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Today we've got a pair of fabulous 3D printed bombers to show off. They're the latest creations by Adm_Maverick. These are some of the biggest pilotable craft out there, and at nearly a foot long, they've been built to an appropriately hefty scale. This allows for some of the detailed elements like turrets to really stand out. Mav has some quirks that they'd ideally like to correct, but I think the results are already pretty fantastic. Bravo!

Printed up, and assembled the parts for a Longbow heavy bomber. There is something I really like about of the Longbow. Sadly the printing process was somewhat uneven resulting in some warping and deformations. I’m not entirely sure what I’ll do about it. I could make new parts, reprint the original parts with different settings, or maybe create new files to be printed. On a side note, I need to do some number crunching but I think this might actually be

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Two new starports have been added to Marlinist systems, following a successful delivery initiative last month.
The use of pre-built infrastructures and mass-produced components has allowed the orbital stations to be assembled rapidly. The starport names and locations are Fairfax Legacy in the Hyades Sector SU-C a14-1 system, and Ackwada Monument in the Hyades Sector LX-T c3-30 system.
The Marlinist Parliament welcomed the new starports, stating that they "will lay strong foundations for increased commerce with the interstellar community".
As a result of a recent diplomatic arrangement, two million Marlinist refugees have been offered transport from the Alliance to the colony systems. They are being processed and granted citizenship at the new starports.
A campaign to rename the two existing starports, Stillman Hub and Tilman Point, was discouraged by Sirius Corporation. These stations were

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

*Pilots' Federation ALERT*
Deliveries to the Reorte Mining Coalition or the Reorte Pro-Alliance League will help determine the system's status.
The system's controlling faction wishes to declare independence, in protest against Sirius Corporation's proposed anti-xeno defence pact with the Alliance Defence Force.
The Reorte Mining Coalition's CEO Fergus Cassidy announced:
"Prime Minister Mahon's insistence on working with Sirius leads us to believe our interests are best served outside of the Alliance. To prepare for Reorte's potential transition to an independent system, we ask for shipments of advanced medicines, skimmer components and building fabricators to be delivered to Davies High starport."
It is expected that if Reorte Mining Coalition is successful, all systems currently under its governance would similarly be classified as independent.
Another faction in the system, the Reorte

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Surprise! Most diehard Wingnuts know the movie takes place from March 15 to 17, but the novelization has an epilogue that happens the next day. It's a dark scene that takes place on Mylon III. This sets the stage for the events that unfold in Wing Commander Pilgrim Stars and are concluded in Pilgrim Truth. There's some wild stuff in those novels!

Day 4 - 1900 Mylon Time - BREAKING NEWS: The supercruiser TCS Olympus has fired on Confederation forces in the Mylon System?! MORE

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

The Reorte Mining Coalition wants to cut ties with the Alliance in protest against the military defence pact with Sirius Corporation.
Vox Galactica featured an announcement from the faction's CEO, Fergus Cassidy:
"The pact's three-month probationary period is clearly a ruse. It is designed to allow time for Sirius agents to bribe, convince or threaten Allied decision-makers into accepting Li Yong-Rui's presence. We'd rather become an independent faction than allow this greedy and untrustworthy company into Reorte space."
Councillor Ainsley Niven, who represents Reorte, told the Assembly:
"Obviously I have argued against this extreme move, but I cannot ignore the strength of feeling from the system's governing faction. For Reorte Mining Coalition leaders, leaving the Alliance is less risky than allowing Sirius Corporation to become embedded in the system's infrastructure."
Vanya Driscoll,

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We recently talked about the Prophecy Demo and how it adds several additional missions to the game's official plot. Today I wanted to briefly plug Prophecy's training simulator and the ten missions included there. Over the years we've heard from a number of folks who just never did any of the bar simulators after exploding in the Tiger's Claw original TrainSim. Some people see these missions as just a remedial tutorial for new players, but there are also some interesting gauntlets with their own high score boards. They can even include little bits of lore. Most WC games don't have the luxury of shipboard simulators, so when you're playing through one that does (Wing Commander 3 is another good example), don't pass them up! Here's a video of Ben Horne playing level 7, a rousing carrier defense.

Level 7: Carrier Defense

Author: Colonel Jacob 'Hawk' Manly (typo!)

Overview: Protect the Midway against a

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

*Pilots Federation ALERT*
Sirius Corporation has received more data than Utopia and will therefore host the Galactic Summit.
Both organisations proposed to organise a diplomatic conference for the Alliance, Empire and Federation. After calling on the galactic community to gather data that would support security operations, many pilots handed in anomalous bulk scan data, atypical disrupted wake echoes, exceptional scrambled emission data and unusual encrypted files.
All three superpower governments confirmed that due to its success in preparing effective security systems, they will accept Sirius Corporation as the neutral territory for the conference.
CEO Li Yong-Rui made this announcement:
"Thank you to all the independent pilots who supported us. Sirius will now begin work preparing for the first Galactic Summit, which we hope will increase peace and prosperity across the galaxy."
Pilots who

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

We are BACK! The latest episode of ALL WINGS CONSIDERED is live now! All Wings Considered is the CIC's first ever streaming variety show which features news, conversation and gameplay relating to our favorite series. This week's Nav Points include:

• Wing Commander III - Loki System - 3DO Version
• Righteous Fire - Sandra Goodin
• A Never-Before-Seen Italian Wing Commander book!

Missed the stream? The replay will be available below once it has been processed by YouTube. You can subscribe to the AWC channel for future notifications here.

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The somewhat amorphous length of a generation is, give or take, about twenty-five years. This means that as of today, the Wing Commander movie is a generation old… and, it follows, so are those of us that once eagerly anticipated its coming. I've written extensively about whether or not it was good (it was not) and what it means to me (I love it dearly) and I don't need to relitigate any of that today. In fact, the war movie cliches about old soldiers are more accurate than ever: the guns have stopped, we're the old men, all quiet on the western front and alike. The bickerings and debates and once-so-important battles of our youth have passed us by as gracefully as such things ever do. No one in 2024 could conceive, for instance, of caring about the Tiger Claw's missing possessive or what the Ralari /really/ looks like or even particularly to complain about Freddie Prinze Jr.'s casting.

If anything,

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You asked for more options to hack into Prophecy, Secret Ops and Privateer 2 - and AllTinker has delivered! The latest update to Originator add support for extraction of the more complex models in the later Wing Commander games. There's also better support for alternate disc formats such as the 3DO, recognition of P2's xmidi music format and much more. You can grab the latest version of the tool here!

Version 0.3.00 is a fairly broad update.

Support has been added for Prophecy/Secret Ops and Privateer 2 models. The former took longer than I thought - I forgot many models included polygonal faces, which required triangulation - the details of which are quite complicated and probably not that interesting.

Prophecy models are quite modular; eventually I may add a specific Ship Viewer, which combines the various models for viewing - also handling things like the WC3/4 hangars. A task for another day!

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LOAF has been doing some intense research of peculiar quirks and rare occurrences built into Wing Commander 4. He's discovering that there are a number of exotic things you can trigger by taking very specific actions. For example, if you fly the mission in the Speradon System to capture the carrier, you get Mace Missiles. Then, if you let Catscratch die, Pliers will offer you an upgraded Avenger. Upon acceptance, you'll get the bomber with a fifth torpedo slot, which you can equip with five Maces! What an amazing thing to be so buried in the game!

My newfound Wing Commander IV gameflow knowledge has allowed me to make a very big boom.

If you play your cards right (capture the carrier, kill Catscratch, accept the upgrade) then you can make a really, really big explosion in Speradon L4B.

The first time I tried this the blast damage hit the Intrepid's escorts and I was immediately flagged as a traitor.

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Binary Legends has posted an awesome 16-minute video featuring the intro and first mission from Wing Commander 2 - in EGA graphics mode! We've posted various screenshots before and LOAF has done some wonderful comparisons between EGA and other iterations of the games over the years, but I don't think we've ever shown off a raw clip like this. If you haven't seen it in motion, it's something to behold. There's an interesting contrast between the EGA visuals and digitized speech with beautiful music behind it. The game may not look quite like the WC2 that you remember, but it gives big vintage '80s Tandy/Sierra game vibes, which is pretty awesome!

Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi (EGA - Intro and First Mission). Running in EGA 16 color mode with Roland MT-32 for the music and Sound Blaster for the digitized sounds.

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Aligned Peoples’ Moray-class fighter, from the initial painting by Syd Mead to concept sketch with feedback from art director Mark Vearrier to Alias “cinematic” model to in-game asset!

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I've been waiting for this day: AD has discovered the first ever bootleg Wing Commander LEGO set on AliExpress!

Here's the original source - a fantastic design by Paul Magurean.

The F-107 Lance was developed in the immediate aftermath of the Terran-Kilrathi War by the Black Lance, an elite special forces organization created by Admiral Geoffrey Tolwyn. It was designed as an all-purpose heavy fighter to be used exclusively by the Black Lance for its intended use in defending humanity in future conflicts. It was funded by the Black Lance's many elusive backers and like all Black Lance projects, was designed and tested in the utmost secrecy. Ultimately though, the Dragon was an illegally-produced spacecraft that had been fielded without the approval of the legitimate Confederation authorities.

The Dragon was a heavily-armed fighter with some of the most advanced equipment to emerge in the 2670s. It was

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Accelerwraith tipped us off about a wonderful little easter egg segment in the animated show Invincible on Prime Video. He captured the clip below where a bunch of purple people in helmets and suits run down a red corridor. The way it frames both their heads and their feet seems to confirm it's an intentional nod to the classic Wing Commander dash from the briefing room to the flight deck. Here they are side by side so you can appreciate the similarity!

.@banditloaf Someone(s) on the @InvincibleHQ team played Wing Commander. pic.twitter.com/XOFfh3bogZ

— 山ㄩㄥ千 (@Accelerwraith) November 10, 2023

Did you know there are actually several different running sequences in the original Wing Commander? You can get different combinations of crew wearing a flight helmet, cap, long hair and short hair. Pretty neat!

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Today we have a truly incredible find! VGDensetsu shared this piece of art by Greg Winters. It's the source sketch for what eventually became the phenomenal box art for Wing Commander: The Secret Missions on the Super Nintendo. We absolutely love finding stuff like this under any circumstances, but there are some extra quirky elements here. One, it reveals that the first cut of the drawing depicts a more typical brown Salthi. In the final piece, the ship is tinted green, which is an excellent nod to the fact that the SNES version of the game replaces its Jalthi art with a green Salthi model. That's such a cool info bit. And two, this sketch is on the opposite side of a piece of paper with the SNES Wizard of Oz game. Wild! The original piece is up for auction throughout this month.

Greg Winters The Wizard of Oz & Wing Commander: The Secret Missions SNES Original Preliminary Box Art (Seta,

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centaurianmudpig is back with a new space sim game to show his fellow Wingnuts. He previously released Absolute Territory, which was a more traditional WC-style shooter. Now he's branched out into a hybrid sim that blends newtonian physics and large capital ships with a variety of familiar concepts to WC fans. It sounds like a cool experience for people who would like to try something different just a little bit different! There is a demo you can try out via Steam and a preview video below.

Hey wingnuts, it's been a while since I last posted about my last big update for Absolute Territory, with space fighters and hostile aliens, on here.

Since then I started working on my next game, in keeping with sci-fi space combat, with large warships (corvette sized and bigger). I've been running a public playtest for A-Spec First Assault on Steam for the last year, and now preparing for Steam Next Fest: June

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Another wonderful Origin ad layout from 1993! What are the odds? I wonder if there's anything interesting in here...

Academy's stunning key art is by Chris Douglas (again!) and Jake Rodgers, another one of Origin's talented early 3D artists. It has two Return of the Jedi explosions, too! The oddest part is the ships which... aren't in the game at all, no "Dralthi MK VII" in Academy.

These ads started running late summer 1993 and continued through the end of the year. There was a pretty significant running change towards the end of the campaign that's worth comparing to the scan above:

The first one: "holodeck console" becomes "holographic simulator". I've worked in game marketing long enough to know EXACTLY how that conversation with legal went.

The other one is that "The Wave" becomes "The Gauntlet"... that's clearly a development change and it is a much better name!

The screenshots are fascinating.

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Today we have a gorgeous Wing Commander 3 spread posted by the Spanish magazine PCMania in 1994. It features a lot of familiar prerelease art, plus gorgeous renders of the Thunderbolt, Longbow and Arrow. Gunnery and flight control are looking good too. The game flow backdrops in WC3 are some of my favorite in the series. At the conclusion of the six page article, the reviewer gives the game a 92% score. Thanks to Maxi de Sokar for the find!

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I bought a joystick! Normally if it ain’t Thrustmaster I ain’t going, but I think they’ll forgive me for straying in this case... Look at the insane choice of screenshots! One is a clip of the box of a different game! Wild!