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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 Battle of Britain (1969) which was an inspiration for the Wing Commander movie and a historical event closely tied to Wing Commander's lore and themes! 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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Greetings WingNuts,

An American Werewolf in Paris was kind of a surprise: it really was a 'so bad it's good' style movie, which are actually a rarity! We all had a great time watching it swerve in crazy directions with awful CG werewolves and crazy jags of slapstick comedy followed by untenable gore and weird sex. A terrible movie that contained multitudes, there's no doubt! Kind of like another film we love…

We will skip some of the funny coincidences–like a character who clearly would've been played by Freddie Prinze Jr. were he available, a climatic 'here me baby, hold together' and the fact that it also concludes with the French female lead being attended to on a stretcher in favor of a couple of fascinating real connections, but there was a lot to watch for for imaginative Wng Commander fans! (I will mention one memory was that the movie came out on Christmas in 1997… a day many of us remember

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This is the fourth in a series of updates that will highlight five fascinating items from our first search through the Video Game History Foundation's new Digital Library. We're sure there are countless treasures to uncover, so be sure to dive into their collection and post what you discover to the forums!

Here's another cool, likely otherwise forgotten collection from the VGHF Digital Library: the original black and white "3DO Club News" newsletters that were mailed to early adopters of the unpopular (but well-Wing Commandered) game console. The fourth issue is from February 1995 and includes multiple items of interest for Wing Commander historians. The first is a neat two page preview of Wing Commander III 3DO, coming in a couple of months:

WING COMMANDER III: HEART OF THE TIGER

Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger is more than just the sequel to the best- selling flight simulation game of all time.

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Here's a little treat from the universe: YouTube has the 1999 Wing Commander movie available to watch for free (in the United States, at least)! YouTube's rules prevent commercial movies from being embedded but you can follow this link to watch the movie. As a bonus, making the movie available on YouTube means that lots of people are seeing it for the first time... and if their social media comments are any indication, they aren't hating it! Weird what a couple decades an do to a film.

This is a legitimate licensed stream rather than somebody pitching up the sound and playing it under a filter... it's the real Wing Commander experience! We don't know how long Wing Commander will be available but past availability suggests that you should have at least all of February to catch it. A big thank you to Sebastian for letting us know!

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The Wing Commander movie club has succesfully ended the beginning with a pretty uneventful watch of Battle of Britain; maybe have some characters next time, movie! And that next time will be 1995's Judge Dredd, a fun action sci-fi movie with a slight technical connection to Wing Commander. You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

Judge Dredd is a British comic book antihero whose stories have appeared in 2000 A.D. since the late 1970s. He's an ultra-powered police officer in a dystopian world where the police are judge, jury and executioner. The 1995 film adaptation is a big, brassy action movie that trades some of the satire of the source material for Jean-Claude Van Damme and a big '90s action movie production. No one thinks Judge Dredd is the best movie in the world (or even the best Judge Dredd movie) but it's certainly a mood!

The big Wing Commander connection to Judge Dredd is

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This is the fifth in a series of updates that will highlight five fascinating items from our first search through the Video Game History Foundation's new Digital Library. We're sure there are countless treasures to uncover, so be sure to dive into their collection and post what you discover to the forums!

It's our final VGHF update (for now!) we've saved the best for last… this one is absolutely fascinating! It's a June 1992 issue of The Journal of Computer Game Design (Vol. 5, No. 5), an early academic-style publication covering game design… and it features a four page interview with Ellen Guon that goes into a great amount of detail about her writing for Wing Commander! This is the kind of article narrative designers today should be reading, it's absolute gold that's still relevant today. And as she talks about developing Angel's story for Wing Commander II, you'll think she probably should've had a

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Last year, we reported on some wonderful 3D renderings of the TCS Victory created by AEdwardBaker. Today we're following up and sharing a number of other Wing Commander pieces he's created! These three pieces are, respectively, Angry Hornets, Homecoming and Sisters. Very cool to see the Victory and the Tiger's Claw together!

They also have two new renders of the Victory, seen both fore and aft.

... and those renders are actually from a pretty cool fan film that they've created featuring the Victory!

Lastly, there's even a phone wallpaper!

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It's a long standing claim that Chris Roberts' Strike Commander was originally intended to have quite a few more playable aircraft. In the end, the game focuses heavily on simulating the flight model of an F-16 Falcon and only allows the player a second aircraft, the prototype F-22 Raptor, very briefly at the end of the game. But early descriptions of the game mention everything from World War I biplanes to Harrier jump jets. What can we find out?

The earliest surviving marketing material for Strike Commander is this press release announcing the game and providing details on the plans and the extremely qualified development team. It was published in May 1991 alongside a sales sheet with additional details. The sales sheet tells us that the game will allow you to "pilot six different aircraft" and it specifically mentions that there will be NPC's flying World War I biplanes. This is the only mention of

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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 Judge Dredd (1995) which provided two ex-military vehicles to the 1999 Wing Commander moie! 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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Greetings WingNuts,

Let it be said of Battle of Britain (1969) that it ws no An American Werewolf in Paris. We joke a lot in this series about boring war movies and... boy was that a boring war movie. The thrilling air battles that enchanted us as children aren't quite as spectacular today and Battle of Britain's 'character adjacent' war story seems pretty plodding. But you can see the bones of why it enchanted so many once upon a time: the air battles, a mix of real vintage aircraft and exceptional model work, are impressive and the entirety of the very long production is full of impressive quality sets and costumes. It's a great culmination of the kind of movie The Dam Busters kicked off fifteen years earlier... but it sure seemed slow as we got through the second hour!The obvious connections to Wing Commander were also a little tough to pick out. The biggest influence on the movie must have been the

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Here's a wonderful 3D rendered Hornet by Algi, based on the original blueprints included with Wing Commander I. It's a good bet the original mesh used to render the Hornet bitmaps looked something like this! Here's the original link on Tumblr. Crazy how close it looks to the rarely seen Kilrathi Saga intro version, too! On BlueSky the artist mentioned that they're just getting started with 3D art... but we'd say they're well on their way!

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We're running a bit later than usual, but we're finally kicking off our annual vote to determine Fan Project of the Year! We have a strong list of contenders this year, and there were even more that were on the cusp but excluded to keep the list tight and manageable. Additionally, we've conducting a special Hall of Fame vote where you'll be able to cast a vote for your favorite from the last ~30 years. Without further delay, here's the nominees!

• Confederation - This past year brought numerous widescreen art updates for this enhancement mod to WC1 by AllTinker. We also got previews of new features, including some highly anticipated slowdown improvements.
• Mac's Lore/Art - Mac delivered both a treasure of slick wallpapers and multiple lore videos jam packed with Wing Commander knowledge in 2024.
• Originator - Originator is a phenomenal hacking and extraction tool that significantly streamlines the

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The Wing Commander movie club has met the law and... the law won. Judge Dredd wasn't as fun as we'd hoped so we're turning to a certified classic with an interesting Wing Commander connection: Titanic! You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along. PLEASE NOTE that because Titanic is a long movie we will be starting one hour early at 9 PM EST (6 PM PST.)

Titanic is James Cameron's famous love story set against an ultra-detailed telling of the final hours of the doomed Titanic passenger liner. Initially derided for its enormous budged, Titanic proved naysers wrong when it shattered box office records on release in December 1997. If you're of the same vintage as Wing Commander, it's a sure bet you remember Titanic!

Titanic's big connection to Wing Commander is a pretty famous one: Titanic's famed production designer Peter Lamont followed that film by taking the same role on Wing Commander...

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GOG has another new sale going this week in honor of Valentine's Day. Their Love at First Pixel deal marks the Wing Commander series down by 60%, which is actually 1% more than the recent Lunar New Year discount. Each package is $2.39 rather than $2.45. And there's one outlier: Privateer 2 is a whole 75% off. That's just $1.49!

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

A recent survey initiative organised by Brewer Corporation has been hailed as a success by CEO Madelyn Teague.
High quantities of exploration data were handed in at the Trailblazer Echo megaship in the HIP 90578 system. The data will now be analysed by Universal Cartographics to assess the prime locations in each system for permanent human structures.
Teague made the following announcement:
"We are pleased that so many explorers have contributed to this initiative. The latest wave of survey data will be processed through a recently updated software algorithm for the next phase of preparation, in pursuit of a widespread expansion campaign. That campaign will be led by factions and communities across the core systems."
Interest in the survey campaign has been met with enthusiasm by many displaced communities resulting by the Thargoid War, who see talk of a 'new frontier' as a chance at a fresh

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

*Pilots' Federation ALERT*
Brewer Corporation has issued a request for deliveries to Starlace Station in the Minerva system.
Brewer COO Mark Rennik is overseeing the second open request by the corporation in a month, following calls for system survey data earlier this month. Rennik's press release, published through most major news feeds, offered an update on Brewer's broader colonisation plans.
An excerpt highlighted by Vox Galactica:
"A key feature of independent colonisation plans is the beacon and suite module used to establish a successful claim. Our secure manufacturing facilities across several systems have been producing considerable stocks of these devices ready to supply outfitters."
"This morning, we held talks with representatives of minor factions on the fringes of populated space. It was suggested – and we agreed - that the initial colonisation efforts carried out with Brewer

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Here's a great listen: the The Retro Hour podcast has posted an in-depth interview with game development legend Harvey Smith. He's best known as the lead designed for the Deus Ex series and more recent titles from Arkane... but like many in the industry, he got his start at Origin Systems! He tells great stories about his time in the military in the early 1990s and then how he joined Origin (first as a member of the softball team before actually being hired!). And there's one fantastic story about QA'ing Super Wing Commander and running into stealth fighters!

I'll tell you a 3DO story though that you might like. You know one of the games in [Super Wing Commander] and that it was all the... it was the Secret Missions packaged with Wing I and II I think, and it was like a good bundle if you were a Wing Commander fan, right. And this was like while Chris Roberts and his team were working on Wing III, so

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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 Titanic (1997) which provided Wing Commander's incredible production designer, Peter Lamont! 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 6 PM PST/9 PM EST but feel free to drop by and hang any time!

PLEASE NOTE that the movie will start an hour earlier than previous weeks. This is temporary to account for Titanic's longer run time.

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Greetings WingNuts,

I'm sad to report that we didn't think much of Judge Dredd! It's such a weird mess of a movie... the cool British sci-fi world and the world class SFX just weren't enough to balance out a confusing, disengaged plot and some actors... chief among them the bizarre choice of Sylvester Stallone and Rob Schneider as the leads. The setup is too offputting and doesn't spend enough time engaging you... you just don't ever feel like rooting for anyone. Incredible props, visual effects and sets, though! The happiest surprise of the night was the discovery of the after credits song, the bespoke "Dredd Song" provided by... The Cure?! What was going on with this movie?

... but we DID find our Wing Commander tank pretty readily! The police vehicles show up throughout the film but are especially visible during the opening riot scene and then at the very end of the film when everything has been

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There's sad news today: the Wing Commander universe has lost another commander. We've learned that prolific character actor Peter Jason has passed away. Wing Commander fans best know him as Daniel (Eugene) Wilford, a Terran Confederation Captain and a Border Worlds Vice Admiral. Jason's Wilford first appeared in Wing Commander IV where he played the Border Worlds admiral giving orders to Colonel Blair and the Intrepid. Much like Ricardo Montalbán in Star Trek II, Jason never actually shared a set with the rest of the cast: his orders arrived via viewscreen. In Wing Commander Prophecy, Jason stepped in following Jason Bernard's untimely passing and played the Wilford character as the captain of the Confederation's new Midway megacarrier. There he worked more directly with the cast, giving briefings and either praising or chewing out the player based on their gameplay.

To call Mr. Jason in-demand would