News categories list

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

*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

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Aegis has continued to monitor the recently shifting Thargoid behaviour and have confirmed a clear pattern.
Expansion efforts have slowed in recent weeks, with experts theorising that this change in the Thargoids was a precursor to a change in overall strategy. Aegis researchers have now gathered enough evidence to confirm a tactical shift.
The Thargoids have adopted a more defensive stance, reinforcing their current position rather than expanding outward. They are also targeting and invading populated systems exclusively, sometimes without their normal scouting operations.
Dr. Jeong-Hui Shing of the Holloway Bioscience institute offered the following view:
"That lack of scouting is the most fascinating element of this change to me. A military man may claim it to be a desperate enemy lashing out at its opponent, but I see something deeper."
"Foregoing expansion to prioritise the defence of

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

*Pilots' Federation ALERT*
The engineer Ram Tah has perfected his modifications to immunise Guardian modules against the effects of anti-Guardian fields.
Discoveries related to the anti-Guardian field resistant nanite clusters led to the first iteration of these modifications. Ram Tah has since described the methodology as "immature and limited" though, referring to an inability to apply the modifications to all Guardian modules, and a reduction in effectiveness for the weapon modules that could be modified.
Aegis has now announced that Ram Tah has refined the technology significantly, and the new iteration of these modifications resolves both issues.
Weapons with these modifications applied no longer have their damage reduced while still being resistant to anti-Guardian field effects.
The methodology used is also much less limited and can be applied to all Guardian modules without penalty to

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

This conversation provided a good excuse to post some airplane diskettes! Origin could make a handsome disk!

ParadiseRegaind: I’m reminded of the beautiful US diskette artwork for Pacific Strike, and to a lesser extend, Strike Commander.

LOAF: Agreed! Makes you wish there had been a diskette SKU for Wings of Glory...

• Strike Commander
• Disk 1 - F-16 Fighting Falcon
• Disk 2 - MiG-29 Fulcrum
• Disk 3 - Tornado
• Disk 4 - A-10 Warthog
• Disk 5 - Su-27 Flanker
• Disk 6 - F-15 Eagle
• Disk 7 - F/A-18 Hornet
• Disk 8 - F-22 Lightning II

(Note that most copies of Strike Commander include a bonus Origin FX demo on Disk 8; the F-22 art only appears in copies without the demo.)

• Pacific Strike
• Disk 1 (and 9) - F4F Wildcat
• Disk 2 - TBD Devastator
• Disk 3 - F6F Hellcat
• Disk 4 - SBD Dauntless
• Disk 5 - F4U Corsair
• Disk 6 - SB2C Helldiver
• Disk 7 - TBD Avenger
• Disk 8 - F8F Bearcat

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Welcome and happy birthday! Today's not just about our celebration - we're also celebrating the community's many years of dedication to Wing Commander fandom. As we talked about just a few days ago: "The point of a fandom is not to build a cathedral to a brand but to provide a shared starting point from which you connect with others, expand your thinking and grow to become better people." Like everyone else, we're not out of the woods yet, and there are still many challenges everyone is facing every day. Nevertheless, we wouldn't have made it this far without each other. WC fans have come up with some great things this year that we're excited to share. To set the mood and kick things off, FekLeyrTarg put together this adorable and amazing little short - I love it!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

The WC4 Fan Remake team is back with a thoroughly exhaustive overview of their recent progress. If you have any questions at all about the latest and greatest happenings with the project, this new video below has the details! It's full of information and beautiful WIP content. You should check out the clip for the full experience, but there is also a new article at WCRespace too with a bit more info... including a target release date! You can also find the recently updated playable demo here!

Happy Birthday, Wing Commander CIC!

As we don't have a new demo to release for this year's celebration, we thought that instead we'd share an in-depth update on the current state of the project: where we are, where we're going and, crucially, when we plan to get there!

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

The Alioth-based facility housing production of Achilles' new Supercruise Overcharge capable Frame Shift Drives came under attack today.
The crime was perpetrated by a small group of individuals piloting a ship loaded with high-impact explosive weaponry, seemingly with the intention of sabotaging SCO drive production.
The group piloting the ship had posed as Achilles' Aerospace engineers and had somehow gained high-level clearance to bring the vehicle deep into the facility. Achilles themselves are unsure how this could have been possible, stating to reporters that the malicious agents would have required "incredibly sophisticated technology" to forge the appropriate passes.
The group were able to bypass the facility's first checkpoint before the automated security robots identified them as a potential threat. The malicious agents apparently opened fire on the facility, preventing the robots

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

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

A few weeks ago we talked about the many Wing Commander articles that Hardcore Gaming 101 has written. It turns out they also did a whole podcast episode about the series. They joke about hating on games for being old, but their appreciation for what it does keeps coming up. It's also just kind of fun to listen to a room full of nerds gush about the series. Give it a listen here (jump to about 2:15 for the real content to get going).

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Here's a quick peek at several different versions of the Hit Squad edition of Wing Commander 1 that come from Dennis Mull's extensive collection. Hit Squad was a budget published that was responsible for a wide range of translations and rereleases for the original game. It's exactly the type of variation that both delights and drives collectors mad!

LOAF: They covered the UK, France, Germany and Italy. Gotta be at least a dozen versions for the patient collector! (I bet Dennis Mull has a bunch.)

Dennis: Yes, I have a few, but there are more out there.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Ever wonder about the callsigns in the Wing Commander TrainSim? They're selected from a bank of options when you start a new game. They include all the wingmen plus SEGALLION, DIBBER, ZORO, GRYPHON, SUTEK and POTSHOT. These are all the callsigns of members of the dev team.

Segallion gets a star system in WC1, too. Sutek was Paul Isaac’s callsign but I’m not sure who the original Segallion was. Learn about the many variants of the TrainSim here!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Awesome! We don’t stop to appreciate that Wing Commander Prophecy somehow managed to out-map Ultima.

Honor_KA: To all my Wing Commander fans and to those playing Star Citizen. Look what I just found doing some summer cleaning.

Here’s a born digital version of you want to pour over all the references and in-jokes. They even named some systems after especially handsome and well-liked fans!

The map was developed by John "Captain Johnny" Guentzel. He was a designer on Prophecy and Secret Ops who was also, as you can tell, a huge cool nerd. In 1997, Origin put a beta version on the WCP site for fans to comment on… and of course I saved it!

It was also the basis for the map used in the Wing Commander movie intro. Longtime Star Citizen fans may remember that this used to hang behind Chris Roberts in videos! This particular version was nicely relit by Klavs:

Shocking but true: this was NOT the first time a Wing

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 Wing Commander News-Bot

We've been reporting for a while now that Wing Commander Arena's days are numbered in the Microsoft XBox Live Marketplace. The game has had an incredible 17 year run, but all Xbox 360 games that aren't forward-compatible with the Xbox One/Series systems will be delisted from the company's digital storefront on July 29, 2024. The good news is that owners will be able to continue to play online for the foreseeable future, so we've been strongly recommending people buy the game while they have the chance. If you have yet to secure your own copy, there's no time like the present. Microsoft is in the process of heavily discounting a variety of the affected games, which includes a whopping 90% reduction for Arena. It's now only $0.99! You can buy it on the web, but there have been mixed reports of the store hanging and timing out. Try a different browser or return later if you have an issue. See you

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Howard Day is branching into new territory with the introduction of a pirate fighter for his Wing Leader project. He's settled on the Talon, which makes a lot of sense. There's some wonderful variation in paint schemes and weapon loadouts to mimic some of the chaotic design seen by pirates elsewhere in Wing Commander. As much as I like the blues and greens, the purples and oranges really pop here! You can help provide feedback and see some earlier work-in-progress photos at the CIC Forums.

This weekend I spent some time making a set of Pirate fighters - based on the F-38 Talon, these are supposed to be Wingleader-styled versions.

The custom loadouts for these are:
Type A: Photon Blaster, Meson Cannon (scavenged Kilrathi weapons)
Type B: Laser, Meson Cannon
Type C: 2x Laser
Type D: Mass Driver
Type E: Meson Cannon, Neutron Cannon
Type F (Boss/Ace): 2x Laser, Mass Driver

I'd love any feedback on these.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

How about some vintage French mag scans? Guybrush_SF has you covered! I've also added English translations to make the reviews easier to read. I love the part where they gush about the game's rare beautiful and branching gameplay, but the text is only part of the appeal. It's also always such a fascinating time capsule to look at how an article like this would have been presented more than thirty years ago. We also have previews from each mag in our archive. Find the Gen 4 preview here and Tilt here (though for the Amiga version, so not a direct relationship).

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

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!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Anybody play Secret Ops when it was released episodically? Each one ended with a password based on your performance which changed the fiction on the website. All the codes were nerdy references: here TALOS IV is the planet from The Cage, ACHERON is the moon from Alien.

Episode 2 is two 2001: A Space Odyssey nods. AE-35 is the Discovery's antenna that doesn't need to be repaired and TMA-1 is the formal name for the Monolith on the moon (Tycho Magnetic Anomaly One).

Episode 3: this is the one I don't know! LAUMER is most likely SF author Keith Laumer... but I do not know CAIDEN! Anyone have an idea? [Chris: Maybe a misspelling of author Martin Caidin?]

Episode 4: LEONOV for cosmonaut Alexei Leonov (or the Soviet ship from 2010!) and KASPAROV for chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov.

Episode 5: BISSETTE and VEITCH are Stephen Bissette and Rick Veitch, horror comic creators (and frequent collaborators).

And

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

To the Wing Commander Combat Information Center's 25th birthday celebration! TONIGHT at 7:00 PM Eastern US (4:00 PM Pacific and 11:00 PM GMT). Help us ring in a quarter century with fellow fans in #Wingnut on Discord!

Featuring...

• A long-anticipated return!
• Reams and reams of new material for the archive!
• Deleted scenes!
• Aural delights!
• Photographic wonders!
• Fan project updates!
• All new prizes!
• Cake... and more!

So join us in Discord, channel #WingNut! You can stop by any time to join the fun!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

There has been a fair amount of chat about the deadline to buy Wing Commander Arena with many fans confused about what the game is and how to play it. Many have also encountered a bug in which their Xbox does not allow them to buy the game. We hope to help by answering these questions and others with this quick FAQ.

What is Wing Commander Arena?

Wing Commander Arena is a spinoff game set in the Wing Commander universe. It was developed for the Xbox 360 and released on Xbox Live Arcade on July 25, 2007. It was produced by Electronic Arts and developed by the now-defunct Gaia Industries studio. Xbox Live Arcade titles were small and often experimental budget games; they were released digitally for a low price point. Players should be aware that Arena is not a traditional Wing Commander game with a first person cockpit view and an interactive story. It is a top-down shooter with a heavy focus on frenzied