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Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Here's a really cool find that LOAF recently came across. From the outside, it might look like a nifty WC1 Special Edition autographed by Chris Roberts, but it's what's inside that's pretty rare! The set was originally purchased directly from Origin in 1990, and the included Secret Missions were special mailed in a WC branded envelope instead of the standard slim black box. Not many of these were produced like this, and even fewer still exist today!

I lucked into one of my grails! It’s a copy of the Special Edition of Wing Commander with the Secret Missions mailer! This version was only available via mail order from Origin in 1990. The mission disk came separately in the mailer in December when it was finished.

They hadn’t originally planned to release Secret Missions at retail at all, it was an extra mailed directly from Origin. But there was so much interest they ended up doing a boxed

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

From May 1986 to September 1998, Origin Systems 'owned' the back cover of Computer Gaming World. Their first ad was for Ogre, a tank fighting game and the last was for Ultima IX.

Origin did this marketing in house and got so good at it that instead of shutting them down after the acqusition EA used their team for studios like Firaxis and Bullfrog. Looking at them is a neat way to watch the culture, desktop publishing and the audience change.

Since there are great scans of the full run of CGW, I thought pulling out all the Wing Commander ads would make for a good start to a larger collection. I've collected them all here.

You start out with handmade ads designed to capture the hobbyists of the early 90s...

... then a more prestigious Hollywood look (moving to digital layouts) for the multimedia era that brought in more gamers...

And then some true X-TREME nonsense towards the end!

Privateer 2, which had a

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Yesterday we got a peek at the awesome French lobby cards designed to promote the Wing Commander Movie, and I mentioned that there were several also available in North America. I looked a bit through our archives, and pics of these cards are few and far between. We didn't want to deprive anyone of our heroes' retinal signatures or flight (school) records, so here are updated photos of each one! You also get bonus pilot nose art and shots of the back this time. The backs differ by calling out the actor shown on the front. I wonder if anyone has ever mailed one before?

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

EmuMusicFan has another cool Japanese scan to share. This time it's the "Exploration Guide" that covers the gameflow portions of Wing Commander 3 PSX. Emu previously scanned the Combat Guide that details the spaceflight portions. Both are in full color, and even if you're not likely to play the Japanese port of a Playstation game any time soon, it's pretty neat to see how the menus and interface slightly differ. Japanese readers will also get some fun flavor text about the characters!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

EmuMusicFan recently added a Japanese copy of Wing Commander 3 for the Playstation to his collection. This version has some absolutely gorgeous documentation that I don't think we've posted before, so here's the Combat Guide instruction manual in its entirety! It's in full color, which is really sweet. I always always like to see what bits of the game and interface remain in English after the rest is translated. It's very cool all around!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Christian Klein

has found another rare and exotic Spanish Wing Commander translation by DROSoft. His

last

couple

finds were for WC1 and the Secret Missions, but this jumps all the way forward to Armada. It would be a treat to see how they changed the Voices of War manual and how the English and Spanish versions would mesh over multiplayer. The Spanish Victory Streak is just there for fun and wasn't part of this set. Armada was ahead of its time and is a ton of fun, so it's great to see other regions that got it!

Just got this hard to find Spanish Wing Commander Armada. The box is in a good shape and the disks are still readable. It's added to the archive now. #DOSgaming

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

This is turning into a series!

Christian Klein

has found yet another DROSoft localization for Spain. This time it's Wing Commander 2. This one has a long of box text to translate, and the small instruction pamphlet has a very cool design with watermark silhouettes of all the ships on it. Relatively speaking, there's quite a few copies of Wing Commander 2 out there, but not this version of it! Really cool find!

Thanks Spain! I recently found another neat Wing Commander 2 version to add to my small collection.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

I was organizing some things into a new cabinet recently and thought you might like to take a peek!

Here's a rundown of what's pictured, starting from the top left.

• Top Row: Wing Commander novels, including three copies of the Junior Novelization and seven Pilgrim Stars
• Second from Top: Super Nintendo versions of WC1 and The Secret Missions in US, UK PAL and Japanese Super Famicon configurations, random publications like the Starlog Movie magazine, printed copies of Star Soldier, Mike Winterbauer art magnet, 35 mm film trailer for WC4, binders with sets of Wing Commander CCGs, a mini bottle of Prophecy water, stack of WC audio albums
• Third from Top: Wing Commander DVDs (1999 Fox release, 2013 Fox reprint and Anchor Bay reprint) and VHSes (WC Movie and WC3 Behind the Screens), WC Blu-rays, Academy animated series DVD, loose promo cards (from Nintendo Power and for the CCG), a handful of 3D printed models

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

Here's a fascinating look at Origin's product plan as of 1989, just before Wing Commander changed things. It's amazing what could have been (a Star Wars RPG by Richard Garriott!) and also how far in advance they planned for projects like Ultima Underworld.

• Bad Blood: released
• Ultima 6: released
• Dinosaur Valley: became Ultima Savage Empire
• Squadron: became Wing Commander
• Time Travel: became Ultima Martian Dreams (?)
• Super Heroes: didn't happen
• Ultima 5 NES: released
• Ultima Gameboy: became Runes of Virtue
• Ultima 7: released
• Car Wars: didn't happen
• Ultima 6: became Ultima 6 SNES
• Star Wars: didn't happen
• The Underground: became Ultima Underworld
• Ultima adventure game: didn't happen
• Ultima 7 Spinoff: became Serpent Isle
• Ultima 8: happened (two years later)
• Blood & Fog: didn't happen
• Ultima 7 Spinoff: went into development as Arthurian Legends, ultimately cancelled

After we initially

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Here’s why weird eBay listings are so much fun. I took a chance on this “NEC PowerPlayer CD Collection” which claimed to include Mechwarrior 2, Command and Conquer, Descent 2... and Wing Commander IV! I had never heard of this bundle and thought it might be a case of a PC owner storing his game discs in a random booklet. But worth a look for a few bucks. Then I saw the WCIV discs: “not for resale” with a unique EA number! It’s an OEM WC4. By searching for the included games, I discovered that it's a software bundle included with two models of computer in late 1996: the NEC PowerPlayer 2010 and the PowerPlayer 2020!

Here

are some very old stats for the 2020.

As I write about this, the postman delivered two more neat pickups! Here’s a German Wing Commander IV promotional mousepad with a second design I’d never seen before. And here’s the original painting for the Kilrathi “Ram” maneuver card

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

We recently reported on Malcolm McDowell's official website adding Wing Commander autographs to their online store. In case you were curious about the final product, here are the results! LOAF's copy came a few weeks after placing an order, and it's pretty nice! It's an odd choice of art, but that also makes this somewhat unique. You can add one to your collection for $65 plus shipping here.

Ta da! It’s a nice heavy stock paper with a semi-gloss printing. Why did they choose a 1995 Wing Commander III Playstation port ad? Who knows!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Here's one you might never notice: Privateer has four different gameflow backgrounds for the ship dealers! New Constantinople (stripe), Oxford (wood floor), New Detroit (darker wall) and everything else!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Colonel Halcyon’s uniform is a little crazy in the Wing Commander Amiga rolling demo! The final product reduced everything to 16 colors which looked much closer to the EGA version.

The Hornet cockpit slides forward to open instead of hinging up from behind. I can’t explain that change but it didn’t make it to the final version of the port!

Differences

• The preview uses 64-color Extra Half-Brite (EHB) mode while the final version of the game uses the standard 16-color mode.
• Colonel Halcyon's uniform is grey with a green undershirt and a red insignia.
• The pilots running during the scramble are noticeably closer together.
• During the takeoff and landing cutscenes the Hornet cockpit slides forward instead of lifting up. It displays more damage than the game allows during landing.
• The Hornet cockpit is incomplete and does not have any active instrumentation.
• The landing cutscene shows the Hornet landing upside down

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

NinjaLA found a neat interview at

Trekyards

with the Cushman brothers, who created all those awesome Star Trek cutaway posters back in the day. It's an interesting discussion that provides insight into the design process and what goes into creating magnificent pieces of art like this.

These clips are entirely focused on the Star Trek work, but it's also important to note than Michael Cushman was the creator of Wing Commander's own awesome Tiger's Claw cutaway poster tie in to the Wing Commander Movie. It was fully designed but never released, and the

Cushmans helped

bring this long lost gem to fans. It's been a few years since we've mentioned it in the news, but it's absolutely not to be missed, so here it is again:

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Artist rcgdoremi has put together an interesting piece to celebrate the Kilrathi from Wing Commander 3. It's an unusual style, but there's something compelling about it. Each individual Kilrathi comes across as familiar and unique, even though there's a few repeats. The artist has a number of similar works for other sci-fi like Dune or the The Mandalorian which are also pretty neat!

Wing Commander - The Kilrathi Saga: “Cat O’ Nine Tails” (Fan Collage - Digital Art)

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Congressman Dalton Chase has made a public statement regretting his involvement with the Thargoid Advocacy Project.
Chase became a member of Congress after an electoral campaign focusing on inter-species diplomatic relations. He was a key organiser and fundraiser for the Kingfisher megaship, which attempted to open communications with the Taranis entity but was subsequently destroyed with no survivors.
In a press statement delivered from Olympus Village on Mars, Congressman Chase announced:
"The tragic fate that befell the Kingfisher has affected me deeply. I now recognise that sourcing the means for those activists to intercept Taranis was, however well intentioned, a mistake. Such an endeavour should not have been attempted by inexperienced citizens, no matter their courage and tenacity."
"In honour of those brave people, I pledge to focus on proposals to introduce xeno-diplomacy as Federal

Quote from Wing Commander News

Welcome to the Vega Sector! Here's the original

star map

sketch that became a page of Wing Commander's Claw Marks manual. The map was redone for several ports and even included as a poster in the FM Towns release (the blue one). The only problem: it's supposed to be to scale but the distances change in each version! Note that "Hell's Kitchen" becomes "Apocalypse" in the SNES version because Nintendo.

Quote from Star Trek Online News-Bot

We have exciting news! Captains on PC will be able to enjoy a bonus on purchased ZEN! Is there a ship in the C-Store that is tempting you? Now is the perfect opportunity to grab ships, keys, and whatever else has caught your eye. From February 13th at 9am PT to February 17th at 9am PT, Captains will earn an extra bonus on purchased ZEN when you charge through Direct Credit Card, PayPal, Skrill, BoaCompra, Xsolla, Paysafecard, or Steam. *Please note that this Charge Bonus offer is ONLY available for the following payment processors: Direct Credit Card (Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Discover) PayPal Skrill BoaCompra Xsolla Paysafecard Steam .share-footer a { margin: 20px 10px 10px 0; background: url(d7afaaa14e96d0d973f76157ae31ec5b1466398539.png) no-repeat 0 0; opacity: .5; display: inline-block; height: 60px; width: 60px; padding: 0;

Quote from Star Trek Online News-Bot

We have exciting news! Captains on PC will be able to enjoy a bonus on purchased ZEN! Is there a ship in the C-Store that is tempting you? Now is the perfect opportunity to grab ships, keys, and whatever else has caught your eye. From November 22nd at 9am PT to December 2nd at 9am PT, Captains will earn an extra bonus on purchased ZEN when you charge through Direct Credit Card, PayPal, Skrill, BoaCompra, Xsolla, Paysafecard, or Steam. *Please note that this Charge Bonus offer is ONLY available for the following payment processors: Direct Credit Card (Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Discover) PayPal Skrill BoaCompra Xsolla Paysafecard Steam .share-footer a { margin: 20px 10px 10px 0; background: url(d7afaaa14e96d0d973f76157ae31ec5b1466398539.png) no-repeat 0 0; opacity: .5; display: inline-block; height: 60px; width: 60px; padding: 0;