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Super cool! Anatoly Shashkin recently posted this awesome September 1994 recruitment ad for Origin Systems. The background is the gunnery control virtual set built for Wing Commander by Mark Vearrier (who went on to art direct Prophecy!).
Want to watch it come together? Sketches and the initial wireframe:
Taking shape:
… and finally!
Dec
Here's a great little time capsule from the fantastic X-Wing Game Series account. It shows a snapshot of the best selling PC games in early 1994. Due to print lead times, this would basically have depicted the holiday 1993 sales. Wing Commander Privateer and Academy are both included as they launched within a month of each other in September and August respectively. X-Wing and its Imperial Pursuit expansion are also up there. Plus, there's MS Flight Sim 5, the original Sim City, 7th Guest and more. What a time to be alive!
X-Wing, Imperial Pursuit together with Privateer and Wing Commander Academy (plus MS Flight Simulator 5.0) in the Top 10 best-selling PC games from February 1994 issue of the Electronic Entertainment mag.Great times for flight games!
Dec
…Professor Palin's biological impurity has proved effective against the Thargoid spire sites, and is capable of halting their functionality.
Independent war reporter Gus LaChappelle published an on-the-scene report of the site in the Hyades Sector ST-Q B5-5 system for his ICE-cast channel Muzzle Flash:
"The eerie stillness surrounding me now is even more unnerving than when I visited this horror factory before. Bioluminescent nodules no longer pulse their sickly glow. Spires blot out the stars above, twisted towers made from solid night. Mega barnacles have ceased producing their foul byproducts. I'm walking through an alien cemetery."
"The soldiers escorting me constantly perform pirouettes with their weapons, trigger-twitchy. But there are no black-hulled monstrosities spitting fire from the shadows or wheeling across the sky. Only rotted mineral sacs drooping from mechanical vines, and
Dec
…*Pilots' Federation ALERT*
Councillor Nakato Kaine has announced that a delivery campaign in the Tionisla system has not reached its target.
Addressing the Alliance Assembly, she said:
"The purpose of this campaign was to demonstrate the core principles of the Alliance: independence, self-sufficiency and mutual support. While we received millions of units, our target quota was not filled. I believe there are important lessons to be learned here. We must not lose faith in the Alliance's ability to remain self-sustaining in military infrastructure."
The strategic defence pact between the Alliance and Sirius Corporation is being subjected to an independent inquiry. A vocal minority of councillors in the Assembly are critical of their corporate partner's inability to deliver anti-xeno ships or activities.
Sirius Corporation CEO Li Yong Rui offered this comment to reporters:
"Sirius Corporation's
Dec
…We have an exciting new project to share today! AllTinker, the talented programmer and artist currently working on the Confederation project, has also been working on an intriguing tool that he's dubbed 'Originator'. The program seeks to dig into the guts of a wide range of Wing Commander and Origin games and extract art assets, sound files and videos. A program like this would make many of the CIC's internal projects much easier. It's also very valuable to modders, artists or just fans who are curious about what makes up the games. There's still a lot of debugging going on, but AllTinker has big plans for future enhancements to add in later. If you'd like to try out the first release and read more about the app, visit the CIC Forums!
Hey all, here's an offshoot project I've been working on for the past few months, which has turned into its own monster... It's still very early days, but perhaps
Dec
This week I learned that there was a fully localized South Korean release of Wing Commander 3! Which means you’re all going to have the option to play WC3 in Korean soon. French, German and Japanese are well documented but this one stayed hidden until now. Here's a quick sample!
Dec
…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
Dec
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!
Dec
…Simguru Pranav Antal has discussed Utopia's analysis of the designs for a Guardian-based device allegedly constructed by Salvation.
The schematics for the Nemesis Failsafe were unearthed by Seo Jin-ae, who believed that Salvation had developed a way to digitise and relocate his mind upon physical death. Following concerns that Utopia was involved, Aegis shared these designs with the commune to confirm that there was no connection with their Sim-Archive technology.
Pranav Antal recently sent a message to Aegis, which has been made public with Utopia's permission:
"After studying the designs intensively, our neurosmiths have gained some insights into the Nemesis Failsafe. Salvation's unique knowledge of Guardian energy particles and their applications exceeds even our understanding. But we have formulated a theory about what happened when the 'Nemesis protocol' was activated aboard the Bright
Dec
Found a pretty neat Wing Commander IV preview from the November 1995 issue of PC Power. Lots of cool set photos and a great one of Mark Hamill as Colonel Blair...
... but even more fascinating, look at that gameplay shot on the last page! That's the earliest build of Wing Commander IV I've ever seen. What's going on with the radar?!
Apparently the September 1995 issue (21) has a Privateer 2 preview which I'd love to see! Anyone out there have back issues of PC Power? I believe it's from the UK.
Dec
…Dave's garage has hosted an interview with Raymond Chen, one of the developers of Windows 95. He has a fun anecdote about Microsoft's mission to minimize compatibility issues with the operating system. When testing Wing Commander 3, they detected an error that would occur when pressing Control+C to cloak at the end of the game. The conflicting behavior highlighted some broken logic around accepting keystrokes, which spurred them to change how Copy/Paste was interpreted behind the scenes. It's a cool story! I'm not sure who managed to stumble across this scenario: WC3 DOS didn't really run in Windows - it was a classic "Reboot in MS-DOS Mode" game, but this could have come in handy by the time The Kilrathi Saga came around!
Microsoft developers once drove a truck to Egghead in order to buy ONE of EVERYTHING! Dave interviews Raymond Chen, Win95 developer, about the time they took a truck to EggHead
Dec
Here are all the new components added to Righteous Fire. The 'booster' style upgrades don't have damage states, so they are either doubled up or they have weird little placeholder graphics! That little frowny face has been hiding for 30 years...
Here's the same sprite sheet but for Privateer, in case you want to scroll through all the damaged components you might never have seen!
The Wing Commander damage states are very cool! Here's an article from earlier this year about Privateer's cockpit damage - plus a comprehensive gallery of all WC4's flight deck damage views!
Dec
Dec
GOG has kicked off their big Winter Sale, and it's a weird one! We used to be able to predict what would happen pretty well, but things have been far less consistent this year. Sometimes we only see a few games marked down - or none at all in the case of Black Friday most recently. This time only Privateer 2 is on sale for 75% off. I looked around a bit and see Ultima has some similarly non-uniform pricing. The earlier games are on sale, but Ultima 8 and 9 are still full price. Both Crusaders are on sale, as is Strike Commander and others. I'm happy that at least The Darkening gets its price cut though!
Dec
…*Pilots' Federation ALERT*
The eccentric inventor Harald Harksing has been causing quite a stir on Angel Station in the Calhuacan system.
Recent reports suggest that the independent entrepreneur is experiencing problems with a corrupted database. This has prevented him from shipping his latest batch of inventions to their intended destinations. The commotion caused by his efforts to resolve the issue has brought both amusement and exasperation to the starport's inhabitants.
Lishan Abara, culture correspondent for Vox Galactica, published a profile piece on Harksing:
"Little of Harald Harksing's background has ever been confirmed. What is well known – indeed, highly publicised – is his annual sending of unusual gifts to individuals referenced in GalNet news articles. These mostly comprise of unique toys, gadgets or games that Harksing has designed and built himself, sometimes tailor-made
Dec
Here’s an interesting find! Very, very early Privateer screenshots released at ECTS in 1992 and published in the November issue of PC Games. All gameflow, probably just renders…
In-game versions of these same assets. You can see nothing was close to final!
Dec
Here's a quirky crossover mash-up of the different franchises that Mac incorporates into his lore videos. Hope it helps you cruise right into the weekend!
The Hangar at The End of The Multiverse
Dec
Display MoreThis is a new one for me: kyleisliving has posted a video of the SNES version of Wing Commander running on a Sony Mega Watchman. If it's the model I think it is, this one has a 4.5 inch black and white screen. It actually looks surprisingly good given the circumstances, and the music sounds great! Sony is also responsible for solving the need for something like this thanks to EA Replay on the Playstation Portable. We still love to see people finding new ways to play Wing Commander though!
Dec
…The Alliance has ended medical isolation for all citizens who were rescued from the Titans after being abducted by Thargoid vessels.
Prime Minister Edmund Mahon's official declaration was published by all newsfeeds:
"The Assembly has agreed that quarantine procedures for everyone recovered from the Titans are no longer necessary. Those who hail from an Allied system are being transported from the secure facilities back to their families and communities. Their long nightmare is over. We are sending our people home."
"I call upon the governments of the Empire, Federation and independent systems to follow our lead with their own citizens. We must not treat these unfortunates as criminals or laboratory specimens. During this dark time of war, let our humanity shine through."
Some medical institutes such as Kamadhenu Medipure and Vandermeer Corporation opposed the Alliance's decision, claiming that
Dec
Today we've got a retro review that AD found in the August 1995 issue of the appropriately named Man!ac magazine. It's a German publication, so we've provided a rudimentary translation. It's easy to get a sense of what they have to say: lots of excitement around the video cutscenes and some commentary about the cool spaceflight. The final score is 86%. I really like the 3DO screenshots here. You see a lot of the same PC images pop up in most reviews, so the more colorful comm VDU clips really stand out!
