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Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Quick, what's that missile? I was studying Wing Commander Prophecy recently and realized I had never taken a good look at the alien missile graphics. Missiles are visible for perhaps a few frames at most so it's hard to get an idea of how they look in the game… but it turns out there was a lot of effort put into distinct missile textures, especially in Wing Commander Prophecy! Not only do the unusual alien weapons all have unique, organic graphics but almost every single Confederation missile and torpedo has a unique design. More, even, than were included in the high resolution renders in the manual and official guide!

From there I decided to look at the other games where I found lots of interesting missiles! I put together the following charts so that everyone can enjoy taking a longer look at the different objects than is usually possible. It also includes several cut weapons that you can't see in

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

*Pilots' Federation Alert*
Titan Raijin is under siege. This is an urgent call to all independent pilots to aid in the complete defeat of the seventh Titan.
The key modules for the assault continue to be readily available at all Rescue Megaships:
• Thargoid Pulse Neutraliser – To break through the maelstrom defence wave.
• Caustic Sink Launchers – To protect your ship from caustic effects of the maelstrom.
• Guardian Nanite Torpedo Pylon – To hamper the Titan's vents and make it vulnerable to damage.
Rewards have been requisitioned for all Commanders able to participate in ending the Titan threat.
Good luck, Commanders.

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Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Seo Jin-ae, special advisor to the Aegis initiative, has suffered a 'significant medical emergency' according to reports from the Duamta system.
A leak from within the Aegis medical facility reached media outlets early yesterday evening, claiming that Seo had suddenly fallen ill. The source also claimed that Seo was registering incredibly high brain activity while unconscious.
The intense speculation resulted in a surprise response from Head of Aegis, Alba Tesreau, only hours later.
Her brief statement was delivered by a spokesperson outside the facility to gathered journalists:
"While it is unfortunate that a member of our staff decided to leak this information, the news is true. I have chosen to confirm the claims myself, rather than let speculation and falsehoods grow about Seo's condition."
"Approximately sixteen hours ago, Seo experienced a generalized tonic-clonic seizure. The

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Last month we took a close look at the various spacecraft weapons identifiable in the Wing Commander movie. The resulting field guide helped show me the incredible level of detail and consistency that went into the background of the world… and of course it's pretty neat to catalog more of the Wing Commander universe, too! With that in mind, I decided to take a similarly close look at the weapons of Wing Commander Academy. Like movies, TV shows have a detailed preproduction process where style sheets showing the characters, vehicles, props and sets would look. These would then inform writers, storyboard artists and the animation production companies at all stages of making the show. Coming through all thirteen episodes has let us take a sort of 'space telescope' look backwards in time to learn more about what those style guides must have included!

PART ONE: GUNS

Laser Cannon

As in the original game it

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Good Old Games skipped Wing Commander in their recent fall sale, but they're now running a new Back to '00 Promo that cuts the price of the WC series in half. It's a funny link, because all of these games came out in the '90s, and the early 2000s were actually a really difficult time to run most WC titles. A lot of people had moved on to Windows 95/98/XP and didn't have a good setup for their DOS collection. New options like DOSBox and MyJEMM did appear and start to gain popularity by around 2005, but it took a while for everyone to catch up with emulation's processing power needs. Each WC game is marked down to $2.99, except for Privateer 2 which is $2.69! (Ditto for Strike Commander)

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Azimuth Biotech CEO Torben Rademaker has claimed that Seo Jin-ae's current medical situation is 'dangerous' for humanity.
Last week, Aegis' special advisor Seo fell into a coma following a violent seizure. Head of Aegis Alba Tesreau confirmed the incident shortly afterwards, stating that Seo was receiving the best possible care at an Aegis medical facility.
Following a request for comment statement by Vox Galactica's Conrad Sterling, Rademaker discussed his views on the latest developments in the Thargoid war and the status of Seo:
"The original whistleblower of this tragic event did everybody a huge favour. No doubt Aegis would have hidden the truth otherwise, as the initiative has done so many times over the years."
"One thing I noticed from Ms. Tesreau's statement was the lack of any reference to the 'incredibly high brain activity' mentioned by the whistleblower. Surely if this detail were

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Origin composer George Oldziey reports that the choral recording that he conducted last week was a big success! Backers of the project's crowdfunding campaign can log in here to download and listen to a brief sample. Mr. Oldziey recently traveled to Salt Lake for an exciting session with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. With this complete, all of the live components necessary for his new album of Wing Commander music are complete! The next milestone will be the elaborate sound engineering/processing, which will begin in January with expert Bruce Botnick.

Greetings all. I just got back from Salt Lake City after a wonderfully successful day of recording the choir parts to the Wing Commander Volume 2 project. The singers were great, the engineer was spot on, and the conductor and fellow composer/orchestrator Philip Klein kept everything moving with artistry and finesse. Here are a few shots from the

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Look at this Wing Commander movie prop AD found. I can't believe how cool this is.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Modern Vintage Gamer has done a wonderful retrospective on the original Wing Commander from the perspective of 2024. The channel has a huge reach and the video has been seen some 80,000 times in just its first day. Since a lot of these will be younger viewers, the clip provides some vital context for how groundbreaking the game was when it arrived in 1990. The narrator walks through all of the features and highlights and even details how several WC1 ports differ, which is always nice to see. Check it out below!

Wing Commander is a 3D Space Combat Simulator game that released on the IBM PC in 1990 - over 34 years ago as of this episode - and it one of the finest games ever made. It took advantage of the IBM PC to maximize the immersion of a space combat simulation. Its game design had no equal. In today's episode we take a closer look at how Wing Commander came to be, its technology, game design,

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Reports that Aegis special advisor Seo Jin-ae has woken from a week-long coma were followed by a statement by Seo, which was sent to all major newsfeeds.
Aegis medical personnel had confirmed earlier in the day that Seo had abruptly woken from unconsciousness, following a significant seizure on October 18th. There were no long-term physical concerns, and she was expected to make a full recovery.
However, less than two hours later, Seo released a statement via ICE-cast. The raw footage was self-recorded and is believed to have been made without Aegis command's authorisation.
"I hate making these public announcements, so don't expect it to be good", she explained. "But everyone keeps telling me how important I am to the war effort, so why not test that and see if anyone listens? There's something everybody needs to know. What happened to me wasn't an accident or an illness."
"Right before I

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

While taking apart Wing Commander Arena I discovered that there are four different wrecked fighter models in the Boneyard map!

Charon System — The Boneyard

Welcome to hell! The Boneyard is the largest debris field in the sector. It began in 2655 when the Tiger’s Claw squadron fought a hard retreat through the area, riddling the asteroid belt with military debris. Since that time, it has come to encompass thousands of derelict ships and millionsof asteroids. The Boneyard is for expert pilots only: success here requires that a pilot navigate between rocks and through the channels and tunnels that riddle larger planetoids. It’s also an excellent chance to turn a profit as the field is littered with useful salvage and even the rocks themselves are overflowing with priceless Gotherian crystals.

Analysis: In an example of galactic irony the home of the hellish boneyard is also the location of the largest

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Awesome resource via Dennie Edwards! I found Wing Commander III in the 1996 catalog. And Strike Commander in 1993, which was the result of a boots-on-the-ground sales campaign from Origin that got massive preorder numbers for Strike (on the back of WC1's smash hit status) from Radio Shack and Walmart.

RadioShackCatalogs is an excellent resource for nostalgia-craving tech fans! The site offers high quality scans of 66 years worth of Radio Shack catalog. We've done the hard work for you, though, and have located the one listing for a Wing Commander game: Wing Commander III in the 1996 catalog! Chris Roberts' Strike Commander appears in the 1993 catalog, which was at the time an especially important new distribution deal for Origin.

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Titan Raijin in the Pegasi Sector IH-U b3-3 system has been destroyed, leaving only Cocijo still operational.
Aden Tanner, anti-xeno strategist for Aegis, provided a brief statement:
"My heart still soars to hear that another Titan has been taken down. Until very recently, these colossal constructs were seen as indestructible. Aegis was even drawing up long-term strategies based around them being permanently present in human space. The Guardian nanite torpedo, and the hard work of so many pilots, has made that academic."
"Anti-xeno pilots are already travelling to the systems surrounding Col 285 Sector BA-P c6-18, to repeat the process one last time on Titan Cocijo. With such a concentrated effort, it is not expected to last long. However, I must repeat my earlier call for caution and preparedness. We cannot tell how the Thargoids will respond to the loss of their last mothership, and we may

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Wing Commander Prophecy’s C-9 Pelican transport, from proposal to sketch up to cinematic model to game mesh! Too bad we didn’t get the TRANS CO sign on the tower in the final version! The cine version has some nice detailed cargo pods, too.

The Pelican has a cameo in Wing Commander Arena, too! The Boneyard map has a derelict Pelican (with Centurions spilling out of it!).

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

The much, much cooler French poster (featuring a Rapier and a menacing phantom Kilrathi) was designed by Digital Anvil and rejected by FOX (presumably for its lack of Freddie Prinze Jr. face).

Quote from Freelancer News-Bot

Updates on where the development is at and how it is proceeding

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Boxography has posted a fun video where they go through and unbox the contents of the original Wing Commander. We've seen a few of these pop up in recent years, and this one is great because the narrator lovingly examines each piece with such care. He mentions that he's actually a relatively new fan of the series, but the whole clip just highlights what a timeless classic the game is. Check it out below!

Ship specs, blueprints, an in-universe military magazine, some lore sidebars, and more. Origin went all-out on the contents in this box.

You can also follow Boxography on Instagram.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

AllTinker was recently asked how the Confederation project to modify and enhance the original Wing Commander was coming along. As we know, he has a lot of irons in the fire and is working on incredible WC series reverse engineering and exploration on many fronts. Despite these competing demands, he's very close to an updated release for WC1. Here's some more tantalizing information:

I've been working away on a bunch of cool stuff - I'm close to being finished with my first pass at the 3D cockpits, and some further experimentation with 3D ships (from a voxel workflow, but trying to produce non-blocky models). I'm hoping my next update will show some or all of that in actual gameplay, with the first release not far behind.

I've been working on some non-Confederation (and non-Originator) stuff too... Which brings me to: So for years before Confederation, and in the meantime since, I've made numerous

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

A prominent figure in the treasure hunting community has gone missing, prompting speculation as to his fate.
Herman Colt, known for recovering several notable historical artefacts across the core systems, departed the Frenis system three weeks ago along with several other pilots. It is believed Colt's latest expedition sought the final treasure hoard of Captain Morrigan, a fearsome pirate active in the mid-3200's.
Rewired spoke to a colleague of Colt's, Natasha Moore, for an insight into Colt's whereabouts:
"It's unlike Colt to maintain radio silence during an expedition. In fact, it's fair to say he loves the attention. Each new expedition generates buzz among the exploration community, with dozens of pilots begging to be taken along for the adventure."
"Colt has a soft spot for Captain Morrigan – I think he's already got some bits and pieces from her life on display at his home. I know he

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

This Border Worlds outpost is present in Wing Commander IV's files and complete with damage states... but it doesn't appear in the game and it's not clear what it might've been intended for!

Wing Commander IV features a lot of bases -- in fact, it has more space stations than the original game had fighters. What it doesn't have is a Border Worlds base... even when you're ordered to rescue the biochemist from the Border Worlds, you do it by landing marines on a Confederation space lab. It looks like they had originally planned to rectify that, though -- with the Union of Border Worlds Outpost.