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Last month we took a close look at the various spacecraft weapons identifiable in the Wing Commander movie. The resulting field guide helped show me the incredible level of detail and consistency that went into the background of the world… and of course it's pretty neat to catalog more of the Wing Commander universe, too! With that in mind, I decided to take a similarly close look at the weapons of Wing Commander Academy. Like movies, TV shows have a detailed preproduction process where style sheets showing the characters, vehicles, props and sets would look. These would then inform writers, storyboard artists and the animation production companies at all stages of making the show. Coming through all thirteen episodes has let us take a sort of 'space telescope' look backwards in time to learn more about what those style guides must have included!

PART ONE: GUNS

Laser Cannon

As in the original game it

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I recently stopped to think about how I had never really seen anyone criticize what has always been one of my least favorite parts of the Wing Commander movie: the 'broadside' scene where Paladin commands the Tiger Claw to defeat a Fralthi by firing a wave of missiles at them at close range as the ships pass each other. It has always seemed weirdly convenient to me as well as seeming to break the internal logic of the world to me; specifically, WHY does the Tiger's Claw have so many torpedo tubes that face to the side, especially if firing them is some sort of unusual trick that maverick Paladin has strategized for the first time. What are they usually for?!

Lately I've found that if I stop to think around things I don't like I often discover new things to consider. So I decided to start thinking about that scene with a simple task to start unraveling the thread: how many missiles does the Tiger Claw

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All of us at the CIC are in shock at the news of Klavs' passing. We all get caught up in the frenzy of our hectic lives, but moments like this really make you realize you don't know how lucky you are to have everyone in your life until it's too late. I had the honor of meeting Adam Burch in person once about ten years ago. He flew into town on behalf of the kit-built aircraft manufacturer that he worked for at the time. I couldn't believe how knowledgeable he was about all aspects of the plane, plus the marketing and business sides, and then he could even fly it! I work in aerospace myself, so I know how complicated this all was, and his expertise was astounding. He was also exceedingly generous and kept mentioning how he'd like to return some day so he could take me up on a flight. If you didn't know, he didn't just design Wing Commander ships - he was also a spacecraft artist/designer at

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Here's how a Privateer 2 ship - the

Shaman

- changed during development, from concept model to alpha build to marketing render to final game asset! Look how the monster face evolved away...

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Today we have a short musical piece that was written as part of a film school project. The artist, Sean Sumwalt, used about a minute of footage from the end of the Wing Commander Movie right after Angel ejects and Blair is forced to keep moving. A new instrumental track accompanies the scene and attempts to set the tone. AD found it while looking for Overture covers, and it's definitely not that, but it's not bad.

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After releasing six episodes of his Defiant Few audio series, Plywood Fiend has been out of the WC fan project world for a bit, but he's back with a new simpler take on amusing his fellow Wingnuts. It's essentially a live-streamed play through of the original Wing Commander, but it's been edited to include his own comedic take. He's already completed everything from Enyo to Venice, and they can be found in a Youtube playlist here. That's a lot to check out! The first mission and a couple of samples also embedded below.

My most recent whimsy-work is a bit humbler, but just a bit. I'm doing a let's play of Wing Commander 1, but one riddled with my own peculiar brand of humor in the (text only) commentary, and with peculiar, (usually) funny intro videos, snippets of which I'll include below, best I can. Rest assured that for those like myself who've played this game more times than they'd care to

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President Zachary Hudson has announced that today is a Federal day of remembrance for those lost in HIP 22460 on August 9th.
In a public address, the president formally acknowledged the recent tragedy:
"The Battle of HIP 22460 is a dark day in our interstellar nation's history. The crews of the FNS Bombardier, FNS Fortitude and FNS Varian Scott gave their lives with dignity and honour, as did many other courageous individuals. They will never be forgotten for as long as the Federation endures."
"We recognise this massacre of defenceless crew for what it was: the latest example of unrelenting hostility by our Thargoid enemy. Another event which leads me to believe no peace can be brokered with that species. I promise, under no uncertain terms, that the loss of over fifty thousand naval personnel will be avenged."
Shadow President Felicia Winters provided a statement to The Federal Times:
"I

Quote from Star Trek Online News-Bot

On July 11th, prepare your blood wine and your bat’leths. It will be a Day of Honor. In honor of our favorite warriors for Kahless, Star Trek Online, Eaglemoss, Modiphius, and the Streampunks are all teaming up to hold an all day streaming event, featuring some of your favorite Trek stars and a whole heaping helping of honorable battle. We’re excited to have you join us for the event, live on the Queue Times Twitch channel. We’ll be announcing more details about the stream, and more importantly our guests, as we get closer. But we wanted to make sure you saved the date, so here’s the schedule for the day, with all times in PT: Introduction 12:00-12:15 Come and say hi as the hosts of all of the days’ streams hang out and chat with you about what to expect from the day. And maybe shout at each other in Klingon. We’ll see. Modiphius – Featuring Rick Sternbach! 12:15 -

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Here's a couple of new items for EmuMusicFan's graphical novel project. The first sketch depicts his first take on a Kilrathi warrior's mane. It might not be something you ever think about as the viewer, but from an artist's point of view, drawing a Kilrathi from behind takes some extra skill with fur. This Kilrathi is supposed to be none other than Khitz nar Ki'ra. There's also a more lighthearted image showing a Kilrathi instructor teaching proper vocabulary to a youngster.

The plot I want to write is that the player is walking while checking the map on the cellphone without looking at the road, and then hits Khitz's back at a corner.

"Teaching our cubs to learn about human culture is not an easy job."

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I went back to see how the sprite-less Jalthi was mentioned in the original SNES Wing Commander. You can see it wasn’t mentioned in the US/EU manuals at all! And that as with everything else, the Japanese version is much, much better.The SNES version doesn’t have enough memory for five ships, so it tints the Salthi green and calls it a Jalthi! The US manuals pretend it doesn’t exist while the Japanese one embraces the weird change.They also had to drop the Exeter to include the Venture, so the Gwenhyvar becomes a corvette.

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The Wing Commander Academy press kit says that there were twelve cadets transferred to the Tiger's Claw. Can you name them all?

Alright, let's see if we can find them! We're looking for the original twelve cadets transferred to the Tiger's Claw's command school. So Victoria/Viking here and the veteran replacements from the Trafalgar who are added after Chain of Command don't count.

First up, the three leads. Christopher "Maverick" Blair played by Mark Hamill and designed from his live action appearances in Wing Commander III and IV (minus 19 years). Bios are from the series' press kit:

Todd "Maniac" Marshall voiced by Tom Wilson and also designed from his WC3 and 4 appearances (though a little bit more The Real Ghostbustersy).

And new character Gwen "Archer" Bowman played by Dana Delany! She voiced Louis Lane on Superman that same season and it sure feels like both character designs were influenced by the

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Spacedock

has put together a neat short clip on the nature of fighter space combat. Daniel talks about the need to turn into your enemy, avoid jousting and aim for large targeting surfaces among other things. Wing Commander isn't the focus of the video, but it may as well be as most of the topic is relevant to fighting in the WC universe. A second video talks about how hard it would actually be to evade missiles in space. Tough times for fighter pilots!

Spacedock gives some handy day-to-day advice on Space Dogfighting.

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OldTechAdverts recently reposted a spiffy advertisement sheet for Wing Commander Academy. LOAF took a moment to appreciate it and point out some interesting elements below. It can be hard for modern audiences to appreciate Academy today, but if you were there to see things like this in magazines back in 1993, you knew how cool this was! You can find more classic WC ads like this in the CIC Documents Archive here.

This ad is a master class in marketing copy. Everything fresh and appealing—“CyberSchool’s holodeck console,” “cybernet wingman”, etc.—is just describing the fictional setting and doesn’t touch the gameplay at all.

The bottom screenshot is one of my all-time favorite bullshots, too! None of these wingmen are in the game and that VDU face appears nowhere else! Final game doesn’t use “zealous”, either.

If you look closely at the Wraith cockpit you’ll see it isn’t finished... the left VDU is

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Here's an excerpt from the end of Privateer 2 where we see the player (and others) escape Kronos' doomed flagship. Unfortunately only the published 320x200 version survives so it can be hard to see some of the neat details. Let's try and identify the ships!

Since the player can choose from 18 different ships there was no way to know which they'd actually fly the last mission in. To hedge bets, the escaping fleet includes four of the most likely options. First out is a Drakkar!

Then we've got a Danrik in an all-grey livery. (And that's a good choice because you were probably flying a Danrik here!)

Then there's a Shaman...

And out in front but not identifiable until you get to the second shot is the game's signature Heretic!

Cinematics not knowing what ship to use wasn't a problem exclusive to Privateer 2, either. Wing Commander Prophecy gives the final hero flyby shot to the Devastator instead of the

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The Confederation Handbook’s index doubles as a review of the different classification levels (circa 2654).

The Secret Missions boxes are both labeled TOP SECRET.

And the card game's secret orders are just SECRET.

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One of the most rousing debates in the history of the Wing Commander fandom is over Privateer 2: The Darkening's name. Many remember that the game was announced as 'The Darkening' and only became a Privateer game close to its release. We aren't here to relitigate the debate over whether that was right or wrong; instead, we're going to try to answer a specific question: when were the multiple decisions to change the name made? To do that, we've put together a brief timeline of Privateer 2's development that we believe tells the story.

Privateer II: Dark Side - Mid-1994 to February 1995

Producer Erin Roberts pitched what would become Privateer 2: The Darkening to Origin in mid-1994. Erin had joined Origin several years earlier, coming from his home in England to Austin to assist his brother finish development of the original Wing Commander. He would go on to join the famed Strike Commander team as

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DID YOU KNOW the Kilrathi word for assassination is... assassination?! Before encountering humanity the cats had a complex system of statuses and fealties with formal challenges that ordered their power structures. They did not murder their kind by surprise for political purposes.

The first high profile Kilrathi assassination attempt occurred in 2667 when Khasra nar Kiranka ordered his fighter squadron to ambush Prince Thrakhath. Thrakhath survived the attempt and did not report Khasra's treachery to the Emperor.

The next year, Baron Jukaga nar Ki'ra maneuvered a sabotaged reactor fuel rod aboard a cruiser set to transport the Emperor and the Crown Prince. The scheme was discovered and Jukaga was allowed to die in battle.

In the wake of the Battle of Earth, two additional attempts were made on the Emperor's life which prompted him to recall Prince Thrakhath and order the deployment of biological weapons

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We've gotten some questions lately about the classic Wing Commander 3 Warbirds poster, which is just gorgeous, so we wanted to take a moment to put it front and center for everyone to enjoy. The regular game came with a black and white version, but Premiere Edition owners were treated to this beautiful foldout in full color. You can also grab it in a concise PDF here (9 megs). You can find all kinds of other WC documentation here!

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After having so much fun looking for missiles in the Wing Commander movie, I decided to spend an evening unraveling another blind spot in my understanding: the decoys, drones, buoys and probes of Wing Commander Prophecy! One (or two… or more?) parts of the game's plot have never been particularly clear for me. The game opens with a scene in which a planetological research ship is cracking asteroids with a flight of drones collecting samples for study. As the Devereaux is destroyed, we follow a beacon which rockets off into the distance. Later in the game, Casey must hunt down a Nephilim buoy which is sending a jamming signall. Soon after, Finley is studying a "Confed signal buoy" that she claims he recovered. How do these all go together, if at all? We have extensive documentation of the making of the game so I thought it would be fun to try and sort out all these questions… and in the process,

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Typos! Don't you hate them? Well, I don't… because they've added at least two Kilrathi fighters to the Wing Commander canon! It may come as a surprise to many but the people involved in writing a Wing Commander tie-in weren't always players of the games they were adapting. Writers and editors often relied on the series bible produced by Origin's creative services group to get the nuts and bolts of the universe correct. As a result, it was easy for small errors to make it to press… especially when they involved words that weren't "real" like Kilrathi ship types. Here are two times when letting the wrong name go to print added a little bit of mystery to our world… and one where it didn't!

Our first example is the Grakhi, a ship type mentioned one time in End Run. From the text, reprinted below, it's pretty clear that Dr. Forstchen had intended to use 'Grikath' for the ship – they're described as heavy