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You have to work pretty hard not to love Return of the Jedi… and frankly, we're not willing to do that much work; it was great! This week, we're back to World War II with Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970). Tora! Tora! Tora! is a spectacular retelling of the attack on Pearl Harbor that brought the United States into World War II. The movie's production is as much an epilogue to the story as it is a telling of it: the film is a massive international co-production divided between American and Japanese teams with directors from both countries filming their parts of the story. You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

Chris Roberts discussed Tora! Tora! Tora! as an inspiration for the Wing Commander movie frequently during interviews. He repeatedly described Wing Commander as an attempt to update Tora! Tora! Tora! for a science fiction setting.

“For me, it's sort of like a classic, nautical World War

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Want to challenge one of Kilrah's finest? Here's a guide to where you can find the various Kilrathi aces in the first three Wing Commander games. Wing Commander I and the 3DO port of III both have a system where aces will reappear if you miss them... up to seven times in some cases! Wing Commander II and III, on the other hand, only give you one shot at each. One neat situation is that if you let all the aces survive in the original Wing Commander they can all appear in the same final mission in Hell's Kitchen!

Wing Commander

Bhurak "Starkiller" nar Caxki (Salthi)

• McAuliffe 3
• Gateway 3
• Hell's Kitchen 2
• Hell's Kitchen 4

Dakhath "Deathstroke" nar Sihkag (Dralthi)

• Gimle 3
• Cheng-Du 2
• Rostov 1
• Hubble's Star 1
• Venice 3
• Hell's Kitchen 3
• Hell's Kitchen 4

Khajja "Machine" nar Ja'targk, aka "The Fang" (Krant)

• Brimstone 3
• Rostov 3
• Venice 1
• Hell's Kitchen 1
• Hell's Kitchen 4

Baktosh "Redclaw" nar Kiranka (Jalthi)

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

We received an e-mail with a question we thought was worth investigating: "I've been reading about Ultima VII: The Lost Vale and it got me thinking: were there any Wing Commander expansion disks in the works that didn't make it out? The short answer is yes, two Wing Commander addons were solicited in some capacity by Origin but very little is known beyond that. They've both been long the subject of rumor and speculation and so we thought we'd check the archives and at least prove they were technically announced!

Wing Commander II: Special Operations 3

In late 1991, Origin held a conference on CompuServe with Ellen Guon and Siobhan Beeman talking about the imminent release of Wing Commander II. One of the surprising things mentioned was that there would be THREE Special Operations disks. "Special Operations 3" was never listed for preorder and we have found very little mention of the concept over the

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Two significant trading blocs have emerged in Alliance territory following the termination of the Strategic Defence Pact.
Last week, Sirius Corporation was ordered by the Alliance Assembly to reduce its involvement in Allied military infrastructure and logistics. The move, labelled 'fascinatingly short-sighted' by Sirius Corp CEO Li Yong-Rui, has triggered an economic rush from Allied corporations to grab the lucrative contracts issued as a result.
The two trading blocs have somewhat predictably formed around the two leading voices in the Alliance Assembly – Edmund Mahon and Nakato Kaine.
This marks the latest in a growing series of confrontations between the galaxy's major Powers. In LP 855-34, a contested mining system, Felicia Winters initially secured control by the end of the first week of conflict. However, her success provoked an immediate and forceful response from Yuri Grom's

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Back in April 1999, a company called Showscan announced that it was developing a Wing Commander motion simulator "ride film" under license from Digital Anvil. Unfortunately, the film never materialized and no one has ever come forward to tell the story behind it… though we do know that it was in active development for months! You can see the original press release that we reported twenty six years ago here.

I routinely trawl places like LinkedIn and the Internet Archive to see if I can find anything from the project (which we do know was in active development for at least four months and possibly for as long as a year before Showscan went into administration). I haven't found anything from Showscan directly but I did recently come across a pretty fun bit of ephemera: a news report from the July 1999 issue of GamePro covering the Showscan announcement that features a cartoon of a roller coaster being

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

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 Tora! Tora! Tora! which informed Chris Roberts' vision for the Wing Commander movie… and which was essentially the first draft of Action Stations! 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,

The Wing Commander movie club certainly enjoyed Return of the Jedi! It was great to see the original version (with the original songs!) again after so many years and it's just a tremendously fun, well made movie that continues to impact pretty much every space opera to this day in some way. There's always an argument that Empire Strikes Back is the 'smart' Star Wars sequel and that Return of the Jedi is somehow tainted because it feels more commercial… and it's hard to maintain that when you're actually watching the movie. It's a stunning piece of work that has as much artistry and thought as anything else in the Star Wars saga and I think it's particularly telling that Chris Roberts seems to come down on the Return of the Jedi side.

As we noted in the introduction post, Chris Roberts has credited the space battles in Return of the Jedi as inspiring combat in both the original Wing

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Today we're taking a new look at some unusual 3DO magazine advertisements from Electronic Arts. These 'high concept' pieces ran in magazines in the UK in the first half of 1995 and they are... something. But underneath that something there are some interesting Wing Commander stories! This one, "Moist Mullet," is especially interesting because it seems to be the only source of an unusual 'bullshot' of a Super Wing Commander Cockpit which doesn't match anything in the game (aside from the Rapiers, which are renderings from the intro!).

The second one, "EA Lard," doesn't include any Wing Commander but we're including it for posterity.

The third one features Wing Commander III, showing a Hellcat V cockpit from the PC version...

... which is likely why it got this running change, swapping the Hellcat cockpit for the Emperor!

Electronic Arts also used the 'EA Lard' version to present their physical 3DO catalog

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Against all odds, we enjoyed Tora! Tora! Tora! Which makes the score Wing Commander movie club one, war movies fifty. This week we've voted to travel back to the future with Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979). ST:tMP is a sometimes-misunderstood masterpiece that we've found has improved greatly with age… and we're eager to see if that remains the case today! You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture is full of spectacular effects and incredible spaceships… but the connection to Wing Commander is the music. Back when Chris Roberts was developing the original Wing Commander he told composer George Sanger (The Fatman) that he wanted the game to have an epic score similar to Jerry Goldsmith's work on Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Here it is mentioned in a recent recent interview with The Fatman!

We had the creative brief that was that we should do something

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Archive sites have recently preserved a new swath of gaming magazines. I found a pretty interesting general Origin preview in this issue of Computer Games Strategy Plus (February 1993)... but as I went to post about it, I got to thinking: just how much of this issue is covering games from Origin? The answer surprised me!

The issue's cover story is a preview of Origin's Pacific Strike, a game that ended up not having the simplest birth. It's all sunlight here, though, as the game promises to be a followup to Strike Commander that actually lets you drool over the textured aircraft in longer gunnery-based dogfights.

This is the preview itself which covers Origin's entire lineup at the time. Some of these projects, like Bioforge and Wings of Glory, would end up being over a year away! The fact that they intended to have a disk-based SKU for Bioforge is itself fascinating but Wing Commander fans will be most

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Observers across the core systems are reporting an increase in antagonistic activity between Power supporters, with skirmishes flaring in multiple regions.
In the aftermath of the Thargoid war, political attention has turned inward as human factions seek to reassert dominance across the bubble. Recent clashes, including the conflict between Vice President Jerome Archer and Admiral Denton Patreus, followed by competing mining operations in LP 855-34 between Felicia Winters and Yuri Grom, have prompted concerns from analysts monitoring political dynamics.
A source within the Pilots Federation stated: "What we're seeing is a shift in posture. Powers that once acted defensively to protect influence are now aggressively expanding, testing the limits of rival claims."
Military analysts believe that while current flashpoints remain contained to power struggles between individual leaders, the pattern

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

We recently posted a guide to where to find all of the 'named' Kilrathi aces across the first three Wing Commander games. Once it was published I was immediately inspired to expand the guide to include all of the 'Drakhai' pilots that appear in the first two games. Drakhai are the Kilrathi Imperial Guards, ace pilots that must have killed eight Confederation ships in order to receive the assignment. The Drakhai are introduced in Secret Missions 2 (replacing the named aces for that campaign) and then appear throughout Wing Commander II and its addons. In Wing Commander II they have distinct pilot profiles but they aren't labeled as Drakhai on your VDU–making it more difficult to know where to find them all!

Secret Missions 2

Firekka System Mission 1 Alpha Wing

• 1 Gratha (Unknown, wave one)
• 1 Krant (Unknown, wave two)

Firekka System Mission 2 Kappa Wing

• 1 Dralthi (Between Tiger's Claw and Nav 1)
• 5 Jalthi (Nav

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

There have been exciting developments with Mash's enhancement patch! For starters, refinement continues with the original program. There's a new joystick setup utility, improved visual elements and a variety of bugfixes which have been implemented. Even bigger news is there is also a WC4 enhancement patch! Similar to the WC3 version, the game can now be played in high resolution and the cutscenes can be upgraded to high quality. There is also support for playing in a window and similar quality of life improvements. Give it a try and let Mash know what you think at the CIC Forums!

The main new feature is a controller setup utility which you can access in-game by pressing Alt+J on the Victory, via the Main Terminal under controls\joystick calibration or during space flight using the Alt+O menu\calibrate. This is the visual part of a general controller overhaul replacing the old Multimedia Joystick

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Here's a neat discovery courtesy of a brief memory someone mentioned on BlueSky. A documentary where Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven played Wing Commander? It sounded too specific not to be real and sure enough, a quick search revealed that the pair appeared in the second episode ("To The Brink of Eternity") of a 1992 British documentary called Pandora's Box.

The documentary itself is about much heavier things than Wing Commander and Pournelle and Niven are appearing not as science fiction authors but because of their involvement in proposing the Strategic Defense Initiative (aka "Star Wars") to the Reagan administration. But as part of their interview, the film crew captured Pournelle very eagerly playing Wing Commander to use as coverage. Here's that clip:

It's worth noting that based on the ship flown (Rapier), the skybox objects (red nebula, blue planet) and the progression of enemy ships (a Gratha

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

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 Star Trek: The Motion Picture which inspired the music 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,

Epic war movies haven't fared great with the Wing Commander movie club so far; a lot of classic air combat movies have come off as either extremely slow (The Dambusters, Battle of Britain) or kind of silly (Midway). Surprisingly, Tora! Tora! Tora! didn't share that fate. It's an incredibly literal telling of Pearl Harbor that abandons any pretense of character drama but it still reads as an impressive spectacle and a story that feels worth telling. The fact that it was so significantly a Japanese and American co-production also makes the film itself an interesting part of the event itself!

The Wing Commander movie references Tora! Tora! Tora! Immediately as it starts, basing the Pegasus attack on the Pearl Harbor bombing. Here's how some of the angles of the attack compare. The movie was actually intended to reference Pearl Harbor even more by opening with a 'fake out' that would've

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

CountvonSchnaps has a whole fleet for you! They've continued their wonderful redesigns of classic Wing Commander ships with a trio of designs from the original game, the Scimitar, Hornet and the Tiger's Claw herself! These are so well done... a true artist's work! You can find more of their redesigns here.

CF-105 Scimitar (DeviantArt)

The second redesign of a Wing Commander II fighter; the CF105 Scimitar medium fighter a commission for Shoguneagle

Again great fun to redesign it making it feel, in my opinion, more modern.

The Scimitar medium fighter was manufactured by Origin Aerospace and is a successful design that was in service with various factions during the span of 140 years.

Armed with dual mass drivers and up to 5 missiles the ship packed a powerful punch when used by a capable pilot.

F-36 Hornet (DeviantArt)

A commission for Shoguneagle showcasing the Hornet light fighter. Small and nimble the

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

We love discounts on Wing Commander almost as much as we love diving into peculiar minutiae, so GOG has us covered on both fronts this weekend with their Loot Drop Promo. I can think of plenty of games with loot from classics like Diablo to modern looter shooters like Destiny or The Division. I can't quite figure how Wing Commander quite fits into that mould, but the good folks at GOG decided to included Wing Commanders Prophecy, Armada and Academy. Armada Proving Grounds does include in-flight loot pickups you can grab, but that's kind of a deep cut! In any case, grab these three at 59% off by Monday!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

There's great news coming out of the Wing Commander movie club's watch of Star Trek: The Motion Picture: it turns out the human adventure is only beginning! This week, we're going back to World War II for another sort of human adventure: Hell in the Pacific (1968) is less of another epic war story and more of a psychological duel. It has only two characters and very little dialogue; more Enemy Mine than Return of the Jedi! You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

Hell in the Pacific is included in our series because of a quote from the Wing Commander movie's visual effects supervisor Chris Brown which was included in an August 1998 preview of the film in SFX magazine. Wing Commander certainly has gun-with-engine Rapiers and tracer bullets in space… but it's not totally clear from what I've read that those are specific to Hell in the Pacific. I guess we'll find out!

The classic war movie

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

'Special advisor' Seo Jin-ae has taken a hiatus from her duties, according to a joint statement released by Aegis.
Seo has worked with the Aegis initiative since November 3308, providing insight into Thargoid communications thanks to a prototype cortical implant. This implant, inserted while Seo was a captive test subject for the clandestine Project Seraph, allows her to 'hear' the Thargoid hive mind.
The Aegis statement reads as follows:
"Seo Jin-ae has served Aegis faithfully, providing vital intelligence on Thargoid tactics at considerable physical and mental cost. Following several months of recuperation since a medical emergency last October, Seo has chosen to leave the Aegis facility in Duamta. We wish her all the best and look forward to her safe return."
Attached was a message from Seo:
"After Titan Cocijo exploded in Sol, I had my best night's sleep in years. No sounds in my head to