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This is the kind of e-mail you like to find in your inbox: Rémi LEONARD is working on a modernized remake of Strike Commander and there's some wonderful progress to see! Strike Commander was Chris Roberts' major project after the original Wing Commander, a combination of a realistic F-16 simulator and an interactive movie styled after an '80s action flick. It was a great game but one that's often forgotten today.

Hello, I am Rémi LEONARD, currently developing a remake of Strike commander, i wanted to report somes updates in case you are interested.

The project is going well, I have implemented somes of the mission scripts logic (thanks to the mission design documentation of wing commander IV found on CIC. The game is starting to be playable, with the possibility to complete somes missions. I have released a gameplay video of the first mission on my youtube channel.

Strike commander Remake Gameplay First

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Vagabond says that we have better things to do than practice our salutes... but we don't have better things to do than collect salutes! We went through the games to pick out as many salutes as we could find--and they make great reaction images online! Can you find any of the ones we missed? Let us know and we'll add them to the collection!

Wing Commander I & II

In Wing Commander I you and Colonel Halcyon salute at medal ceremonies and funerals. Wing Commander II just has the wide shot at funerals.

Wing Commander III

WC3 has plenty of salutes, typically when characters are arriving or leaving the Victory.

... Blair also salutes in all 39 briefing videos, too. Eisen usually does as well, athough if he's annoyed he makes a point of not doing it. Blair salutes Tolwyn throughout the game but Tolwyn only retruns the salute once, before the Behemoth is destroyed. And then Rollins joins in only in the last

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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 Planet of the Apes (1968) which was a reference for the Kilrathi costumes made for Wing Commander III. 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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After Action Report: Run Silent, Run Deep

Greetings WingNuts,

We're back from the depths of viewing Run Silent, Run Deep and it was a solid experience! Despite the age and the subject matter, it was a taut film loaded with compelling character relationships and a satisfying story. And while everyone is happy that it's (probably) the last submarine movie of the series we didn't have any real complaints about the film itself! One thing it has over Wing Commander is that it gives all of this room to breathe instead of needing to devote much of its run time to the 'Top Gun' part of the story.

Now let's talk about how it is Wing Commander! When we first started looking at the reference to "Silent Running" in the original Wing Commander movie treatment I suspected that there was an additional mistake: that Chris Roberts was not thinking of Run Silent, Run Deep but the somewhat more prestigious Enemy Below.

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The WCRespace team has an exciting new feature to show off: volumetric nebulae for WC4 Remastered! In other words, the pink screen filter of decades past has been replaced by swirling fog that slowly reveals objects out in the distance as you approach. There have also been enhancements to the backgrounds so that starfields in the distance also match this environmental art. Check out the full article on what's new here.

A nebula was just a palette switch in ’96, even by ’99 Freespace 2 had made WC4’s nebulae look incredibly dated.

As always we aren’t polishing before moving on so that we can get the complete game up and running ASAP, but we thought you might like a glimpse at the volumetric fog in its current state. I think it’s already a huge improvement, and the simplicity of the effect doesn’t feel out of place as a replacement for the old palette change.

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We've got a new poll, and it's a perfect one for 2025! The wonderful calendar included with The Kilrathi Saga was designed to sync up with 1997 and 2673, then the upcoming new year as well as the year the just-released WC4 takes place. It also works for 2025! LOAF recently rescanned the calendar as a very high quality PDF, which you can get here: 220 archival quality PDF or 9 meg compressed PDF. Each month gets a special piece of concept art. The new poll asks which one you like best, and they're all represented on the back cover for quick reference!

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Our annual new year's poll concluded with pretty positive results! We've already seen some fantastic new releases so far this year, including both Team Fat and George Oldziey audio albums. And there is surely more in store as the year unfolds!

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

An unusual and turbulent situation has arisen for residents of the station Lantern Light in the Lalande 25224 system. The architect, CMDR Lavelain, commissioned the station nearby a neutron star. However, the station was inadvertently deployed deep within the star's gravitational well. As a result, the station's movement and rotational speeds far exceed safe limits – time should be taken for caution when attempting docking.
Brewer Corporation has received numerous requests for support from the station's residents and is mobilising to correct the station's violent and turbulent movement. The operation is currently undergoing careful planning to ensure the orbit is not destabilized further into catastrophe, and is expected to take several weeks to accomplish.

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The Wing Commander movie club has returned from that horrible Planet of the Apes with a shocking revelation. But we won't spoil that, so instead we'll just prepare for next week's fantastic space outing: we'll be watching The Last Starfighter (1984). You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

The Last Starfighter is a movie that Wing Commander fans are likely to know because it tells a favorite fantasy: a man becomes especially good at a space arcade game which turns out to have been a recruiting device for real space war! That storyline has been referenced ad nauseam in pop culture in the decades since so much so that you probably know the story even if you've never seen the movie itself… a bit like Citizen Kane for nerds. And there's lots to appreciate even if the final film doesn't quite come together like Planet of the Apes, from one of the earliest uses of CG for VFX to a very

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In November, GOG announced something called the "GOG Preservation Program" which aims to make sure the site's most popular offerings are constantly updated to remain available on ever-changing modern operating systems. This week they've added both Wing Commander 1 + 2 and Privateer 2: The Darkening to the program.

As promised, another wave of classics joins the GOG Preservation Program!

To preserve gaming history, we’re adding horror, action, and strategy icons from legendary franchises—ensuring they remain playable in their best versions and yours to keep forever.

Let’s welcome...

Silent Hill 4: The Room – being the only PC version with previously missing content restored.

F.E.A.R. Platinum – honoring Monolith’s legacy by ensuring this legendary FPS horror lives forever.

And alongside them, even more masterpieces:

Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption
Tomb Raider: Anniversary, Legend, Underworld
Alone in the

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We have a small treasure for you today! We've acquired a set of storyboards used to develop the Wing Commander Academy intro sequence. This covers the original animation created for the intro. Like many cartoons of the era, Academy's intro was a combination of high quality bespoke animation mixed with a series of quick clips from the show. These storyboards even include several intended shots that didn't make in into the final version! Let's take a look...

These first three pages do not appear in the final version (although the transport shot is similar to one we will see later). It would've been interesting to see Thrakhath's dreadnaught so early, too!

It's not clear what "photo ID inserts" would've been but we're guessing it would've been images of the real Mark Hamill, Tom Wilson and Malcolm McDowell.

You can find another breakdown of the Academy intro which shows the origin of the reused clips here.

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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 The Last Starfighter (1984) which inspired the Raptor fighter in the original Wing Commander. 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,

Maybe I'm biased because I love Planet of the Apes but we loved Planet of the Apes! It's a fantastic film: the script (by the great Rod Serling!) is a vast improvement on the original novel, adding cutting then (and sadly now)-current social commentary that at no time feels like a weight. The cast is amazing, the cinematography is still stunning and the ape costumes that the entire thing hinges on are pulled off perfectly.

To compare to Wing Commander III we thought we'd put together a quick rogue gallery showing all the Kilrathi costumes from the game as clearly as possible that you can compare to the ape costumes. You can find some great behind the scenes photos of the workshop that built the Kilrathi here.

There are three basic types of apes in Planet of the Apes: chimpanzees, orangutangs and gorillas. This lets the costumes start to distinguish between different characters pretty

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We're improving the Warrior King experience! If you familiar, back in 1996 the USA Network had a totally unexpected cartoon crossover: a newly created character, the Warrior King, traveled through an ongoing story across all four of their action-oriented kids shows: Street Fighter, Savage Dragon, Mortal Kombat and finally Wing Commander Academy. Over the years, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat and Wing Commander have all been released on home video... but Savage Dragon has not.

Years ago, I tracked down an off-air dub and digitized it so we would be able to watch the complete story. Then came Peacock, which offered Savage Dragon (and Wing Commander Academy) for streaming. Sadly, that was short lived and Savage Dragon isn't online for commercial streaming anymore. Luckily, I recorded the crossover episode from Peacock so we now have a significantly cleaner copy! Download it here (477M).

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If you will indulge me for just a moment I have some great personal news to share. This past October, my mom had a stroke during surgery and she has been in one hospital or another ever since… until now! She has made an amazing, tough fought recovery and has finally returned home from rehab. I'm so happy about this and in honor of the past six months of hospitals I thought it might be therapeutic to take a closer look at a fictional one: the famous Crius hospital from Privateer 2: The Darkening!

Treatment Background

A cryopod containing Vell Ricaud II, a male humanoid, was found in the wreckage of the Canera in Mendra City. His two decade-old custom-built Shernikov Medical Equipment Cryo Nine Series pod saved his life and limited his physical injuries, leaving him the only survivor of the crash. The damage to the pod started the thaw cycle from his deep cryonic sleep. Rescuers brought Ricaud to Astravin

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Street Fighter: The Animated Series is coming to BluRay! This is of interest to Wing Commander fans because the set will include the first part of the USA Network 'Warrior King' crossover. The episode, unsurprisingly titled "The Warrior King", includes the short prelude sequence that shows the beginning of the story that stretches across the four shows (the others being Savage Dragon, Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm and Wing Commander Academy).

The new release will include a variety of extras including artwork, storyboards and commentary tracks from fighting game experts. The set is being put out by Diskotek, a boutique physical media publishing company that has been making a name for itself lately with high quality, feature-laden releases of esoteric properties. Maybe they could put out Wing Commander Academy someday! The set is due May 27th for an MSRP of $39.95.

Street Fighter: The Animated

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The Wing Commander movie club has taken the Starcar home from Rylos. But we're already planning to head back to space: this week we're going to be watching Battlestar Galactica (1978)! You likely know Battlestar Galactica either as a television show made immediately in the wake of Star Wars' successs or as the edgier, longer-running 2000s TV series. But it was also a movie! The original 1978 pilot film was so expensive that Universal cut a theatrical version which was a notable success in a variety of markets--even in the US after the show had aired on TV! You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

It might be easier to list everything Wing Commander didn't borrow from Battlestar Galactica. Chris Roberts and the original development team were big fans of the show and knowing both IPs it quickly becomes aparent that there was a LOT of inspiration particularly for the first two Wing

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November 16, 1996: eager young wingnuts turned on the USA Network to watch the latest episode of Wing Commander Academy, typically the third of four action shows aired in a block. But on this particular Saturday what we found was... Mortal Kombat? Had Wing Commander Academy been cancelled, pulled early? No, it turned out the episode was airing a half hour later. But it was a pretty crazy one, with Michael Dorn playing a... space viking?

Thus we were introduced to the Warrior King saga, an entirely insane (and unpromoted) cartoon crossover between four licensed IPs: Street Fighter, Savage Dragon, Mortal Kombat and Wing Commander Academy. The four shows went together to tell the story of the Warrior King, the aforementioned space viking, as he sought a magic orb that would restore his destroyed homeworld. Each show followed the rules of its universe, and the familiar characters and settings never

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Imperial socialites were treated to a tour of Gutamaya's newest ship, the Imperial Corsair, at an extravagant launch on Capitol in Achenar.
Gutamaya's event was attended by over a thousand prominent engineers, senators, press members and other notable individuals. Princess Aisling Duval and her cousin, Lucretia Roche-Duval, were the guests of honour.
Positive reviews of the Imperial Corsair's public unveiling have been published in several outlets across the Empire already.
"The Corsair's specifications showed a promising mix of straight-line speed and large cargo capacity, making it ideal for traders who value efficient travel times," said Eugine Varrik of the Imperial Herald. "The sleek design employs Gutamaya's famous curves – attendees were queueing up with their blinks to take the perfect selfie."
"What impressed me was the flexibility of the Corsair's internal components," said Miyu

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AllTinker has a brand new version of Originator... and another one, and another one! We've been blessed with three updates to Originator that make the already-wonderful tool even better. The full notes are below but these updates fix everything from palette issues with Privateer 2 and Strike Commander assets to bugs that were preventing Armada, Wing Commander III and IV from displaying all of their content. If you aren't familiar with Originator, it's an incredible utility for taking apart almost every Wing Commander game. It's something I've found myself using every single day and I'm so grateful for all the work AllTinker has put into it. You can download the tool, learn more and follow development on the forums.

Version 0.3.07 (2025-03-28)

• Improved XTRE support (WC3/4); 1hash-clash name tables are processed properly now.
• Privateer 2 palette logic improved. Hopefully all palettes are now resolving

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The team at GOG recently announced that Wing Commander I & II and Privateer 2 would be joining their GOG Preservation Program. Now they've issued updated versions of both releases which gives us a look at what this actually means!

The answer seems to be 'not a lot, but not nothing'. The patch notes are reprinted below. All of the "verified" and "validated" items just mean they checked to see if the game still loads, so those aren't particularly interesting (or even accurate in the case of Privateer 2, which suffers fro crippling slowdown issues in space). But there are a couple of gems in here, including the addition of the French version of Privateer 2 the re-enabling of Wing Commander I's transfer utilities and Wing Commander II's installer options.

Privateer 2: The Darkening:

Added French localization.
Validated stability.
Verified compatibility with Windows 10 and 11.
Verified Cloud Saves support.

Wing