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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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 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!

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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

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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

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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!

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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

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Wing Commander Academy viewers often come away from the experience with one enduring question: what was the deal with Viking? Viking (or Victoria as she prefers to be known on her own time) is a human pilot who appears only in Wing Commander Academy's first episode. She is part of Blair and Maniac's class at the flight school. She is part of the training mission that opens the episode, she flirts with Blair afterwards and then during the simulated dogfight she is the one that accidentally shoots down Jazzman.

At the end of the episode she appears in civilian clothes on the tarmac and informs Bair that the experience has taught her she can't be responsible for killing anyone. Instead, she is leaving the military and offers him the opportunity to come too. He refuses and the episode ends with her walking away sadly as his Scimitar blasts off into space. It's a poignant moment, especially when informed

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Here's an interesting little eBay pickup: a free pass to see a preview of the Wing Commander movie! The screening took place on a Tuesday, March 9th 1999, in Fresno California. This was just a couple days before the movie released which means it was for a press screening where various outlets were allowed to preview the movie to prepare their reviews for the following Friday. These passes would've been distributed to the public to allow people to fill out the rest of the theater… and hopefully those people would pass along good word of mouth to their friends. Here's a nice high quality scan of the ticket:

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

An aggressive trade war in Alliance space appears to have been won by supporters of Mahon.
The recent withdrawal of Sirius Corporation from Allied military infrastructure created a significant opportunity for member state companies. The shipment of cargo to key locations has been used as a barometer of success between two trade blocs, formed around Edmund Mahon and Nakato Kaine respectively.
After two weeks, the trade bloc favouring Mahon has been declared the winner by analysts and pundits. Irfan Karim of the Alliance Tribune noted that the Mahon trade bloc is 'likely to secure the biggest and most lucrative contracts over the coming weeks.'
Participants in the trade war can now collect their rewards:
Supporters of Edmund Mahon's trade bloc can find their rewards at Bowersox Port in Winiama.
Supporters of Nakato Kaine's trade bloc can find their rewards at Fuca Dock in Apura.

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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

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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 Hell in the Pacific which inspired the look and feel of the Wing Commander 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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Greetings WingNuts,

It's no secret that most of us love Star Trek and we generally felt that The Motion Picture is a film that becomes more and more compelling the older it gets. What was once decried as slow and moody now feels impressive and relevant. And it's really the only of the Star Trek movies that directly follows the characters as they were in the original TV show.

The Wing Commander connection this time around was that Chris Roberts asked Wing Commander composer George "The Fatman" Sanger to pattern the original game's music after Jerry Goldsmith's spectacular Star Trek The Motion Picture score. I have a tin ear, but others in our party did claim they could hear the inspiration! Here are the main themes for both if you'd like to compare them yourself.

Another connection between ST:TMP and Wing Commander is that the film was Syd Mead's first project as a concept artist for film. He was

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Today we're looking at a pair of 'trade ads'. These are magazine advertisements that mention Wing Commander because they're promoting different pieces of middleware that were used in the creation of the series. The first is from the July 1995 issue of Next Generation magazine which promotes Wing Commander III's use of Silicon Graphics' graphics computer to generate its CG sequences:

Here's an excerpt from Origin's Official Guide to Wing Commander III where Chris Douglas talks about the team's then-intense SGI requirements:

CD: Yes, indeed. Yes, indeed. The first and greatest surprise for the artists was that we had about two years worth of stuff to do, but only one year of time to do it. The second surprise was the hardware. We needed high-tech computers. We needed lots of them. At first we thought that one Indigo II, and three Blue Indy computers would do the trick. Then we realized that we couldn’t