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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

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Here's December 1991 issue of Computer Games Strategy Plus's review of Wing Commander II (plus Speech Accessory Pack.) At first glance, this is a usual contemporary review of the game... but there's a twist: the screenshot of Prince Thrakhath. Does anything seem unusual about it?

First of all, the screenshot is using the earlier painted background seen in the CES demo. Here's how the two compare:

But what's particularly odd is the line: "My ships have destroyed the Tiger's Claw, Emperor." That doesn't match the demo ("The pride of the Terran Navy, the Tiger's Claw, has been destroyed and soon my stealth fighters will demolish the rest of the human fleet.") or the final version of the scene ("The Terran carrier, Tiger's Claw, tried to attack us here at K'Tithrak Mang. But my stealth fighters destroyed it!"). This is either a bullshot or a build of the game that existed somewhere between the initial set

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This is a reminder that there's still a little time left to get your vote in for the annual Fan Project of the Year tally as well as our new poll that asks about the best undertakings of all time. The nominees and voting buttons are below!

• Fan Project of the Year 2024
• 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 process of analyzing Wing Commander assets. AllTinker released more than half of a dozen updates to the program this past year that added support/features for everything from the mainline

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The Wing Commander movie club has sailed the Atlantic with the Titanic and now it's time to get back home… to space! This week's movie is a true classic with some deep ties to Wing Commander: Alien. You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

Alien needs no introduction, but just in case: Ridley Scott's 1979 sci-fi/horror film is about a group of interstellar truckers who must battle a relentless monster in close quarters aboard their starship. From the gritty, realistic environs of the Nostromo to the biomechanical alien itself, the spectacular film earned a level of respect that far outstripped the standards of its genres. Countless aspects of Alien are deeply rooted in most any science fiction film made since.

Wing Commander is, of course, no exception. From the chairs in the spacecraft in the original games through to the characters of the movie itself (with a little creative crossover

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

This month's analysis of the influence held by key figures in the core systems has arrived, courtesy of Conrad Sterling of Vox Galactica.
His latest survey of system populations suggests the following five powers enjoy the largest sphere of influence:
Rank 1: Edmund Mahon – 1,431 systems
Rank 2: Aisling Duval – 1,410 systems
Rank 3: Arissa Lavigny-Duval – 1,328 systems
Rank 4: Yuri Grom – 1,020 systems
Rank 5: Li Yong-Rui – 801 systems
The largest increase in system influence belonged to Li Yong-Rui, who can claim an additional 77 systems as supporters.
Vox Galactica will provide another update on the state of the powers next month.

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Early in Secret Missions 2, Shotglass informs Blair that he has seen a suspicious story about the Kilrathi withdrawing from the Deneb Sector on "Jerry Rivers on the Galaxy Network News". Who, exactly, is Jerry Rivers?

From Blair's reaction ("that show will rot your brain") and the name alone, players at the time would infer that Jerry Rivers is Wing Commander's pastiche of a '90s tabloid television presenter inspired by Jerry Springer and Geraldo Rivera.

But there's more to the story! Like many elements of Secret Missions 2, the mention of Jerry Rivers is intended to preface an appearance in Wing Commander II. Jerry Rivers was ultimately cut from the game but his intended story was pretty interesting! The idea was that Jerry Rivers would replace the 'Meanwhile…' clips from Wing Commander I which informed the player what was going on in the war beyond the Tiger's Claw. In Wing Commander II, players would

Trailblazer_ Update which features colonisation mechanism have arrived into the game. There were also revealed some further information about new stuff planned to be added into the game in 2025.

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Brewer Corporation's much-anticipated system colonisation module and claim management process is now available.
While colonisation technology has existed for over a millennium, a formal claim and colony establishment process for individuals, communities and minor factions has not previously been available. Analysts consider this a moment of historical significance, as viable colony targets will not be dictated by large corporations or superpower governments.
CEO Madelyn Teague shared her enthusiasm at a gala event in Minerva, covered by Vox Galactica:
"The sheer potential of this process is staggering. I'm delighted that the move towards widespread, community-led expansion was so eagerly endorsed by all three superpowers. System colonisation contacts will be available on starports to facilitate the initial work on a claimed system."
"This is an exciting time, and I can't wait to see how the

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Sharpshooter is back with another smart analysis of a Wing Commander IV mechanic!

This time, they have tackled the Hawk vs. Panther morale mechanic which decides which winning cutscene you receive at the end of the game. Sharpshooter discovered that the morale for Panther is stored at 0x600 and the morale for Hawk is at 0xfe in your WSG (save) file. The character with the higher morale at the end of the game decides the final clip: if it's Panther, you are a flight instructor and if it's Hawk you're an Admiral. If the two values are tied then the game plays the flight instructor ending.

There are a grand total of nine FMV choices that impact Hawk or Panther's morale. Their morale level starts at 5 and goes up or down based only on these choices (and not how you treat them in flight.) Not all of the choices will be played in any one play through of the game and some of them can be ignored if so desired.

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Earlier this month, the science fiction art community was saddened by the passing of artist Chris Moore. Mr. Moore was a famed UK illustrator who painted countless science fiction book and album over his long career. You can find his obituary here. While looking through his artwork, I noticed something familiar:

That's right: his painting "Millennium" was used by Taiwanese publisher Soft-World for the disk labels of the original Wing Commander! It's not clear how the piece made it around the world but it was originally painted in 1988 as a wraparound cover for a reissue of Ben Bova's novel Millennium. It was also used as the cover for the July 1991 issue of Omni, which seems better remembered.

The original painting sold at auction some time ago, which provided an image of both the original painting and Moore's initial layout sketch. The sketch is listed as 12 1/4" x 9 3/8" pencil on tracing paper and

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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 Alien (1979) which influenced everything from the seats in the Rapiers in Wing Commander II to the character of Angel in the movie. 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!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Greetings WingNuts,

We loved Titanic! The film hods up extremely well. It was very easy to write it off as a fad in 1997 but rewatching it today there's no question that its success was well deserved. It's an amazing combination of rewarding character drama set against so much hard work to create a world that even Richard Garriott could learn something. And it certainly didn't seem like it was three hours long! James Cameron's position as king of the Hollywood universe is deservedly still secure today. (A note relevant only to this group is that Titanic opened one week before one of our previous films, An American Werewolf in Paris. And it was much, much more successful!)

The big Wing Commander connection was production designer Peter Lamont who deservedly won an Oscar for recreating the Titanic for the film. One of the reasons the movie works so well is that Cameron goes so very deep with his Titanic

Quote from Freelancer News-Bot

Release of the mod, what is to come next in the future.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Actor Christopher Walken recently made headlines when he revealed in an interview that he did not watch streaming video and didn't even own a cell phone. Well, this November 1995 Computer Game Review interview seems to suggest that's nothing new--here he says he's never even seen a CD-ROM (after shooting two of them)! This was published as a sidebar to an article about Ripper (which is now old enough that we should call it Bossman) but he talks about his work on Privateer 2: The Darkening, noting that he shot his role there for two days. And look how much fun he's having on the cover!

A small bonus from this issue: a previously unarchived version of the Wing Commander CTCG release advertisement with the tagline "Available Everywhere!"; sadly, this was not true!

One on One Exclusive Interview with Walken

“This guy can convey a character in a situation so well, it’s just unmatched.”
-Mark Semeret,

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Eggs are in the news right now and we thought we'd investigate one thing that's driving up the prices. That's right, it's the Dioscurian Ovizard! These adorable twelve-legged lizards show up in "Lords of the Sky" when the cadets first enter the atmosphere of Dioscuri-2. The ovizard eats the egg and is then startled by the Scimitars' thrusters, prompting it to change color and dart away. That's a lot of biology in a few frames!

Here's their home, from the mission briefing earlier in the episode. Note the Easter eggs in this screenshot, references to Forbidden Planet, Alien and Star Trek!

Their name was introduced in Star*Soldier in a classified ad intended to be from a scientist studying on Dioscuri-2:

Free to Good Home: litter of Dioscurian Ovizards. Stealthy, eggchomping space weirdos are allthe rage in Sol!
Contact creid@dioscuri.science

One question remains: what made the nest and the egg in the first

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The Wing Commander movie club has visited space and attempted to scream; results pending! This week, we're going to be taking another space voyage with the 1972 science fiction film Silent Running. You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

Silent Running is an environmental-themed science fiction film that tells the story of a convoy of spaceships carrying a destroyed Earth's last plant life. It was directed by the man responsible for 2001: A Space Odyssey's spectacular special effects, Douglas Trumbull, on a shoestring budget. Silent Running won critics' hearts but didn't perform at the box office; it has become a cult classic today.

Wing Commander's connection to Silent Running is… pretty much nothing. Here's an excerpt from Chris Roberts' original treatment of the Wing Commander movie where he is trying to explain how he intends for the film to feel:

Space combat in this universe follows

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There's a big new update on the progress of WC4 Remastered! The WCRespace team is now well into building out the Masa System with the new ships and gameplay mechanics that the game introduces there. They've got shuttle docking working and DefianceIndustries has introduced his very impressive Tallahassee cruiser. Plus there's additional discussion on targets to get a closed beta going by the end of the year and a tentative initial release next year.

While it’s still possible we’ll hit the February 12, 2026 target, we’re preparing for a slight delay to ensure we have enough time to polish the visuals. So we may be following in the original’s footsteps and delay the release to hit the 30th anniversary year, though possibly not the exact day.

We plan to have a closed beta by sometime close to the 30th anniversary of the original advertised release date (December 8th this year). The feedback from that