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If you missed the big news earlier this week, be sure to check out the new WC4 Fan Remake demo! There are numerous fixes and updates, better joystick support and new in-flight comms. You can download it here (886 meg exe) and get right to playing! The WC Respace team has posted a full article with instructions and FAQs if you have any questions or issues. If you're not quite ready to jump in yourself, here's a video of The Eradicator checking the demo out. It's actually the original release, so the latest version is even better!

It looks like a team of modders are trying to remaster Wing Commander IV. In this video, we will check their work out.

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This prompted me to dig up the original Tarsus model...

But what's that written on the rear!?! Zoom in and enhance... HIDDEN LORE!

Is this visible in the game itself? Not even a little.

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

President Zachary Hudson has accused the Order of the Far God of being directly responsible for the fate of the Dedicant megaship.
"Our assessment of these Thargoid-worshipping extremists has been proved correct," he told The Federal Times. "Hijacking the Dedicant to deliver it to their alien gods is an act of treason and mass murder."
"I have ordered the Proactive Detection Bureau to root out every deluded individual with sympathies for this twisted cult. Automatic life sentences will ensure that these traitors never again put innocent people at risk."
The declaration brought political pressure on all three presidential candidates to state their intentions for the Far God cult should they be elected.
Vice President Jerome Archer: "I will be pleased to continue President Hudson's policy on dealing with these religious fanatics: stricter controls, increased surveillance and tougher sentences."

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

*Pilots' Federation ALERT*
The lost megaship Dedicant has been located in HIP 19600, with signs of Thargoid attack and all inhabitants missing.
The Dedicant was being prepared by Federal authorities to deport imprisoned members of the Order of the Far God when it unexpectedly jumped into hyperspace. Pilots who helped decipher its fragmented distress call were informed of the recent discovery by the Imperial Navy.
Executive Agent Jalen Locke of the Federal Intelligence Agency issued a statement:
"We can confirm that the Dedicant has been discovered adrift in the HIP 19600 system. There is evidence that the Thargoids penetrated the hull in multiple locations, and thousands of escape pods were launched. Unusually, there are no bodies onboard and we have not been able to locate any of the escape pods. The whereabouts of all three FIA security teams and over 8,000 Far God cultists cannot be

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Development of the WC4 Fan Remake is picking up again, and the team has a new update today on comm videos. If you were thinking the clips that play in the communications VDU were simply upscaled, that's just the tip of the iceberg! It was quite a process for AllTinker to extract the colorful Playstation versions and then sync them with the PC version which are higher resolution. They aren't even cropped to the same frame. Then all of that was given to ODVS for an advanced enhancement based on color channels. It was quite a process, and you'll need to read the full article at WC Respace for the details. There's also a video that walks through the comparison.

Oh, and last - but not least - there's a whole new playable demo! Grab it here (886 meg exe). It showcases these new comms, and also a whole bunch more:

• Prioritize GPU based on maker if multiple are found
• Support for 128 button joysticks

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It's been a while since we've shared Matthew Cushman's awesome SciPubTech cutaway poster, and it's fabulous, so we take every opportunity we can get to put it front and center. The project was officially commissioned to support the Wing Commander Movie, but like the Wing Commander Ride or action figure vehicles, it was never officially released. On the bright side, the gorgeous art is available right here for all to enjoy. Mr. Cushman recently reposted it on Behance with a little blurb. There's no new info, but it's nice to see his 'official' statement on the piece!

Wing Commander’s Tiger Claw Cutaway ArtThis diorama was created with the help of the film’s creator. Reference for this piece was supplied by the movie studio to create an accurate depiction of this vessel, but eventually this was not sold as a poster.

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If you're like me and intensely follow the ups and downs of Wing Commander pricing across the internet, we have some very exciting news today! GOG.com has been regularly discounting Wing Commander games for many years, and for the vast majority of that time it's been very by the numbers: all eight packages discounted 75%. Just a couple weeks ago though, we noted that they were running a "Make Classics Last Forever" sale with Armada and Academy omitted. Now they're kicking off a week-long "Shooter Sale . Fortunately, all the DOS/Windows Wing Commander games are back this time, but Prophecy and Privateer 2 are just 70% off rather than 75%. That means they're $1.79 each instead of $1.49. Bizarre! Still, a wonderful chance to fill out your digital WC collection!

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Having a grand time tonight flipping through Wing Commander I & II: The Ultimate Strategy Guide. This book is so cool. It’s written as an in-universe memoir with the main character (here named Carl LaFong) at age 73 looking back on his training and military career. There’s a neat meta layer too, he’s writing this memoir because he has just served as the technical advisor for 28th Century ‘holovid’ versions of Wing Commander I and II made by “Tristan Roberts”.

This kind of guide written as a novel wasn’t uncommon at the time. X-Wing and TIE Fighter had great ones, as did a bunch of the Sierra adventure game series.

Whoever owns the rights to these in 2023 should serve them up as ebooks; I bet there’s a mint to be made from retro gamers and general nostalgia fans. Despite being written by an Origin marketing executive the prose is wonderful. It captures the more limitless 1991 version of the IP

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A few days ago, we shared Michael Pretli's slick take on the Midway class heavy carrier. It turns out that he's also built a Murphy destroyer! It's also quite a looker.

My second gem from 2010 I want to preserve here, also done in Truespace 5.x

My rebuild of the Murphy-Class Destroyer featured in the Wing Commander Prophecy games, though I added quite some additional greebles to it since the original model in the limit game engine from that time was rather undetailed. To give it a more offensive looking capability I added addtional torpedo tubes and a fixed bow weapon to it. The ship also features a small landing bay for shuttles and a few fighters.

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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).

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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

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

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'

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

*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

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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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!

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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:

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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!