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The Wing Commander movie club has made it through RoboCop 3 which, while not a good film by any means, ended nicely. But after two weeks of objectively lower quality films, we asked everyone to vote from a selection of six Oscar winners. And the victor was psychological horror classic Rosemary's Baby (1968), which won Best Actress in a Supporting Role. You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

Why Rosemary's Baby? We previously talked about directors honored with references in the Wing Commander universe, specifically George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Akira Kurosawa and their associated star systems. We've since picked out two more for the movie pool: Michael Cimino (the TCS Cimino appears in the Prophecy simulator) and Roman Polanski, tuckerized as the Wing Commander movie's "Bishop" Polanski. As with the others, we've selected an additional classic to represent each. We'll be back in

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Several years ago, I purchased an unusual Wing Commander shirt from a 'picker' in Malaysia that I found on Instagram. Such sellers dig through unwanted clothing given to thrift stores or otherwise discarded for treasures that will appeal to collectors of vintage clothing. I've found several Wing Commander promotional shirts this way over the years… but this one was different, I'd never seen it before. It simply reads "Wing Commander" in glittery letters. Were it not for the small text mentioning "Wing Commander Productions" I would've assumed it had nothing to do with our favorite franchise.

Then last week, AD thought up the idea to search the Internet Archive for the Japanese website for the Wing Commander movie. It was set up by distributor Gaga Corporation at wc.gaga.ne.jp (now defunct) for the film's local release. It has the usual collection of cast biographies and a brief background… and this

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Here's a preview of Wing Commander SNES that we found on eBay, of all places! We snagged it from one of those 'cut up magazines and sell them as posters' accounts and as of this moment we don't know where it was from. The listing claimed it dates to 1992, which makes sense, but we haven't found the specific magazine it comes from. When we do, we'll track down a higher resolution version! But we thought it would be good to go ahead and get it in the archive because the article layout is just so pretty. Look at those cool alternating icons!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

I think every member of the Wing Commander movie club can agree that 1492: Conquest of Paradise was not the most thrilling film in the world. It's not that it wasn't well made but it just… sort of sat there with lavish production values that never seemed to quite live up to the story it was telling with characters that just weren't engaging enough for you to put your full head into them. But my philosophy is that mediocrity should be met with a little extra work to make things better… so we're going to use our viewing of 1492 as an excuse to really look at part of the Wing Commander movie!

We watched 1492 for a very important reason: its opening titles were a major influence on the ones Chris Roberts created for the 1999 Wing Commander movie (alongside Sphere and The Fan, which we will be viewing in the future). So technically our Wing Commander interest was over in the first four minutes but it was

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

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 Robocop 3 (1993) and you can find details on why we're watching it in the announcement post here. The movie will start about 7 PM PST/10 PM EST but feel free to drop by and hang any time!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

The rarely seen 2006 film Visual Futurist: The Art and Life of Syd Mead is back! The group responsible for preserving Mead's legacy has remastered the film and made it available for sale and rent on streaming services:

• AppleTV
• Amazon
• Google Play
• YouTube

I watched Visual Futurist in advance of this update and found it very compelling! I went in knowing that Mead was both an incredible talent and someone loved by their peers... and the documentary quickly confirmed both of those things. The film doesn't cover his work on Wing Commander Prophecy's Nephilim but it does showcase a lot of incredible art from his storied career, with extended sections covering fan favorites like Blade Runner, TRON, 2010 (topical!) and Aliens. Learning about his thought process about industrial design was fascinating and there was plenty I'd never heard before. I had no idea that he had designed a luxury yacht for Donald Trump and

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Bitterman stopped by the CIC Discord the other night with a cool present for the community: scans of four Wing Commander cover stories from French magazine Joystick. The Wing Commander Prophecy preview is especially interesting... look carefully at the right VDU images in the screenshots and you'll see that some--but not all!--are from the E3 demo.

Joystick 62 - August 1995 - Wing Commander IV preview

Joystick 68 - February 1996 - Wing Commander IV review

Joystick 77 - December 1996 - Privateer 2 review

Joystick 89 - January 1998 - Wing Commander Prophecy review

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Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

GOG.com is turning 17 years old! The Wing Commander series is discounted by 50% to celebrate the milestone. We first reported about them back in 2008 when the company was announced, and their first WC title was Privateer in June of 2011. It's pretty wild how long they've been serving up classic Wing Commander!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

The Wing Commander movie club is home from exploring the new world with sexy Columbus. I wouldn't say anyone loved 1492: Conquest of Paradise but it was certainly a movie you could think about. This week's movie is... not that. We'll be watching RoboCop 3 (1991), arguably the third or fourth best of the RoboCop movies. But it also may just be the kind of movie you need after a week of taking things too seriously! You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

The big connection for RoboCop 3 is once again that Chris Roberts used some of its music when temp tracking the 1999 Wing Commander movie. RoboCop 3's score is by Basil Poledouris who we previously heard in StarShip Troopers. Chris used "Murphy's Memories" embedded below for the early version of the scene where Blair confronts Angel about Maniac (after the depth charge attack).

RoboCop also reminds us of this classic fellow (robot?

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

An eBay listing fo a Wing Commander Prophecy flight suit recently ended. We thought we'd add the quality photos to the archive. It seems to have belonged to a prop house, probably one that purchased it surplus after Electronic Arts sold off their stored props. No label is visible, so it's likely that this belonged to an extra. Maybe Smudo?!

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Lakon Spaceways has announced the early release of the Type-11 Prospector, a new mining vessel designed specifically for laser mining operations.
The Prospector builds on Lakon's reputation for industrial reliability and functionality. Featuring an exclusive Large Mining Hardpoint and the Mk II Mining Multi-Limpet Controller, the Type-11 can extract higher yields per asteroid than any previous mining vessel. Engineers confirm that its optimised loadout and expanded limpet capacity make it ideal for laser mining, setting a new standard.
A Lakon senior design engineer commented:
"From the very first prototype, the Type-11 Prospector was designed to deliver results. The new mining tool debuting with the Type-11, with its enhanced targeting system, offers pin-point precision when excising fragment yields via laser mining."
The Type-11 Prospector also includes a dedicated fighter bay, giving pilots

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Inside Mac Games was a unique sort of magazine from the mid-1990s. It was specific to the small, affluent community of Macintosh gamers and instead of being printed it came on a CD-ROM! The articles were presented through an interactive executable and they could link to slide shows, trailers, advertisements and even game demos! Dundradal, who remembers IMG from his youth, located five major previews and reviews of Wing Commander games which we've extracted to the best of our abilities here. Links to copies of the ISOs themselves are also included in case you want to get the genuine experience emulating them on an old Mac!

IMG 24 - January/February 1995 - Super Wing Commander preview

Sneak Peek: Super Wing Commander

by Tuncer Deniz

NOTE: Screen shots and information presented in this article are based on a pre-release version of Super Wing Commander and are subject to change before final release. This

Quote from Freelancer News-Bot

21st REGULANCER: Rise of Hiigara showcase, showing systems around and talking about future updates.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

We had a great time following a universal classic with its weird but incredibly special legacy sequel. 2010: The Year We Make Contact is a fascinating movie and I hope everyone enjoyed listening to me go on about it for two hours. I could probably spend that much time just opining on the unusual choice of tense for the title!

Here's the Leonov, designed by Wing Commander Prophecy's Syd Mead! Eagle-eyed sci fi fans will notice that Babylon 5 later... borrowed... the ship for the Omega-class destroyer. Which in turn fascinated Chris Douglas during the making of Wing Commander III!

All three of our simple 2001 references also reappear! Here's HAL, the AE-35 and TMA-1 as seen in all three places (2001, then 2010 and then Wing Commander). The Tycho monolith is only seen in the slideshow of clips from the original movie that opens the film. By the way, we also see "Moonbase Tycho" as a Confederation base on

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

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 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992) and you can find details on why we're watching it in the announcement post here. The movie will start about 7 PM PST/10 PM EST but feel free to drop by and hang any time!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Cybot has a friend to introduce us to: Uncle Bilbop. Uncle Bilbop has a large selection of Privateer-styled ship upgrades that are available as OBJ files for you to use in your own work!

• Cargo Pods DAZ
• GOF Cabin Passager 01 DAZ
• PRIVATEER Armor Type 00 DAZ
• PRIVATEER Base Shield Generator 00 DAZ
• PRIVATEER Cargo BOT 00 DAZ
• PRIVATEER Device Protype 00 DAZ
• PRIVATEER ENFORCER DAZ
• PRIVATEER ENGINES 00 DAZ
• PRIVATEER Ecm Package 00 DAZ
• PRIVATEER Office computer 00 DAZ
• PRIVATEER Sensors 00 DAZ
• PRIVATEER Shield Generator 00 DAZ
• PRIVATEER Weapons 00 DAZ
• Privateer 00 Cargo
• Privateer_Droids Repair Mk2 -00
• Privateer_Droids Repair Mk2 -01
• Privateer_Droids Repair Mk2 -02
• Privateer_Droids Repair Mk2 -03
• TURRET Bottom A Daz LW
• TURRET TOP A

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

There's a pretty good joke hidden in the 'tips' section of the Wing Commander IV manual. Check out the very last one:

"You can fight the Seether" is maybe not a helpful tip for playing Wing Commander IV… but it does tie the game's genetically enhanced villain to the 1994 Veruca Salt song that provided his name! Here's the music video:

Another fun little popular music reference in a Wing Commander game is Arena's Broadsword Warpig, which was named after the Black Sabbath song War Pigs. RIP Ozzy!

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Leading voices in the exobiological community are demanding clarity on the fate of Terri Tora, the young researcher who recently went missing around HIP 87621.
Professor Frank Raddix, who originally appealed for help in locating his young partner, issued a new statement this week:
"Terri risked everything in pursuit of discovery. We deserve to know whether she is safe and what exactly she found. Continued silence from the authorities is unacceptable."
Independent journalist Alexei Keel of Vox Galactica has published evidence linking the permit lock to billionaire investor Lexi October. October Consortium, which predominantly deals in technology, gambling circles, and high-profile investments, refused to comment when approached. Lexi's silence has fuelled intense speculation over whether her organisation is involved with controlling access to the system.
Keel noted that the October Consortium's

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Are you lucky enough to live in or near Sweden? Then you'll want to mark your calendars: the next edition of the gamed SCORE game music concert is coming to the De Geerhallen concert hall in Norrköping on November 8… and it will include music from Wing Commander! SCORE is an ongoing concert series which presents an ever-changing lineup of both classic and current video game music. In the past they've played a suite of music from the original game's score by George Sanger and it's a good bet that's what lucky Swedes will hear in November. You can learn more about the project and the Wing Commander suite here and you can book your tickets here.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

The Wing Commander movie club has returned from the distant, hopeful tomorrow of 2010 and we've voted to watch another movie with a year for a title! This is going to be an interesting one because it's a movie I have not seen and know nothing about: Ridley Scott's 1992 historical drama 1492: Conquest of Paradise. Ridley Scott has made a lot of nearly perfect movies… but this is one we didn't know. It should be pretty exciting to find out what its deal is! You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

The Wing Commander connection is fascinating, too. 1492 is one of three major references used by Chris Roberts to develop the Wing Commander movie's spectacular opening sequence. The opening was not scripted with the rest of the movie, it was something Chris developed after the shoot to try and capture viewers' attention based on the same 'everything in the first act' philosophy used to develop