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Today's your last chance to get those summer classics at half price! I couldn't put it any better than GOG themselves:
Relive those late summer nights spent with friends, battling through the games that defined your childhood. Reconnect with the classics you loved and the memories they carry - it’s time to play like you used to.
Aug
This is a reminder that we have another fun #Wingnut movie night planned on Discord this evening! The ongoing theme will be movies that are referenced by Wing Commander in some way. Tonight's film is Demolition Man and you can find details on why we're watching it 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!
Aug
…Greetings WingNuts,
We'll start our look at Forbidden Planet with a gallery of the ship referenced on Wing Commander Academy, the United Planets Cruiser C-57D. It's simplistic compared to the kind of starships we know today but you can see the influence on the original Enterprise right off…
We'd show you a picture of the Krell, a name borrowed by Privateer 2 for a heavy fighter, but they don't actually appear in the film! All we ever see is their enormous underground machine.
Another enduring impact on science fiction is the prevalence of Altair as a location. Altair is a real star but the fact that it played such a major role in Forbidden Planet is the reason it appears constantly in other science fiction… including all over Wing Commander! The Wing Commander III 3DO port names one of the Confederation depots at Kilrah the TCS Altair:
The Wing Commander IV novelization makes Altair the planet Paladin
Aug
Someone told us that it was already August, and that stunning revelation means it's almost time for another CIC Birthday Party! We're on the verge of turning 27 years old here at wcnews.com, and we'd once again like to celebrate with you in two weeks. Mark your calendars for August 16th at 7:00 pm EDT (4:00 pm PDT and 11:00 pm GMT). The party takes place on the CIC Discord server, but we're also planning to have a live stream to go along with it. You can check out last year's stream to get a little preview. It should be a blast - see you there!
Aug
…Alias|Wavefront (now a subsidiary of AutoDesk) is a company with a long history of developing industry-focused 3D rendering tools. Origin's FMV Wing Commander games used their PowerAnimator suite for their CG work and the team at Digital Anvil used Maya for working on the Wing Commander film. Every year Alias|Wavefront produced a VHS 'showreel' that was part advertisement and part thank you for their loyal customers. It would include dozens of clips of projects from the previous year and then some longer segments describing how some of the work was accomplished.
DMJC was recently browsing their 1996 demo tape and found a fun surprise: a clip from Wing Commander IV! It turns out that Chris Roberts was eager to have his team's work shown alongside film production groups like ILM and encouraged his artists to submit their best efforts… and guess what, they compare pretty favorably with the ones being
Aug
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Demolition Man gets our seal of approval; it's not anything brilliant but it's endlessly fun and it really compares favorably to Judge Dredd. Our next movie will be Seven Samurai (1954) by Akira Kurosawa. Seven Samurai is regarded as a timeless classic and a film that has had endless influence on films since… so it will be pretty fun to see that and decide how it might connect back to Wing Commander! You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along. Please note that the movie will begin one hour early (at 9 PM Eastern/6 PM Pacific) to accommodate the run time.
The Wing Commander universe has a sea of over a dozen stars named after the sci-fi authors that inspired the series, from Clarke to Niven. But there are only three named after directors: Steven Spielberg and George Lucas (both in the Enigma Sector)... and Akira Kurosawa in the Vega Sector. The system, sometimes spelled Kurasawa, first
Aug
…Before Wing Commander was ever an 'interactive movie' it already had a lead actress: Saranya Carr (2629-2688). Though she is barely ever seen, the story of Carr and her daughter Morgana is a constant in the background of Wing Commander's lore. Let's take a closer look…
Saranya Carr was created by Aaron Allston for the original Wing Commander's Claw Marks manual in 1990. She is a young actress who is the lead in what is implied to be a show-within-a-show series of film serials called Luna Jones, Jumpscout. Carr was introduced in the magazine's Comm Relay news section in a story about how the Terran Confederation Service Organization is sending her to the Tiger's Claw as part of a morale-building tour. We suspect her name, an Indian given name and a British surname, is intended to hint at a more blended human culture in the 27th century.
TCSO Show Scheduled
(Tiger's Claw, TCAFCN) - There’s good news for
Aug
…Years ago, we scanned a copy of what has been referred to as the Wing Commander "series bible" (here, PDF) It's a massive document that records all sorts of information about the Wing Commander series up through Wing Commander III. The copy we preserved came from the actual physical document that the Maverick team maintained and updated over time and which was rescued after the team was disbanded.
The core of this document was what might be called the Wing Commander licensing bible, a hundred page document put together just after the release of Special Operations 1 for the express purpose of being a reference for the writers of the Wing Commander novel series. Dr. Forstchen, for instance, was sent a copy of this initial document and used it for reference during the writing of End Run, Fleet Action and so on. For anyone thinking about that material, it's valuable to have a copy of the original bible so
Aug
…Brewer Corporation has issued an urgent call for assistance following a wave of pirate attacks targeting the Minerva based resupply efforts for the Trailblazer fleet.
The convoys, which are transporting historically large volumes of aluminium, steel, titanium and CMM composites, have become high-priority targets for opportunistic raids. Security analysts have noted the coordinated nature of the attacks, prompting speculation that elements within a superpower may be providing clandestine support for the attacks.
A Brewer Corporation spokesperson commented: "The Trailblazer fleet remains a key element in supplying humanity's expansion into the stars and exploiting the opportunities this affords. It's disappointing, if not surprising, that some forces would prefer to see that vision of independence fail."
Pilots are asked to defend shipping lanes by registering for the initiative at Starlace
Aug
…The Video Game History Foundation recently announced that they had acquired the rights to Computer Entertainer magazine, a gaming periodical that ran from 1982 to 1990, and made it freely available online under the Creative Commons license. This is an invaluable resource for early gaming historians… but the magazine ended its run in July 1990, two months before the original Wing Commander was released. Nevertheless, Danthrax (amazing Wing Commander Armada reference!) discovered two pretty interesting articles that are relevant to our interests!
The first article is from Computer Entertainer's penultimate issue, June 1990. It's short but it covers a very important point in history: the initial announcement that Origin will show off a space sim named 'Squadron' at the upcoming summer CES trade show.
Origin has two new programs to show at CES
First in series of Ultima spin-offs plus space combat simulation
Aug
This is a reminder that we have another fun #Wingnut movie night planned on Discord this evening! The ongoing theme will be movies that are referenced by Wing Commander in some way. Tonight's film is Seven Samurai and and you can find details on why we're watching it in the announcement post here. The movie will start about 6 PM PST/9 PM EST but feel free to drop by and hang any time! Please note that the movie is starting one hour earlier than usual to accommodate its run time.
Aug
Greetings WingNuts,
Last week, we watched the 1993 action classic Demolition Man. The only major connection to Wing Commander was that Chris Roberts used a track from the movie when temp tracking Wing Commander. Here's the scene in question as it appears in the movie… the music is pretty hidden under the gunfight! Can you imagine the scramble scene in Wing Commander sounding like this?
Sully is a certified fan of both Taco Bell and Pizza Hut; dono't make him choose!
Aug
Find a Dralthi, pick it up -- all the day you'll have good luck. Don't you love coming across new takes on Wing Commander ships where you don't expect them? Case in point: David Müller posted this neat interpretation of Wing Commander III's Dralthi IV medium fighter that just feels so much like a modernized version of something you'd discover in a random Usenet binaries group back in the day. A well thought out and emotive take on a classic space fighter... I'd love to see more!
Wing Commander Fun Art (ArtStation)
Aug
It's hard to believe, but today marks 27 years of the Wing Commander CIC! This is the anniversary of the first day we opened our doors at wcnews.com, and it's been a wild ride ever since! As we recently announced, we'll be holding a big event this coming Saturday to officially celebrate with everyone. Visit us on the CIC Discord and the accompanying live stream on August 16th at 7:00 pm EDT (4:00 pm PDT and 11:00 pm GMT). We're looking forward to spending a super fun evening with you!
Aug
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The results are in: seven is exactly the right number of samurai for a movie to have. This week, we're moving a few centuries forward in history… to the 1970s! Friday's Wing Commander-connected film will be the classic supernatural horror film The Exorcist. You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.
The connection to The Exorcist is a funny one. The concept artists on the Privateer team would label their work with the names of movies and albums as a running joke… so we've added those movies to the movie club pool (that's right, Ishtar is coming)! In this case, The Exorcist was presumably chosen because of the name selected for this room, "refectory". It's a word usually used to refer to meeting rooms in churches. Here, however, it's been chosen for an options screen on Perry Naval Base which was first imagined as a cafeteria rather than another bar. Privateer's original art list
Aug
Display MoreThis 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: Aisling Duval – 1,936 systems
Rank 2: Edmund Mahon - 1,674 systems
Rank 3: Arissa Lavigny-Duval – 1,616 systems
Rank 4: Yuri Grom – 1,201 systems
Rank 5: Li Yong-Rui – 1,183 systems
The largest increase in system influence belonged to Aisling Duval who can claim an additional 275 systems as supporters.
Vox Galactica will provide another update on the state of the powers next month.
Aug
…When it comes to science fiction, sandworms are everywhere. We largely owe that to the enduring popularity of Dune. Its desert planet is defined by impossibly huge worms which play a major role in the story.. and that has led to decades of sandworms in fiction, from Beetlejuice to a Star Citizen demo. And Wing Commander is technically no exception! We don't ever get a visual of sandworms in the Wing Commander universe but we do know of at least THREE planets that are home to such creatures! Let's take a quick tour of the universe…
Brimstone II: In the Wing Commander I & II Ultimate Strategy Guide, veteran Carl LaFong recounts his first days at the Terran Confederation Space Naval Academy. He includes a note given to him on arrival from the senior class as part of the hazing of new students. It mentions, among other things, that they are "lower than a sand worm in the Brimstone System." Here's the whole
Aug
…PETSCII is a character set that was introduced for the Commodore PET in 1977 and which was used for Commodore's other PCs prior to the Amiga. And where there's a character set there are users turned artists who can do incredible things with it! In 2025, Commodore fans still compete to push the limits of PETSCII art. Case in point: a new piece named Deep Space Anomaly by Sande of Hokuto Force which placed fifth at Pågadata 2025, a Swedish retro computing art event. It features a Wing Commander-style cockpit view hunting down a Dralthi, a Death Star and the Enterprise. That's fun on its own and the amount of talent required to render that with a Commodore PET's built in font is extra impressive. You can learn more and download the 'native' version at the C-64 Scene Database (download backup). Thank you to elend for finding this; we are always thrilled to find a little Wing Commander in an unlikely
Aug
Display MoreIn their original print form, the original seven Baen Wing Commander novels each open with an excerpt in their front matter. It's typically an action scene from later in the book intended to sell the book to readers not familiar with the franchise. And each one of these previews had a unique "tagline". Because this front matter isn't included in the ebook versions of the novels, these risk being lost to history… until now! Here they are, for posterity:
Freedom Flight - LEARNING BY DOING…
End Run - "Form up, you know your targets."
Fleet Action - THE LAST BEST HOPE OF MAN
Heart of the Tiger - TORA! TORA! TORA!
The Price of Freedom - LAST CONTACT
Action Stations - SCREAM-AND-LEAP! (THE KILRATHI HAVE A WORD FOR IT)
False Colors - NOW IT'S YOUR TURN...
Aug
This is a reminder that we have another fun #Wingnut movie night planned on Discord this evening! The ongoing theme will be movies that are referenced by Wing Commander in some way. Tonight's film is The Exorcist and you can find details on why we're watching it 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!
