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It may still not be fall yet anywhere, but GOG.com's long-running Autumn Sale is winding down. This is the final weekend. Rather than across-the-board flat savings for every title, there is some variation this time. Most Wing Commander games are still 75% off. Prophecy and Privateer 2 get a 70% discount from the usual $5.99 price, and Academy plus Armada are each reduced by 55%. We talk to fans every day who have gaps in their collection, and this is a perfect opportunity to plug those holes. But if you miss out, I'm sure the Winter Sale won't be far off!

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Sirius Corporation has revealed a long-running project to rescue people who were captured by the Thargoids.
CEO Li Yong-Rui made this statement during a press conference:
"Shortly after the early reports of Thargoid Interceptors collecting inhabited escape pods were received, Sirius has explored several possible countermeasures. Various remote recovery methods had been designed, although only a few prototypes were ever constructed."
"Now that the Thargoids are conducting widespread, systematic abductions of living humans, we believe that this research may prove crucial to saving millions of lives. Sirius Corporation is willing to bypass the commercial potential of our work and share it directly with Aegis. I have personally requested a meeting with Professor Tesreau to provide details and discuss options."
Deputy Prime Minister Angela Corcoran, who oversees the Alliance's contributions to

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Today we have a gorgeous Lego interpretation of Prince Thrakhath's iconic Bloodfang fighter. It was built by edgeofhearing on Instagram. This person makes tons of inspiring and clever little Lego designs, so be sure to check out their gallery. I'm especially impressed with how authentic it looks given the relatively compact size. It even has the right hull markings! You've got to really leverage those bricks to get the right look with limited options!

I only ever played one Wing Commander game, Academy, which didn’t have much to it besides a collection of spaceships. That was enough for me; my brother and I played it a lot (even though we remained very terrible at it).

Anyways, I frequently imagined how cool it would be if I could add my Lego spaceships into it. In this case though, I’ve taken a ship from it (the Kilrathi Bloodfang) and made it out of Lego. My flame yellow collection is a bit too

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Up for a little late night Wing Commander lore? Claw Marks includes the earliest published timeline. The late, great Aaron Allston imagined the major battles of the first two decades of the Kilrathi war. Including the 2639 “Enyo Engagement”:

Claw Marks also establishes that Knight is a veteran of the Enyo Engagement and that it was where he earned his callsign. (I know what you’re thinking; Knight was a combat pilot for 15 years?!?!)

Next, the Wing Commander I & II Ultimate Strategy Guide, which heavily references Claw Marks, says that one of Blair’s Academy instructors was Lt. Col. Blakely, the man who planned the Confederation’s counterattack.

Uh, don’t you mean Prankster and not Blair? Regardless of how you choose to deal with that, Blair being in Blakely’s class is mentioned in one of his yearbook signatures in the Kilrathi Saga manual:

The second iteration of the Wing Commander timeline is published

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Sometimes a little shortie burst of Wing Commander just hits the spot, and today is one of those days! This is a look at the TrainSim in the Super Nintendo version of Wing Commander put together by Retro Shorts.

This might look like the TrainSim you're familiar with from the DOS edition of the game, but there are actually quite a few differences! It's fairly distinct on the PC versus Amiga versus Sega CD, SNES and SWC! You can learn more about these variations in LOAF's article here.

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*Pilots' Federation ALERT*
A pulse wave xeno scanner upgrade that can detect human life signs on Thargoid Titans is now available.
Professor Alba Tesreau, head of Aegis, announced the campaign's successful conclusion:
"The upgraded pulse wave xeno scanner will isolate human life signs aboard the Titan motherships. If Seo Jin-ae is correct that some of our missing populations are being stored by the Thargoids, this could be the most important technological breakthrough in the war. I'm deeply grateful to all those who helped make it a reality."
"Aegis is already trialling potential methods to rescue abductees, providing they can be located. I have also accepted Li Yong-Rui's invitation to discuss the recovery methods already explored by Sirius Corporation, following majority approval from our superpower delegates."
Former Federal admiral and current Aegis military strategist Aden Tanner

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I did this quick for a Discord discussion and thought it was pretty interesting: the difference in resolution between a Wing Commander III cutscene (320x160!) and a 4K movie. (AKA why they couldn't just reuse the game costumes, props, fx, etc for the movie...)

You can find a complete index of downloadable source videos (again, in the original 320x160 format!) here. On the opposite end of the spectrum, ODVS has used his advanced AI editing techniques to enhance and upscale the footage to HD quality here.

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Here's a fun review of the Mega CD port of Wing Commander. It's noteworthy for having fully (Japanese) speech similar to its (English) Sega CD counterpart. This piece was originally posted to Twitter by Baller Speeder and ZealousFoX, and I've formatted it into one block of text. I like to encourage people to appreciate Wing Commander across all platforms and media types, so I wanted to acknowledge this here!

Game review: Wing Commander (Sega Mega CD / 1994 Sega/Electronic Arts/Origin Systems/CRI/Game Arts/Bits Laboratory)

Yes, five companies worked on the Mega CD port of a Chris Roberts space flight sim classic. Oh well, the important bit is, this gave me the most fun.

Published by Sega themselves in Japan and ported by Game Arts in collaboration with CSK Research Institute (the guys behind the Mega CD port of Might and Magic 3) and Bits Laboratory (the Mega CD Prince of Persia guys), the player sees

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Prompted by a handful of questions at the CIC Forums, AllTinker has provided some updates that detail his ideas and plans for the Confederation project. It's some nice insight into what's in store to expand the capabilities of the original WC1 engine. Here's what he had to say:

I've been working on it on-and-off since 2016 or thereabouts, but posting about it (or more the community response) has been a big motivation boost.

I plan to implement [enhancements] gradually in layers, but yes - ultimately some kind of dynamic/strategic campaign system is exactly the sort of thing I'd like to implement. The current plan is that the first layers of that will actually be released prior to the WC1 campaign being fully playable; i.e. simple preset or dynamic scenarios to test things out.

Having the WC1 campaign fully playable is the primary goal until it's achieved, but the way we'll get there will be a little

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Today we've got an old recording of Mark Hamill being interviewed on the Craig Kilborn talk show to promote Wing Commander Prophecy. Wing Commander was a rare crossover hit in the mid '90s with promotion on television shows like this. The interviewers would typically not have any experience with the material, which contributes to how out of touch they seem. The humor is super cringe and Kilborn is obnoxious, but it's an interesting look at the time. I do appreciate that it would be lost if not for people like jahwilly transcribing their old VHS tapes!

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The Federal Times has published evidence that trillionaire and presidential candidate Zachary Rackham was once the pirate lord 'Calico Zack'.
The newsfeed featured a detailed exposé by financial journalist Bryanna Blanco:
"The Wallglass Investigations Agency has confirmed my long-held suspicions about Zachary Rackham's past. With the timely assistance of independent pilots, we have unearthed a message archive concealed in the Zeta Trianguli Australis system."
"This was created as insurance by a pirate named Angelo Defries. Wallglass's analysis revealed that Defries learned of Zachary Rackham's alter-ego over sixteen years ago, and threatened to transmit evidence to several newsfeeds – including, ironically, us here at The Federal Times."
"While Defries seems to have disappeared around 3992 with his evidence withheld, conversations from that period were traced to the Wishbone Point facility.

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Today we have several new pages from EmuMusicFan's slick retelling of the Hobbes interrogation scene in Freedom Flight. Now that Prince Thrakhath has ended the imminent threat, Lord Ralgha nar Hhallas turns his attention to dealing with Jahkai!

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You've probably heard of the famous 'thank you for playing Wing Commander' story. It claims that a programmer on the original Wing Commander was stuck getting an error message when the game unloaded its memory during a quit. Pressed for time, instead of fixing the issue he simply hex edited the memory manager's error reporting to print 'thank you for playing Wing Commander' instead. A funny and relatable story! The anecdote has made the rounds on the internet for the past decade and has even started to make the phrase "thank you for playing Wing Commander" synonymous with a dirty-but-functional hack. The most common version looks like this, sourced from Reddit's /r/shittyprogramming:

Engineers immediately recognize this as a funny and relatable story; it's the exact sort of thing that anyone who has ever worked in software development can recognize immediately. A perfect example of the old aphorism

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Today we've got another shortie from Retro Shorts. The Playstation version of Wing Commander 4 is noticeably less crisp in spaceflight than the PC edition, but there are some nice input (joystick) improvements and enhancements to the cutscenes. Also regarding the date, the original Playstation was released in North America in late 1995. It was the WC3 port that was released in 1996, and WC4 made it to the system in 1997.

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Here's a new technical update on the Confederation project by AllTinker. He was aiming to deliver a release in time for Wing Commander's birthday on September 26, but that's looking pretty sporty now. Wing Commander fans are nothing if not patient, so we're just happy to get the status update on all the latest progress!

Just thought I'd post a quick progress update, mostly probably-dull semi-technical stuff - sadly some contract work is kicking my butt at the moment, so the 26th is looking kind of dubious... But things are still progressing steadily!

I'm currently knee-deep in the revised audio system, which (amongst other things) I'm hoping will be able to render the OPL2 (Adlib) sound effects and music purely from the original data. Things seem positive, but I'm not finished with it yet. My previous effort involved using some external data to send to the OPL chip emulation code, but it was a little

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Zachary Rackham has officially ended his election campaign, following the discovery of evidence that supported claims of his criminal past.
Federal Times journalist Bryanna Blanco published the results of an investigation by the Wallglass Investigations Agency, which included a message archive found on Zeta Trianguli Australis A 7 a. These findings strongly support a long-standing rumour that the trillionaire operated as notorious pirate lord 'Calico Zack', prior to inheriting his family's wealth.
PR consultant Anya Blackriver delivered a statement, in her role as campaign manager:
"Mr Rackham has decided that these attempts at defamation are a regrettable distraction from his election campaign. His amused tolerance of the nickname 'Calico Zack' – a nickname assigned to him by the media, I should point out – is not an admission of any true link to that despicable outlaw. Rather than allow

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AD found this one on a new YouTube channel, 3DO World. It's a trailer for the 3DO version of Wing Commander from an in-store video sampler tape. Like the full version of WC3 on this console, the video quality depicted here is pretty good with minimal artifacting and solid colors. The trailer is fairly short overall, and you only get a quick shot of the gameplay at the end. Although the engine might look low res like the Playstation port, a handful of missions and features have been jazzed up in a very compelling way. It's definitely worth giving this one a try if you get an opportunity! You can find our collection of different WC3 trailers in CIC Holovids!

This is a trailer of the 3DO game, Wing Commander 3. This appeared on a VHS tape titled "3DO Video Sampler 5" that was distrusted with retailers circa 1996 in the US.

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Wonderful! This is for Wing Commander III PSX which was localized for Japan.

This was posted by Japanese Magazine Ads and comes from the October 1996 issue of Jugemu magazine. You can find more advertising and promotional material in the CIC Document Archive.

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It's autumn now where GOG is based, but they've already run their lengthy autumn sale. That's not a problem though, because they've just launched a big sale to celebrate their 15th anniversary! The Wing Commander series is discounted once again, and this is a "proper" across-the-board markdown. Each title is its customary 75% off, which means less than $12 for the whole series! Now's a great time to digitize your collection. Thank you to Drachenhannes for the tip!

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

With human life-signs now confirmed beneath the hulls of the Thargoid Titans, the urgency to mount a rescue mission has intensified.
Many pilots equipped with the updated pulse wave xeno scanner detected signals that match living humans on every Titan mothership. As a result, Aegis has prioritised finding a way to recover the abducted. A potential solution has emerged, reportedly via a low-ranking engineer within Sirius Corporation.
Director Ivano Colombera, the Empire's scientific liaison to Aegis, explained:
"Li Yong-Rui has shared Sirius Corporation's projects to counter Thargoid abductions, and this has accelerated our work. Among their research was a blueprint that repurposes sub-surface displacement missiles – a commonly used mining tool – to breach Thargoid vessels and expose captured escape pods."
"These missiles were originally designed to extract mineral deposits from within