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Today we've got a wonderful pile of old reviews from Maxi de Sokar. First up is a WC2 from the Spanish OKPC magazine. They give it a solid 85% and comes with lots of gorgeous screenshots. There's also a Special Operations preview, and although it's short, it packs in tons of great little references that really date game development to the era (1991-1992). Then we shift gears into a PC Review review of WC Academy. The game only gets 5 (out of 10, I suppose), but they had enough to talk about to fill a two page article. We often point out that there was genuine demand for something like this and it filled a niche that was pretty unique back in the day. With all that being said, the same author returns to review Wing Commander Privateer... and he also gave it a 5/10! So maybe that says something more about him than the game. In the end, I guess I'm not mad about Academy being rated on the same

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The TCS Tiger's Claw! To ask a leading question: how many engines does she have? Let's find out!

Here's the line art from Claw Marks which was also what was provided to the outsource company that built the original game's ships. And it seems like that's our answer: like five enormous thruster cones, five engines.

But wait! Here's the resulting sprite sheet that appears in the original Wing Commander. It has not five but SIX thruster cones. Six engines? Seems reasonable, maybe the Tiger's Claw, which is slightly larger, has an additional engine from other Bengal-class ships.

But wait, again! Here's the more detailed sprite used in both the winning and losing cutscenes where the 'Claw either bombards an enemy planet or retreats from the Vega Sector (pictured). Now we've got SEVEN engines!

So that's three conflicting configurations in one game. In 1994, the Bengal was re-imagined for Super Wing Commander.

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Remember: the love arrow always loves you. Hope you have a happy day!

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Earlier this year, Starfleet Engineers, in conjunction with the finest minds in singularity technology of the Romulan Republic, finally made a breakthrough in investigating the incursions from the Galaxy of Great Sales, which occasionally merges with our own to set off the anomaly known as the “Flash Sale.” This allowed Star Trek Online to put together three great sales during the Earth event known as Black Friday, but during the Intra-galactic Winter Holiday Celebrations, we’re putting together five sales! The rarest ships in the galaxy are coming back, and you get another shot at commanding them! From December 22nd at 10am PT to December 25th at 10am PT, the Infinity R&D Packs return, and what’s more, they’re 30% off! This is your chance to get your hands on the original Enterprise, the Discovery D7, and more! .share-footer a { margin: 20px 10px 10px 0; background: url(

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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!

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There's sad news for the Wing Commander family of performers tonight: veteran actor David McCallum passed away earlier today. McCallum, 90, started his career as a leading man on television shows like The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and went on to serve as a jack-of-all-trades who could pop up anywhere and everywhere. His nearly endless resume included a variety of guest appearances on cult genre shows including The Outer Limits, seaQuest DSV and Babylon 5. He joined the Wing Commander universe in 1996 in a short but memorable appearance in Privateer 2: The Darkening. You can find an obituary with a more complete retrospective of his career at Variety.

McCallum appeared in Privateer 2's opening scene as the captain of the doomed freighter Canera. He commands Don Warrington's Helmsman, Nichola Cordey's Second Officer and stuntman Riky Ash's Communications Officer through the game's opening that ends in all of

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Privateer 2 developer Paul Hughes managed to do a little digging and come up with three cool concept posters for the game. These are pretty early works and predate The Darkening becoming a Privateer title, which sometimes means material from this era can be harder to come by. Check out those taglines: "The City of Lights" is kind of odd, but "In the Darkness Lies the Truth" is a really good one. We also get an excellent look at that prototype Heretic that pops up from time to time!

Digging around on some backup drives, I found some old unused concept art for Privateer 2 from Paul Chapman...

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We recently talked about the Prophecy Demo and how it adds several additional missions to the game's official plot. Today I wanted to briefly plug Prophecy's training simulator and the ten missions included there. Over the years we've heard from a number of folks who just never did any of the bar simulators after exploding in the Tiger's Claw original TrainSim. Some people see these missions as just a remedial tutorial for new players, but there are also some interesting gauntlets with their own high score boards. They can even include little bits of lore. Most WC games don't have the luxury of shipboard simulators, so when you're playing through one that does (Wing Commander 3 is another good example), don't pass them up! Here's a video of Ben Horne playing level 7, a rousing carrier defense.

Level 7: Carrier Defense

Author: Colonel Jacob 'Hawk' Manly (typo!)

Overview: Protect the Midway against a

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Maintaining different color schemes for our discussion boards used to involve styling dozens of tiny images for the various buttons and labels, so at some point we picked one scheme that matched our homepage reasonably well and stuck with it. Fortunately, XenForo's user interface components are entirely CSS based, allowing a return to user-selectable color schemes! All we have to provide is a matching CIC logo. Look below for our hi-res logo in the various CIC colors that you are familiar with -- and perhaps a few others! You can find the style selection button near the bottom of any Chat Zone page. These updated logos will also make an appearance in our classic Guides and Ships sections.

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While researching the uniquely named Clydesdale and Free Trader-class transports in Wing Commander II, I happened to make another set of discoveries that I thought I should preserve with an update: no less than thirteen unique ships that are mentioned in Wing Commander II missions but which do not appear in the final game! The majority of these are likely ships that were at one time intended for missions but which, for whatever reason, ended up being cut… though several of them may have been the victim of a bug in Special Operations 1!

Every Wing Commander II mission has a 'cast' which defines which ships can be used in that scenario. Often, mission designers would remove ships from the mission itself but not drop them from the cast. This leaves behind a trace that can tell us the name of the cut ship, who was intended to pilot it and where it was originally to have been used! As with the transports,

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

The first wave of newly colonised star systems has been labelled a 'remarkable success' by observers from across the core systems.
Harlow Nassry of the Federal Times wrote that "the raw potential of these new ports and settlements has inspired migration, with a notable number of displaced refugees from Sol boarding colony ships to start fresh."
Colm Tornquist of the Imperial Herald noted the "considerable opportunity offered by Brewer Corporation's support system for independent system colonisation," remarking that "these fledgling populations are potential candidates to accept the Empire's benevolence."
Meanwhile, Irfan Karim of the Alliance Tribune suggested the "commercial enterprise offered by these system architects is truly impressive. One wonders just how far this new frontier will expand, given the industrial potency of these trailblazing communities."
Brewer Corporation has released

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This is the first 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!

The Video Game History Foundation has launched an impressive new initiative that aims to help out anyone interested in video game history… and you'd better believe that means us! The VGHF's new Digital Archive offers an impressive collection of preserved media that anyone can access without jumping through any hoops! They've got hundreds of issues of gaming magazines like PC Gamer alongside an impressive amount of inside baseball content like promotional CDs and GDC-related publications… and it sounds like that collection is just going to grow. You can read more about the effort in their launch

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Mac recently got a new Blender tool that adds some gritty lighting effects. It adds a real moody stream of light coming down from the overhead hangars fixtures depicted here. And you get to enjoy it with the Ferret, Rapier and Sabre!

I recently bought an addon called Glared from the Blender Market. I've been so in love with it recently that like they say in commercials for Franks Red Hot Sauce: "I put that s*** on everything.

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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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It's a new year, but we're turning back the clock today with a new batch of retro reviews found by Maxi de Sokar. The first is a wonderful five page spread in PC Review for Wing Commander 3. It starts off with a couple pages of "behind the scenes" info before launching into the actual review. Then we have a quick take on Super Wing Commander for the 3DO by Micromania. Finally, there's a six page spread in OKPC about Wing Commander 4. I love how much space was dedicated to these new releases at the time!

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People have been loving the recent glimpse of Mac's massive Concordia fleet, but the scene we've gotten has featured the ship and its many escorts majestically cruising through space. Now it's time for a peek at the action! He's posted this teaser that shows the dreadnought's powerful phase transit cannon warm up, take aim and blast a Fralthra to bits. The encounter is inspired by this famous scene!

This is what all y'all wanted from the Concordia video wasnt it.

So here's the first pass of the Phase Transit Cannon in action.#wingcommander pic.twitter.com/jJb2bDtorK

— Mac's Lore (@MacsLore) October 19, 2023

Way back in 2010 I wondered if perhaps by 2020 it would be appropriate to post the full 250 kilobyte animated gif directly on the front page. Dear readers, I believe that day has come. Brace yourselves:

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Today CMDBob has a stellar model of a Wing Commander 3 Southampton class destroyer. We've seen lots of gorgeous examples over the years, but this one goes in a new direction with a wonderful animated style. Even the weapon effect looks spot on. We love it!

I took an old, low polyish model of the Southampton destroyer I'd made a while back, and gussied it up. Ended up with a nice enough animated-ish render style using 3DS Max's ink and paint materials, along with some other material stuff.

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Michael Pretli has posted some of his old models online, and that includes this really gorgeous TCS Midway. It's not textured, but it does a good job of conveying the ship's massive scale. A few things, such as the turret emplacements, have even been upgraded over the original. You can find his site and a few more up-close shots at his webpage here!

This is one of my earlier models (from the year 2010). Since I always and only modeled for games and mods, low poly modeling is all I ever did, always having performance and engine limitations in mind when creating something, it's automatically guiding my hand. I made this model in my old "truespace 5" software, which was very limited by today's standard, in 2017 I switched over to Blender. But 2010 I was very proud of it, and I think it would be a shame of just getting forgotten in the depths of my modeldumps, so I hereby add it to my portfolio. It's a

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Know your Condors! Red is the search & rescue version, yellow is the refueling ship and grey is the shuttle (which I think didn’t make it to the game).

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NightBall06 is back with a final final drawing of his advanced Hellcat V concept. Unlike the majority of ships that we showcase, this one is a digital sketch (from multiple angles) as opposed to a rotatable 3D rendering. This time he's got a friend lined up to make a full fledged model, so we'll look forward to seeing that next. After that, who knows?

So - that's it... I'm done. It's funny - I only wanted to add a bottom view but ended up reworking almost the whole frame because I felt the overall height to be too high and the wing/main body proportions to be somewhat off. But now it's finished, and quite honestly I'm pretty satisfied with it. It looks sharp and fast (at least to me). What do you think?

And yes - this is finally the end of my drawing time!I already made contact with a friend who's a 3D artist from Volkswagen... He'll help me visualize this baby.