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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).
Jul
…Here's a double shot of retro for your 'spective! These come from the Rowan J Coleman channel on YouTube, which has more than 120,000 subscribers, so we're happy to see such a wide audience get a peek at the highlights of the WC series. The author notes that he was born after these games was released, so it can be hard to fully appreciate everything from that frame of reference. Nevertheless, he's become quite a fan. Although we're quite familiar with everything shown here, watching these always makes me want to jump back in. There is a little bit of salty language peppered throughout, so steer clear Wedge!
Here's a look at one of the few FMV games which wasn't sh*t, Wing Commander III Heart of the Tiger.Returning to the Wing Commander series now. While I appreciated Wing Commander III Heart of the Tiger a lot, I had heard Wing Commander IV The Price of Freedom was even better. Spoiler alert: it
Jul
…Vox Galactica journalist Jade Sanderlyn reports on the latest news emerging from the front lines of the conflict.
"Events in the war continue to move quickly, sometimes outpacing the 'speed of news'. In my last update, I mentioned that the Thargoids had occupied over a thousand systems. But by the time that was published, the number had reduced considerably. According to my sources, anti-xeno squadrons and independent pilots are reclaiming systems at a higher rate than Thargoids can conquer them."
"This incredible achievement suggests we are finally gaining the advantage in this war. The hopelessness that many have felt over the last nine months is now tempered with optimism. Our naval forces are proving that the alien fleet is not undefeatable."
"My sources also passed on some unsettling stories from pilots working beyond the frontline systems. A few of them seem to think that the Thargoids'
Jul
…*Pilots' Federation ALERT*
The missing megaship Dedicant is close to being located after fragments of its distress call were tracked down.
The scrambled messages were discovered on comms beacons in the LP 714-58, Wuniez, Olurung and Kwakimo systems. Combined decryption efforts eventually led to another beacon in the HIP 19912 system, where the Dedicant's original transmission was revealed:
FEDERAL ESCORT TEAM ALPHA
ASSIGNED TO ORDER OF THE FAR GOD MEGASHIP 'DEDICANT'
PRISONER TRANSFER MISSION HAS FAILED
SIGNIFICANT NON-LETHAL DEFENSIVE MEASURES ENCOUNTERED
MAJORITY OF ORDER OF THE FAR GOD PRISONERS ESCAPED
PRISONERS INITIATED DEDICANT HYPERDRIVE
ESCORT TEAMS ALPHA, BRAVO, CHARLIE AND CULTISTS REMAIN ON BOARD
'DEDICANT' CURRENT LOCATION UNKNOWN
ADVISE TRACING METADATA COORDINATES TO THIS MESSAGE
REQUEST IMMEDIATE FEDERAL NAVY ASSISTANCE
Vice Admiral Amir Rafiq of the Imperial Navy provided an
Jul
Marco Alfaroli recently shared his gorgeous sketch of the CF-117b Rapier. The artist saw the lack of Rapier I artwork out there as gap in the internet that he needed to fill. He describes the design as "ugly but essential," but I think the drawing is beautiful! You can find more of his work here.
Jul
The fun just keeps on going with the latest installment of LOAF's close read of the Wing Commander Confederation Handbook. Watch the latest installment to learn all about the details behind each page. You can also engage interactively in Discord #Wingnut!
Mark your calendars, part three of the Confederation Handbook stream is tomorrow at 7 PM Eastern on my YouTube channel! I even Freeformed up a clickbait graphic for it.
Jul
…Michael Pretli has posted some of his old models online, and that includes this really gorgeous TCS Midway. It's not textured, but it does a good job of conveying the ship's massive scale. A few things, such as the turret emplacements, have even been upgraded over the original. You can find his site and a few more up-close shots at his webpage here!
This is one of my earlier models (from the year 2010). Since I always and only modeled for games and mods, low poly modeling is all I ever did, always having performance and engine limitations in mind when creating something, it's automatically guiding my hand. I made this model in my old "truespace 5" software, which was very limited by today's standard, in 2017 I switched over to Blender. But 2010 I was very proud of it, and I think it would be a shame of just getting forgotten in the depths of my modeldumps, so I hereby add it to my portfolio. It's a
Jul
…It looks like a certain movie has people talking about a certain war-ending bomb. It just so happens that I took a wonderful senior seminar on the bomb decision and would be happy to walk everyone through the details of what really happened.
Step back in time with me to the '50s. Faced with a seemingly endless standoff, both sides began investing heavily in scientific 'wonder weapons' intended to rapidly upset the status quo of the war.
Black budgets would increasingly fund a rogues' gallery of amoral projects: Project Behemoth, the 'planet-killer' Hopper Drive, the biological warfare laboratory on Greenhouse, the Genetic Enhancement program and others.
In 2659, the task of developing a classified large-scale demolitions laboratory was assigned to Col. James Taggart, a rising star in Special Operations fresh off coordinating the Kilrathi-led rebellion on Ghorah Khar. The effort will cost billions of
Jul
How would you like some French retrospectives on the early Wing Commander games? Well, we're all gearing up to watch the surprise drop of tonight's Strange New Worlds episode (join us on Discord to talk about it!), so this is what today's news post will be. These are actually really good overviews though. They talk about the games at length, of course, but they also hop around and share what some of the magazines were saying, what the documentation was like and give you a more complete time capsule look. It looks like YouTube will do auto-translated captions as well, so anyone can enjoy. Thanks to Greg14 for sharing. Have fun!
Jul
The guy organizing the Origin Museum sale has some great original artwork listed on eBay right now! The auction is for two wonderful Wing Commander II demo paintings! Too rich for my blood but these were among the coolest items in Joe’s collection. It would be great to see them go to a good home. You can find the listing here.
The WC2 demo is essentially a non-playable prototype of the WC2 intro. You can see that it differs a bit from the throne room depicted in the final game in the video below:
Jul
GOG is holding a new "Make Classics Last Forever" sale, and Wing Commander is included. This one is slightly unusual. All of the main games plus both Privateer 1 and 2 are marked down as you might expect. Armada and Academy are oddly absent, however. Still, it's a wonderful chance to add the majority of the series to your collection, and it's a good bet that the missing pair of spinoffs will make their way into a different sale soon! Each discounted title is $1.49 for 75% off. Thanks to LividLiquid for the tip!
Jul
Kotaku recently reported on a massive leak of Sega documents from the 1990s. One interesting bit for me: Sega's release calendar lists a Saturn port of Wing Commander IV for October '96. I don't believe that was ever announced (or otherwise leaked).
A Saturn port of Wing Commander III, not mentioned here, WAS announced and was supposedly shown in some capacity at the first E3 in 1995. Little else is known!
The leaked documents also have Sega's internal estimated release dates for the Playstation ports of WC3 and 4. They're just a month off for 3 (February vs. March '96) but way off for 4 (September '96 vs May '97). It's unlikely that a Saturn port could've shipped in October '96!
You can download the document leak directly from Sega Retro here (61 meg PDF).
Jul
…*Pilots' Federation ALERT*
Rare goods delivered to Xi Wangda helped ensure that Azimuth Biotech's arms convention was a success.
CEO Torben Rademaker confirmed the initiative's completion:
"From today, the Overcharged Gimballed AX Multi-Cannon with Auto Loader is available at all rescue megaships, as well as Azimuth Biotech's core markets. I am confident that this will prove useful those brave pilots who enter combat with Thargoid ships. Once again, my company has proved that its ingenuity and experience in developing anti-xeno weaponry cannot be surpassed."
"I would like to offer my heartfelt thanks to all of the corporate, financial and military representatives who attended the convention. Many fascinating proposals were discussed, most of which must remain commercially confidential for now. Suffice to say, the future for Azimuth Biotech and our partners looks bright."
"Finally, the event
Jul
…*Pilots' Federation ALERT*
Traces of a distress call from the Dedicant megaship have been detected in the LP 714-58 system.
Vice Admiral Amir Rafiq, a spokesperson for the Imperial Navy, broadcast an announcement on all public channels:
"An Imperial scout ship travelling through LP 714-58 has intercepted several fragmentary signals. Their identifying markers confirmed that they originated from the Dedicant. We believe there has been an encryption error in the system's communication beacons, which prevented the distress call from being rerouted to its intended destination in the Federation."
"Officially, the Imperial Navy no longer performs joint operations with our Federal counterparts. Nor do we involve ourselves in the activities of the illegal Far God cult. Nevertheless, we are sharing this information as a humanitarian gesture. Our hope is that this may aid a rescue mission for those
Jul
If you were hooked by LOAF's deep analysis of the Confederation Handbook over the weekend and can't wait for more, the time is now! Part two of the stream is live! Check it out below:
In 1999, HarperEntertainment published the Wing Commander Confederation Handbook. Was it the greatest book ever written in the history of the world? Yes. Let's talk about it! AGAIN.
Jul
…Today we've got a triple-pack of hardcore reviews from Hardcore Gaming 101. We reported on their WC1, WC2 and Strike Commander retrospectives back in the day, but we missed how these three prime spinoffs to the Wing Commander series also go their own proper articles.
First up is Academy. Taken in a modern context, some players may not understand how a mission builder could be its own fully boxed (and nearly full priced) standalone game, but that fails to capture the situation at the time. Fans were clamoring for the ability to do this. Fan mods were years away from being a thing, and Academy made it easy to craft your own WC games with zero learning curve. Plus, it packed in new ships as well as a really fun (and challenging) gauntlet mode.
Armada also gets a lot of credit for doing something different in such a way as to expand the Wing Commander tapestry. There is a some discussion on how the
Jul
…The three candidates in the Federal presidential election have taken part in a second live debate to discuss policies.
The event was more closely moderated than the first debate in June. The candidates discussed their campaigns in detail, with minimal interruption from their rivals.
Republican Party candidate Jerome Archer is the current vice president and a former director of the Federal Intelligence Agency. He explained his intentions to tighten security and increase military spending:
"Shielding citizens from external threats, whether human or alien, is always my top priority. Ms Winters lacks any significant achievements in her political career, if we're honest. Whereas I can refer to many successes – such as the Proactive Detection Bureau – which prove I am a man of my word."
Shadow President Felicia Winters, leader of the Liberal Party, was previously the secretary of state in Jasmina
Jul
It's been several years since our All Wings Considered live Wing Commander show has been in production, but LOAF is trying to get his space legs under him again. He's messing around on YouTube this evening in a totally unstructured stream about the WC Movie's Confederation Handbook. Check it out below!
In 1999, HarperEntertainment published the Wing Commander Confederation Handbook. Was it the greatest book ever written in the history of the world? Yes. Let's talk about it!
Jul
We're quickly cruising through the year here, so it's time for us to officially announce the next CIC Birthday Party! It's a big one this time as it will commemorate 25 years at wcnews.com! Mark your calendars for Saturday, August 19. The official event kicks off at 7:00 pm EDT (4:00 pm PDT and 11:00 pm GMT) on that night, but there will be plenty of people hanging out well before and after. You can join the fun in Discord #Wingnut. Feel free to stop by any time beforehand to get acquainted with how everything works. We'll see you there!
Jul
…Here at the CIC, we used to keep pretty close tabs on Ultima Online. As a product that was developed alongside contemporaries such as Wing Commander Prophecy at the famous Austin studio, it was a big deal to see EA continue the MMO long after Origin's closure. When Electronic Arts finally did decide that they were done with it in 2014, that could have very easily been the end, but the game has somehow continued to thrive for another decade under Broadsword. So I was really happy to see this recent PC Gamer blurb about high turnout for the game's summer barbecue event. The game has been continuously running for more than 25 years now, so the fact that it exists at all is impressive - but all the more so that they're still having fun events in their tight knit community! You can skim through a few recorded streams below to see what the game's like in 2023:
Ultima Online still boasts an active
