take on the Behemoth from Wing Commander 3: Heart of the Tiger.
• This is my rendition of the Arrow Class fighter from Wing Commander. It is my first texture made in Substance painter, and I have to say that I am pretty pleased with it.
• Here is the work I’ve done on

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The King of Grabs has turned his attention to the Wing Commander series. The concept here is to take a whole pile of screenshots for all sorts of classic games. We love giant walls of WC screenshots, so this is right up our alley. They do run into a bit of a classic pitfall: there are dozens and dozens of pictures of WC1... which are all flying the Hornet in the Enyo System. Likewise, the WC2 images are all flying the Ferret in Gwenydd. It's a missed opportunity to see a greater variety of ships and some of the cooler late-game set pieces, but it's still a pleasing sight. Stay tuned for Hellcat dogfighting in Orsini!

Wing Commander was developed by Chris Roberts and his team at Origin Systems and first released for PC MS-DOS in 1990. It’s a classic cockpit-based space combat game with cinematic cut scenes, and it developed into a long-running series. The Wing Commander series.

Wing Commander is

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Here's a grand revisit to some of John Nelson's recent Lego creations. The first couple images show the combined fleet of human fighters. His faithful interpretations of the Broadsword, Ferret, Lance/Dragon, Rapier, Thunderbolt, Hornet, Arrow, Longbow, Avenger and Scimitar are all there. He's also in the process of reimagining a couple of his Kilrathi designs. His Darket and Strakha have been rebuilt with darker brown and mustard-toned bricks to more closely mimic the color schemes of Wing Commander 3. That's some wonderful dedication to the cause!

I got more brownish colored bricks and swapped out the Darket and nearly rebuilt and beefed up the Strahka. I hope you like them. Look for a new model that I submit to Chris soon.

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Wing Commander II has some excellent tuckerizations! This is from Special Operations 1. Denis Loubet is the famous Origin artist, and the Miller is Craig Miller, who designed the Wing Commander II box.

General Snell of Niven Colony was Wing Commander II's executive producer Dallas Snell (who is likely well known to many Origin Systems fans)!

Lady Blue, CO of the Concordia's Ferret wing, is writer/assistant diretor Ellen Guon (who you probably know first as the co-author of Freedom Flight).

Ghorah Khar Sabre pilot "Ladyman" is the man behind the manuals, David Ladyman.

Blair's gunner Lieutenant Haley is programmer Richard Haley.

Ghorah Khar rookie pilot "Cafrelli" is programmer Charles Cafrelli (who also voiced a Kilrathi admiral!).

Do you know any others?

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A you may know, we recently purchased a collection of Wing Commander IV continuity photographs which we've been researching for front page updates. In honor of the birthday we thought we'd jump ahead and share the full collection of photos. Stay tuned for more articles covering the unsung histories of these actors and characters! You can find the current slate of feature articles here.

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There's some unfortunate news concerning the Xbox 360 and Wing Commander Arena. Microsoft has announced that the console's digital storefront will be closing in July 2024. This means some 220 games, including Arena, will no longer be available for sale in any form. Wing Commander's debut on the Xbox was part of a new digital-standalone push dubbed Xbox Live Arcade. The results were quite impressive given a variety of constraints such as a 50 megabyte download cap and $10 asking price. Arena was the platform's first 16-player game and made heavy use of features like matchmaking and online leaderboards. Although Arena never received a proper physical release, the "demo" of the game was included on the cover disc of the November 2007 issue of the Official Xbox Magazine. These demos could be "unlocked" into the full game, but that function will presumably be removed as well.

Since the game was

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Today we have several new pages from EmuMusicFan's slick retelling of the Hobbes interrogation scene in Freedom Flight. Now that Prince Thrakhath has ended the imminent threat, Lord Ralgha nar Hhallas turns his attention to dealing with Jahkai!

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LOAF, AD and the team have been doing big and exciting things lately with Privateer 2. To further their research and project prep, we're holding a group watch-along of the "director's cut" footage posted by P2 director Steve Hilliker for the game's 25th anniversary. To join in, visit Discord #Wingnut on Monday evening at 9 PM Eastern Time. This YouTube link is all you need!

LOAF: Set your nav computers for fun: join us on Monday at 9 PM Eastern at the CIC Discord for a group watch of the Privateer 2: The Darkening 25th Anniversary movie cut!

If you want to enhance the experience even further, there is also AD & ODVS' special remastered version of the material that improves the quality and resolution even more. You can download it here (2.7 gig mkv) and watch with something like VLC. Here's a comparison of the two versions:

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The recent Heritage Auction of material from Planet Hollywood included several Wing Commander costumes! Which means there are some great high resolution photos to share. Here's Mark Hamill's flight suit from Wing Commander IV:

And here is Malcolm McDowell's Black Lance uniform from the same game! (Note that the rank insignia on the cuff is there incorrectly.)

Here are some photos of the event where these costumes were donated to the restaurant in 1996 just a few days before the game was released. They got some good press out of it!

On the other hand, I didn't even know Mark Hamill's Wing Commander Prophecy flight suit had been in Planet Hollywood's collection. Guess the same trick doesn't work twice! (Or three times, Planet Hollywood got a movie Rapier at one point too...)

There was also a great photo by of some loose rank insignias up close. Can you identify them?

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When I learned that our Away Team would go to Destination Star Trek in Birmingham, I had no idea what would await me there, and that it would turn out to be the best experience ever as a Community Manager. Of course, there was a lot of work to do. The perfect opportunity to turn that thrill of anticipation into announcements, teasers, games, and of course, to prepare the Universal Translator for Europe's biggest Star Trek party. Thanks to our Communicators, the members of our Away Team were in constant contact, and getting there from different regions of the planet went almost without incident. I say almost, because Ambassador Kael did steal someone's luggage, but luckily, that was solved quickly, so we could proceed to our first personal meeting over fish & chips and some amusing anecdotes. If you've worked at a Star Trek Convention before, you will know how it feels to be there on the first

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General: Memorial Plaque Text Updated: Added Aron Eisenberg - Thank you for everything, Aron. Added Jack Donner Content: Resolved an issue during the Mycelial Realm Task Force Operation, which was causing the Elachi computers to not display the proper color variants when the computer is unlocked and usable by the player. UI: Resolved an issue in the new Patrols window, where the rewards were moving across the screen and also overlapping the scroll bar. Systems: Warbird Updates: Resolved an issue that was allowing TOS-era and DSC-era Federation Captains to access Warbird starships of inappropriate era availability before they had traveled to the correct timeline during their starting experiences. Warbirds will now only be accessible to non-Romulan Captains after they have chosen a primary allegiance (2409 Starfleet or

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Five new patrols are coming to Star Trek Online, bringing new challenges and story to the universe. J’Ula, sister of T’Kuvma, is on the march once again. She is seeking the spores of prototaxites stellaviatori to fuel her devastating new superweapon. With the aid of Lt. Commander Paul Stamets and Captain Kuumaarke, captains can stand tall in the fight against the dangerous matriarch of House Mo’Kai. We’ll be revealing the new patrols one at a time in the lead up to Awakening – check back with Startrekonline.com for more! Within The Briars Within the Briar Patch, the player braves deadly pockets of Metreon Gas to protect spore colonies from the agents of House Mo’Kai. You will first be able to access these new Patrols from your mission journal after completing the episode “Beneath the Skin.” If you are on a Patrol mission from the journal, have completed it, or skipped it, you

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It may not have been the smartest course of action, but we've all been there (there being the Alcor System after the destruction of the Behemoth).

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I just noticed the Wing Commander IV PlayStation disc change screens all have different ship reflections. Cool as hell!

The first disc image with the Hellcats is also used as a splash screen for the DVD version of WC4.

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The UK-based Centre for Computing History recently tweeted about this really cool collectible phone card made as a promotion for Wing Commander 2. I realized I actually have a couple of these laying around, but somehow we've never shared them in the news before! You can find their profile page on this item here. I really like their website and mission!

Just added to the collection: A promotional Wing Commander II Mercury telephone kiosk card!

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Card for use in a Mercury telephone kiosk, with Wing Commander II design.

Mercury Communications was a national UK telephone company formed in the early 1980s, and was an early competitor of BT. Mercury's payphone kiosks were in use in the UK from 1986-1995.

The card states on the back that Mercurycards are available in £2, £4, and £10 values, however the card itself is a £1 value, so was likely given away as a promotion.

A

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If you were hooked by LOAF's deep analysis of the Confederation Handbook over the weekend and can't wait for more, the time is now! Part two of the stream is live! Check it out below:

In 1999, HarperEntertainment published the Wing Commander Confederation Handbook. Was it the greatest book ever written in the history of the world? Yes. Let's talk about it! AGAIN.