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  • 29

    Sep

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    Sep

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    Sep

  • 30

    Sep

    Wing Commander I's manual, Claw Marks, includes sixteen pages of hand drawn art of the game's ships. These schematics were part of a larger group draughted by Origin artist Glen Johnson as reference for the game's outsource 3D artist. While the original art consisted of 21 ships with 5 views each, Claw Marks reproduces only 16 ships with 3 views, two of those split in half to save space. We thought it would be a fun experiment to 'unsplit' the top and bottom views from the Claw Marks artwork! Here are the results, quick-and-dirty edits to show what the ships looked like when they were originally drawn:

    cmdouble-Hornett.jpgcmdouble-Scimitart.jpgcmdouble-Rapiert.jpgcmdouble-Raptort.jpgcmdouble-Draymant.jpgcmdouble-Venturet.jpgcmdouble-Exetert.jpgcmdouble-Bengalt.jpgcmdouble-Salthit.jpgcmdouble-Dralthit.jpgcmdouble-Krantt.jpgcmdouble-Grathat.jpgcmdouble-Jalthit.jpgcmdouble-Dorkirt.jpgcmdouble-Ralarit.jpgcmdouble-Fralthit.jpg

  • 30

    Sep

  • 30

    Sep

  • 01

    Oct

    It's a great week for never-before-seen Wing Commander imagery: AD has discovered the official website and social media presence of Wing Commander III, IV and Prophecy set photographer Mike Kubeisy. A fair amount of Wing Commander III set photography has been made available over the year but almost none from Wing Commander IV and Prophecy was ever released... it's pretty neat seeing some of the sets and costumes in high resolution! We've reached out to Mr. Kubeisy to see if he has any other Wing Commander photographs available.

    Hamill__1_t.jpgMalcomt.jpgWng_Cmdrt.jpgMarkHamillt.jpg10932595_873727696048294_17226677_nt.jpgvlcsnap-2022-09-14-23h22m02s356t.jpgWing_Cmdrt.jpgWing_Cmdr2t.jpg

  • 02

    Oct

  • 03

    Oct

    The The Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment (MADE) has been digitizing video donated by Electronic Arts and 3DO founder Trip Hawkins. Among their collection is the '3DO sizzle reel' found below, a store looping tape created to show off the first round of games available for the 3DO. VHSes like these were sent to stores like Babbages and Electronic Boutique to display games to customers on in-store TVs. The tape includes a short-but-interesting pre-release teaser for Super Wing Commander which includes clips from several cutscenes and some early gameplay. Pay special attention to the action: the player attacks two Scimitars which still have the original Hornet art as their VDU and when one explodes it spawns what looks like a pretty spectacular destroyed Super Wing Commander Rapier (which isn't in the final game). Neat!

    3DOIn-StoreSizzleReel7-29screenshott.jpg3DOIn-StoreSizzleReel7-33screenshott.jpg3DOIn-StoreSizzleReel7-34screenshott.jpg

  • 03

    Oct

    The folks at Good Old Games are celebrating their 14th anniversary, which means cheap Wing Commander for you! I know, it seems like there's a new sale every other week, but we hear from players excitedly picking these up every time, so we're happy to promote each event! It's the customary 75% off sale, so each title is $1.49 or less than $12 for the whole DOS/Windows Wing Commander lineup - an absolute steal!

    gog-wc12-button.jpggog-wc3-button.jpggog-wc4-button.jpggog-wcp-button.jpggog-priv-button.jpggog-p2-button.jpggog-wca-button.jpggog-armada-button.jpggog-strike-commander-button.jpg

  • 03

    Oct

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    Oct

  • 05

    Oct

    Today we've got a tiny 1992 video review from the British television show GamesMaster. Non-print reviews are quite rare from this era since we were still a couple years before magazines starting including multimedia cover discs. Wing Commander 2 is one of my favorite games, so I was anxious to see what they had to say. And boy, they did not like it! Both reviewers say the game just has graphics going for it and award it a failing 59% score. I'm honestly pretty shocked at that assessment. The graphics were only minimally refined over WC1, but there were some wonderful advances in terms of storytelling, sound/speech and gameplay mechanics (torpedo bombing, turrets, tractor beams, jump points, etc). Ah well, check out this thirty year old clip below! Thanks to Oli for archiving this.

  • 05

    Oct

    Today we've got another amazing Wing Commander ship recreated in the modding workshop game Space Engineers. It's got a lot of wonderful touches designed by Aubi-Nation. The spaceframe shape is pretty solid with all of the recognizable pieces in place. I really like the running lights on the landing deck, and there are some nice moving doors and motion activated components as well. The interior of the ship has also been modeled as well, although it's a bit less complete. It's not the first Space Engineers Claw we've seen this year. You can also find NakaKen's here!

    #ThisDadPlays Space Engineers! I take one of my favourite ships from Wing Commander and I recreate it in Space Engineers! Here is the rediscovered version of the Tiger's Claw!
  • 06

    Oct

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    Oct

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    Oct

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    Oct

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    Oct

  • 08

    Oct