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My teenaged self would never have believed this but piracy is one of the major forces in preserving our history! Case in point: these screenshots compare two copies of the Wing Commander movie. The first is the commercially available bluray and the second is taken from a recording of the movie as it aired on TV with a Farsi dub! Seeing Wing Commander in another language is pretty cool but there's also something more exciting here: compare the top and the bottom of the two pictures. While the dubbed TV copy is much lower quality it's also clearly taken from an "open matte" version of the film not often seen. As a result, you get to see the entire frame without the 'black bars'.

We'll be on the lookout for more unusual versions of the movie wherever we can find them! You can download the full video here.

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Bioforge, one of Origin's most eclectic games, recently celebrated its 30th anniversary. Billed as the second of Origin's "interactive movie" products, Bioforge was less Wing Commander III and more a totally fresh take that could have modernized the classic Sierra-style adventure game. (It does share an odd central plot with Privateer 2: the search for your forgotten identity… and Bioforge interestingly plays like a lot of the early Darkening pitches read!) Thanks to GOG, Bioforge is still available and playable today. There's even a dedicated fanbase today with one brilliant person hard at work on "OpenBioForge" which aims to modernize the game's framework. Here's an new anniversary trailer showing off some of that work:

So what's the Wing Commander angle? It's a small thing but interesting: Bioforge and Super Wing Commander share a shuttle! The Bioforge team created a "Mondite Gunship" which is used

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Wing Commander Academy storyboard artist Tim Eldred is a true old school anime fan; in fact, his spectacular Art Vault website maintains a continually updated, world class section on the anime that inspired him. His familiarity with shows like Space Battleship Yamato and VOTOMS was a clear influence on the board work he did on Academy.

When he was designing the character sheets for the Tiger's Claw deck crew (first seen in The Most Delicate Instrument) he included a little Easter egg intended primarily for the shows' Japanese animators but too small to really appear on the show: a tattoo of Captain Harlock's distinct skull emblem on one of the crewman's forearms. Well, those animators took the nod seriously and you can ever-so-briefly pause the show to find the tattoo!

Space Pirate Captain Harlock is a 1978 anime series about the pirate crew of a starship defending Earth from an alien invasion from

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

We have some extremely sad news to report today: per the Ex Origin Facebook group, veteran Wing Commander developer Kirk Winterrowd passed away suddenly this past weekend. Our hearts go out to his friends and family. If you'd like to share anything about him for posterity we would be happy to post any messages in a future update. By all accounts, he was both a talented game developer and a decent human being and we would like to take some time to celebrate his contributions to the Wing Commander universe. As we have after other tragic losses we hope that highlighting some of what he created–some of what we've enjoyed for decades now even if we didn't know it!–we will help keep his memory alive forever.

Like many people who attended 'Origin university', Mr. Winterrowd started in quality assurance and quickly proved how capable he was in a range of roles including production manager, music composer and

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 – 1,461 systems
Rank 2: Aisling Duval - 1,436 systems
Rank 3: Arissa Lavigny-Duval – 1,366 systems
Rank 4: Yuri Grom – 1,041 systems
Rank 5: Li Yong-Rui – 860 systems
The largest increase in system influence belonged to Li Yong-Rui who can claim an additional 59 systems as supporters.
Vox Galactica will provide another update on the state of the powers next month.

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Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Game over, man! Aliens remains a nearly perfect movie, the Wing Commander movie club had a great time revisiting it. This week we're going in a slightly different direction but one with plenty of action: we will be watching Die Hard 2 (1990)! You know, the Die Hard everyone forgets about. Die Hard 2 was the first sequel to the 1988 classic. It takes Bruce Willis' John McClane to the east coast where he battles terrorists at a Baltimore airport. You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

The Wing Commander connection here is slight but pretty interesting: the original art list for Wing Commander Privateer references Die Hard 2 as the inspiration for Commodore Reismann, the officer Admiral Terrell puts in charge of ambushing the Steltek drone. Here's his original, surprisingly lengthy character description (note that Tolnidan became Gemini):

Commodore Hans Reismann: Commodore Reismann has

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Migrants are flocking from the core systems to begin new lives in the thousands of recently established colonies.
A wave of independent colonisation efforts over the past few months have increased human territory considerably. While many of these star systems have been classified as 'waypoints', with singular docking outposts for journeys between systems with wider infrastructure, a significant number have been expanded with multiple starports and settlements.
It is these that billions of people are now heading towards in the hope of starting fresh. Workers and their families are starting to arrive in large numbers, bringing with them a major boost to economic output.
With the influx of population, the new colonies will be more capable of producing their own colonisation-related commodities, with economies now driven by linking installations and markets placed throughout the system. Analysts

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

I'm always fascinated to find brief glimpses of Wing Commander that aired on TV and I thought of another vector for them: 3DO advertisements! So I spent some time digging through material archived by 3DO fans to find a few glimpses of Super Wing Commander and Wing Commander III that aired on national TV.

First is a 1994 advertisement called "Stop Playing with Toys" which includes a brief clip of Super Wing Commander! Watch carefully to see part of the Scimitar takeoff sequence. Fun fact: both of the 'toys' thrown away at the start, an SNES and a Genesis with Sega CD attached, also have excellent Wing Commander ports.

Then we have a 1995 advertisement called "Welcome to the REAL World" which incudes a brief clip of gameplay from Wing Commander III. The available copy is pretty low resolution but it's clearly the player flying a Hellcat and destroying a Dralthi.

Super Wing Commander also appears in this

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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 Die Hard 2 (1990) which informed a very minor character in Privateer. 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,

The Wing Commander movie club is pretty universal in this one: Aliens is as close to a perfect movie as you can make! We greatly enjoyed revisiting it last week and it's such a good film that we could probably do it again soon.

In the treatment for the Wing Commander movie, Chris Roberts described it as being like Alien in that the character drama emerges from the fact that everyone is totally cut off from reasonable rescue or help. And he was right, both movies certainly do chase that goal… although the isolation you feel in Aliens is much more effectively delivered. Of course, Aliens' greater legacy to Wing Commander and across most science fiction was the colonial marines. James Cameron's mixing of future space warfare with Vietnam-styled American soldiers feels like a lightning bolt… they would be aped endlessly including in Wing Commander III, IV and Prophecy.

Here are the two

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Here's a first: a bit of Wing Commander-adjacent history reported by my wife! She came across a cover story about Freddie Prinze Jr. from the February 2000 issue of Seventeen on an Instagram account called imstuckin.1999 which provides a bit of a look at how he was marketed to teenage girls around the time of the Wing Commander movie! It even quotes Matthew Lillard and notes that they became friends on set in Luxembourg. And great news for collectors: the magazine had two different Freddie Prinze Jr. covers!

During the release of Wing Commander I remember working closely with the "fan girls" running news sites like ours but for Freddie Prinze Jr. and Matthew Lillard… and frankly, it was a lot more interesting way to interact with people than bickering with other gamers! And while we're at it, here's something else to preserve for posterity that doesn't really fit anywhere: a Freddie Prinze Jr. gag

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The physical copies of Origin composer George Oldziey's new Wing Commander album are now being mass produced, so Mr. Oldziey has shared a few samples of what to expect. He's posted the finalized graphics files for both the CD and vinyl album art. There's also sample audio copies of the vinyl album so you can get a taste of what it will sound like in long form! Backers can log in to the project's Kickstarter updates for the links.

Greetings all, and thank you for your amazing patience. Both the CD and vinyl products are (finally) in production as we speak. In the meantime I want to share all the cover art as well as the vinyl audio files for you to check out. The vinyl audio is obviously divided into two long audio files which will give you the opportunity to listen to the tracks in sequence without having to click on individual files. One note about the side A file; it starts with a 60 second

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Warning: This update contains spoilers for the ending of Privateer 2: The Darkening.

As is often the case, the topic several nights ago on Discord turned to Privateer 2. While talking about the game's conclusion, Chris Reid thought to ask: is there any significance to the 'Arris' in his fake name?

To back up: the reveal close to the end of Privateer 2 is that you are not, in fact, Lev Arris but Vell Ricaud II, the long lost first son of the founder of Ricaud Interplanetary. The head of the Kindred, "Kronos", is really your twin brother Sar Ricaud. The booth system will eventually tell you that Ricaud Interplanetary is "the largest industrial concern in the Tri-System" and there are various small hints that Sar has turned it into the Kindred. When you decode the memory solid later in the game the report says that "also the names Larn Regis and Vell Ricaud occur over 150 times, as well as the name Ricaud

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

The Wing Commander movie club has put their seats up and their tray tables in the upright position following the conclusion of Die Hard 2. Next week, we're going a little further back in the past… to 1933 for the original King Kong! King Kong is a massively important film for how it defined the kind of blockbuster movies whose evolution continues to this day… and it's always fun to watch a giant ape wreck things. You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

The direct connection to Wing Commander this time around is a fun one: the island that Blair, Grunt and Kulrag crash land on in Wing Commander Academy's Word of Honor is based on the island where Kong is discovered in the original movie (later named Skull Island). USA originally aired a 'Kids Club' bumper with the series' background artists explaining this; unfortunately, it has been lost to time!

There's also a big connection to Chris

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Last month, we held a special Saturday morning cartoon watch party in #WingNut where we watched the entire 'Warrior King' crossover saga that included Wing Commander Academy. Well, we had so much fun that we've decided to do it again! It's not possible to find anything quite as epic as the Warrior King saga so instead we've pulled together a collection of other Saturday morning shows that reference Wing Commander in some way! Here's the lineup:

Doug - Doug's Lost Weekend (1992, s2e25): This early episode of Doug (pre-Disney's Doug) will be extremely relatable to any Wing Commander fan: Doug becomes addicted to a space sim that is full of nods to the original Wing Commander!

Gridman the Hyper Agent - A Lonely Hacker (1993, s1e17): Gridman is a Japanese "tokusatsu" superhero show similar to the ones used as the basis for shows like Power Rangers in the United States. Watch carefully for the slightest of

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Having trouble reading PALCOMM.S and COMMUNIC.S37 in WC2? Not anymore! AllTinker has released a new bug fix update to Originator. Other recent updates have improved compatibility with WC3/4, Armada, Privateer 2 and even OriginFX and Strike Commander. If you wanted to peer into the code that makes up WC games, this is the app to get. Download the latest version here.

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I was leafing through False Colors the other day and happened to notice an unusual reference I wanted to explore a litle further. This paragraph is from when the Landreich fleet is assembling to recover the Karga and it introduces two of the ship captains thusly:

Diaz would be working closely with the captains of the tender Sindri and the huge factory ship Andrew Carnegie, a Mutt-and-Jeff pair whose names were Dickerson and Lake—Bondarevsky still wasn't entirely sure which one was which. Their commands, though non-combatants, would have the pivotal part in the Goliath Project, the tender serving as a deep-space repair platform for the supercarrier while the mammoth Andrew Carnegie, designed for semi-automated minerals extraction and fabrication work on unsettled frontier worlds, had been pressed into service to manufacture whatever the Kilrathi derelict might be lacking right on the spot.

Mutt-and-Jeff

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Tensions between Yuri Grom and Felicia Winters have erupted into open conflict around the mining system of LP 855-34. The system's platinum rush, triggered by local construction demands, has drawn forces from both Powers. Yuri Grom's representative accused Federal factions of "cornering the market" unfairly, urging loyal supporters to counteract the Federation's aggressive tactics. Combat Zones have appeared throughout the region as pilots clash over strategic mining sites. Pilots supporting Yuri Grom are encouraged to report to The Undeniable station in LP 855-34 to assist in industrial mining operations and help push back the Federal forces.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Origin composer George Oldziey's new Wing Commander album is one step closer. CD production is complete, and the finished units are in his hands! People who pledged for just the compact disc should be seeing them soon. If you are due to get other items such as the vinyl album, these will all be shipped together in a bundle at some point next month. Good things come to those who wait!

Greetings! The WC volume 2 CD's just arrived yesterday. Looks and sounds great! I will be sending these out to CD only backers very soon.

Unfortunately, due to longer processing time and popular demand for vinyl, the LPs will not arrive until at least the first week of June. So for those who are receiving both a CD and a vinyl version I'll be shipping those together in one package.

Thank you all for your patience. I know this has been a long process, but I am thoroughly pleased with the results, and hoping you will

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 the original King Kong (1933) which was reference for an episode of Wing Commander Academy… and where Chris Roberts' game development career started! 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!

And don't forget our second Wing Commander Cartoon party is early tomorrow!