09
Nov
News categories list
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11
Nov
Display MoreWe've got a treat for fans of the Wing Commander movie today! We've done high resolution scans of a collection of 48 set photographs saved from the film. These images are stunniing and they give us a new look at some of the incredible sets and props created for the movie... as well as a window into what life was like for Chris Roberts and the crew working on the film at the time!
Concordia - Bridge
Diligent - Bridge
Spacecraft
Time Slice
Film Crew
Chris Roberts
Sound Stages
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11
Nov
…Pretty neat to see a full sized Hornet made for this year's Star Citizen CitizenCon! (Pictures from Citizen Erased) It may not surprise you that this is not the first time Chris Roberts has built a full sized spaceship! Let's go back...
Wing Commander IV had a full sized version of the previously all-CG shuttle introduced in WC3! It's used for several big scenes. Some folks have criticized the shuttle set as a big waste of money but I would argue that those people aren't fun.
But that wasn't the only real ship they built for Wing Commander IV! They also constructed two cockpits, the first being the Dragon seen in the intro:
And the second was the Hellcat V! It was mostly shot without the canopy bubble which is too bad because it looks very cool on. Like the Hornet, this is a ship that was never designed to be constructed physically!
They also redressed the Dragon cockpit to use as a Banshee for one -
12
Nov
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We had so much fun watching Wing Commander on Discord last week and it was such a nice distraction that we thought we would try making it a regular event! And what could be more fun than going back in time to watch some of the classic movies that have been credited with inspiring Wing Commander? This week, we're watching The Dam Busters, one of the films Chris Roberts wanted the 1999 Wing Commander movie to emulate. Details about the film and how to find a copy follow.
The Dam Busters is a 1955 film which dramatizes Operation Chastise, a daring 1943 air raid in which specially trained British bomber crews dropped purpose-design "bouncing bombs" to destroy German dams. It's considered a classic war and aviation film, particularly in the United Kingdom where Wing Commander Guy Gibson's World War II heroics are revered. The film is also famous for being a major inspiration for the original Star Wars'
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14
Nov
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Today we're sharing a podcast that Mat Bradley-Tschirgi created and sent over way back in 2016. Look, it's been a rough eight years, and we're a little behind. Better late than never though, since this is a great episode that you should definitely check out. He's assembled a medley of tracks that does an excellent job of taking you on an aural journey through the series. You've got music from WC1-4, the Privateers and even Cobalt 60's techno Prophecy album. There's also an intro and conclusion that set the stage and give a little bit more context. Give it a listen at the KBOO website here!Air date: Sat, 12/03/2016 - 9:00am to 9:30am
Combining the earnest plots of World War 2 films with an original sci-fi setting inspired by Star Trek and Star Wars, the Wing Commander games were a load of space sim fun. The Terran Confederation waged a years long battle against the evil feline Kilrathi alien race.
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15
Nov
…It's been thirteen years since GOG.com started selling Wing Commander games. Over the years, they've added the entire primary DOS/Windows catalog, but some of the packages are starting to show their age. The last WC game to be added was Armada in November 2013, and there hasn't been a whole lot of tweaking since. A few critical bugs were fixed here and there, but as hardware and operating systems change, glitches have started to arise. And that doesn't even count the occasional bug that's been around since the games were first listed!
To help combat this, the service announced a new effort today to shore up some of their top titles. There are 100 games in the initial rollout, including Privateer and Wing Commander 3. Both have gotten a handful of updates to ensure they continue to run on modern systems. And both are 50% off to celebrate! We hope to see many more improvements added and more WC
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16
Nov
…This is a reminder that we have another fun #Wingnut movie night planned on Discord this evening! The ongoing theme will be movies that inspired Wing Commander in some way. Tonight's film is The Dam Busters, which Chris Roberts credits as inspiring the WC Movie's fantastic score. If you don't own a copy, a version is hosted by the Internet Archive. Feel free to drop by and hang!When I set out to make "Wing Commander," I envisioned a classic World War II film as its model. Except that it was set in space, 500 years from now. This motif played strongly in the design and look of the picture. I also wanted it to play strongly in the score. I wanted the music to evoke some of the glorious old war film scores; full of heart, melody and heroic acts. "633 Squadron," "The Dam Busters" and other such classics came to my mind. When I first talked to David and Kevin about the score, they were in tune from
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16
Nov
The fact that Wing Commander III drops you in media res instead of having a start screen has long been cited as one of those brilliant immersive Chris Robertsisms. Well, here's the original start menu from an earlier build! Suggests you would've had the option to transfer your character from WC2.
The logo is pretty fascinating on its own! I suppose it's intended to be for the Victory but it reminds me of Blair's later (and similarly unexplained) nose art crest in the movie. I think we need to find a heraldry expert to think about both of these!
Another fascinating and rarely seen Wing Commander crest: the Wing Commander Academy (game) team shirt! Designed by the late, great Paul Steed. I dream of having one of these in my collection!
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17
Nov
…Today we've got a different kind of video to share. PixelPusher Mailman is going page-by-page through a thirty year old copies of PC Games. I just like the concept of someone lovingly paging through a vintage magazine like this. There is a section in his latest issue on Wing Commander Armada that actually makes the game look really cool. Unfortunately the narrator here wasn't into it, but both the strategic gameplay portion and multiplayer are very special. Anyhow, this clip is in German, but you can turn on YouTube's automatic translation feature to get real time captions in your language of choice. Jump to 17:41 if it doesn't auto start in the right place.
Come with me back in time again – to 1994, to be precise! In this video, I flick through the 09/1994 issue of PC Games.Star Wars is on the cover, unfortunately not quite as present in the inside pages. There is only a small preview box for
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18
Nov
Tonight's project: added the Super Wing Commander cockpits to the WCCIC's cockpit reference page!
Don't forget the SWC Dralthi! I do three versions: no alarms at 100%, all alarms active and then one with damage states:
I've also added Wing Commander III and I'll start looking at the console ports at some point. Find all of these and more in the WCPedia here! -
19
Nov
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I'm happy to report that our second Wing Commander movie night was a success! We had a great group of fans who enjoyed seeing–and lightly roasting–The Dam Busters together this past Friday night. You can find the complete after action report later this week. So next we're going to be watching a movie that's a little more modern… with some more obvious connections to both the original Wing Commander game and the 1999 film. That's right, on Friday you are welcome to join us for a group watch of Top Gun (1986).
Top Gun is a 1986 action film based on the United States Navy's elite program that teaches top fighter pilots skills that they in turn pass on to their compatriots. It helped usher in lead Tom Cruise's ongoing superstardom and is one of the prototypes of the modern blockbuster. My generation loved it for mixing pulse-pounding air combat with engaging characters we couldn't help but root for… but
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20
Nov
Here, enjoy some Amiga WC1! This is far from the first time that we've posted an Amiga playthrough, but it's always fun to watch. Plenty of people got their first look at the game on PC or Super Nintendo, so for those folks, it's fun to see something like this to pick out the many small differences. Check out LOAF's comparison of the TrainSim and Barracks as an example!
The original Amiga version of Wing Commander had just 16 colors. It was released right before the Amiga 1200, which introduced the 256-color AGA version. Wing Commander is a computer game series from Origin Systems, the series creator is the American game developer Chris Roberts. The series is about humanity's fight for survival in the 27th century against aggressive alien races, particularly the cat-like Kilrathi.
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20
Nov
…With a renewed focus on internal politics within the core systems, Conrad Sterling of Vox Galactica has provided an analysis of the current support for key figures of importance based on system allegiance.
Population surveys suggest the following five powers lead the way in this early stage:
Rank 1: Edmund Mahon - 1355 systems
Rank 2: Aisling Duval - 1296 systems
Rank 3: Arissa Lavigny-Duval - 1162 systems
Rank 4: Yuri Grom - 956 systems
Rank 5: Pranav Antal - 659 systems
With power influence fluctuating from week to week, it remains to be seen if these powers will enjoy their relatively large influence over the coming months.
Powers are offering plenty of incentives and rewards for those pledging to their cause, with independent pilots reaping the benefits of the growing struggle for prestige and authority.
Vox Galactica will continue to monitor the ongoing political landscape as it unfolds. -
21
Nov
Here's a little treasure: six pieces of rarely-seen Wing Commander cover artwork without the trade dress! These stunning paintings were created by sci-fi and fantasy artist Jan Patrik Krásný for the Czech language translations of six Wing Commander novels. The books were published between 2001 and 2005 by Poutnik Knihy. Most interestingly, they were published not for the Wing Commander IP but because Dr. William Forstchen is particularly popular in the Czech Republic! The resulting cover art is a kind of what-if scenario where the novels are imagined on their own without the associated games!
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22
Nov
…Caliban System, 2669; second mission. Captain Eisen has ordered you to clear every single nav point to prevent the Kilrathi from reporting the Victory's jump point. You battle through two nav points of fierce fighters and then find… four capital ships, unescorted? There's a light destroyed, two corvettes and a…
… it's a transport? No, it's a… "scout"? The existence of the scout has long been recognized but to the best of my knowledge no one had really looked into /why/ it was there. So I did… and learned some interesting things in the process, including a pretty significant change to something we had previously thought about the making of the game!
Wing Commander III famously shipped on time… but to make this happen the developers had to cut some broken features rather than spend time to get them working. A number of these changes were related to an item attachment bug which caused issues in some
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23
Nov
This is a reminder that we have another fun #Wingnut movie night planned on Discord this evening! The ongoing theme will be movies that inspired Wing Commander in some way. Tonight's film is Top Gun, which has been inspiring the series since the very first game. You can find details on that as well as how to watch along with us in the announcement post here. The movie will start about 7 PM PST/10 PM EST, but feel free to drop by and hang any time!
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23
Nov
…Greetings WingNuts,
In honor of last week's premiere meeting of the Wing Commander Movie Club (name pending) we've decided to start posting after action reports talking through what the group thought about and discussed with each movie. If all goes according to plan we'll run them in the news on Fridays alongside the reminder posts! Now what did we think about The Dam Busters…
In general, we found the movie to be extremely dry… especially the first half, which focuses on the development of the bouncing bomb and the training for the attack. Audience sensibilities have changed a lot in sixty-nine years: the thought of starting a war movie with old men talking about math and then not getting to an actual air battle until the very end would be unthinkable now. That's not to criticize the movie itself, it's just very difficult for a younger viewer to connect with today. Along the same lines, it's
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24
Nov
…Want another way to get Wing Commander news and interaction? We're happy to announce that we have set up an official Bluesky account for the Wing Commander Combat Information Center! Think of it as an updated version of Twitter that features a lot fewer Admirals Tolwyn and quite a few more adult depictions of Prince Thrakhath. And hey, bonus, they got the color of the sky just right.
You can access the profile here. We'll be posting news and updates and interacting with the community as much as we can. And if you're new to the service here's a very short directory of Wing Commander-relevant accounts that are already posting to the service. If you'd like to be added, please let us know in the comments!
- Richard Garriott - Origin Systems founder and assistant designer for the Wing Commander TCG.
- Siobhan Beeman - designer on the original Wing Commander and director Wing Commander 2
- Mark Hamill - the actor
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25
Nov
…A few days ago we showed you the cover art for the Czech language editions of six Wing Commander novels. One thing that's always particularly interesting to think about is what the cover of any given Wing Commander novel is showing… and these are no exception! Case in point: the Czech version of Action Stations shows a wing of Raptor-like fighters with some kind of space station complex and/or group of ships in the background. We've run the numbers and we think there's only one scene this could be: a squadron of Wildcats from the Concordia (including young Geoffrey Tolwyn and Vance Richards) leading the counterattack against the Kilrathi at McAuliffe or perhaps defending the Concordia. The main station may be Alexandria and the surrounding ships (if they are separate objects) would be Terran and Kilrathi warships engaged in the battle.
What is a Wildcat? Action Stations gives us a brief look at the
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25
Nov
…Professor Alba Tesreau, Head of Aegis, has issued a warning for all anti-xeno fleets to remain on high alert.
The warning comes as human forces continue to push towards the last remaining Thargoid Titan, Cocijo. While victory over the Thargoid invasion force seems likely at this stage, Tesreau has urged defensive fleets not to become complacent.
"We have seen repeatedly that the Thargoid fleets are capable of surprising us when their defeat seems inevitable. The Proteus Wave incident in HIP 22460 is a perfect example of this – our confidence was such that Salvation's celebratory speech was broadcast across the core systems only moments before he was killed by a Thargoid counterattack, along with thousands of military personnel."
"Seo Jin-ae has - rather publicly - insisted that her recent medical emergency was the result of the Thargoids seeking to learn about her and, by extension, humanity
