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The Wing Commander movie club greatly enjoyed our trip back to 1970 with Apollo 13; it's a movie that comes together so perfectly it feels preordained rather than directed. This week we'll be traveling further into the future for another outer space adventure… but one that's anything but neutral about its director! The next film will be the 1984 version of Dune by David Lynch. You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

A beloved IP meets a director who has his own, distinct vision separate from any of the fans. The results… something no one can quite explain. Am I talking about Wing Commander or Dune? But beyond that similarity, our first in game reference is a pretty clear one: in Privateer when you try to communicate with New Constantinople you can choose a line of Paul's from Dune: "My name is a killing word". Why? It's not entirely clear...

We also recently did a deep dive into

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If you were afraid you might have to go a whole month without a GOG discount, worry no longer! The summer sale may be long gone, but the Back to School Sale kicks off today. This means the Wing Commander series is 50% off across the board - just $3 each game!

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There's a scene in Pilgrim Stars, the first Wing Commander movie tie-in novel, where we see a news broadcast from a hastily-assembled Pilgrim concentration camp. The news chyron identifies the location of the camp as the University of Central Florida. Note that this includes a wonderful example of the 'sci-fi list' trope where one or two future events are included in a list of familiar ones:

Bellegarde now studied the image of a university campus. Ancient brick buildings with signs identifying them as Library, Administration, Biological Sciences, Offworld Sciences, and Humanities and Fine Arts girdled an oval reflection pond about thirty meters across. The caption read: DESIGNATED PILGRIM SAFE ZONE: UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA , EARTH. A half dozen rifle-toting young men sprinted along the pond’s perimeter, with an equal number of Marines in pursuit. The men took up flanking positions near the

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Here's one from the depths of Google Groups' Usenet archive: a Wing Commander press release we didn't have preserved! This was posted May 30 1996 to announce the release of Wing Commander IV Macintosh's demo. The Macintosh ports of Wing Commander III and IV are largely forgotten today... we aim to change that!

Wing Commander IV to Release on Macintosh -- Demo Now Available!

Los Angeles, Calif. -- The best is about to get even better. The
interactive movie that was called "the most impressive space adventure
game ever produced" by Universal Press Syndicate is preparing for its
next ground-breaking act as a new Power Macintosh(TM) title. ORIGIN's
Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom(TM) is slated for release for
the Power Macintosh in June.

Already receiving critical acclaim as a PCCD title, Wing Commander IV
will incorporate several hours of live-action video and will feature
many talented actors from the

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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 are referenced by Wing Commander in some way. Tonight's film is Dune (1984) 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!

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Apollo 13 is essentially a flawless movie, so much so that it almost feels too slick to be real. But breaking it down into component parts–like the score, used in part to temp track Wing Commander–you begin to appreciate the sheer amount of artistry that went into every part of the thing. There's not a lot to share in this report; you can find the music used in the Wing Commander temp score in the initial post.

We were also curious about the scale of the Apollo spacecraft compared to familiar Wing Commander ships. I made this quick-and-dirty chart which mostly just highlights how poorly scaled the Wing Commander III ships are.

Sully can make a round cat fit into a square box like nobody's business.

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I was digging through Google's increasingly limited Usenet archive when I found an interesting series of posts concerning Wing Commander Academy that I thought were worth preserving here. On September 20, 1996, Wing Commander Academy storyboard artist Tim Eldred posted to rec.arts.anime.fandom and rec.arts.anime.models to tell friends that the show he had worked on was starting the next day. At the time, Wing Commander Academy was of interest to the American anime community because it had been animated in Japan by notable studios. The conversation that followed adds a few details to the Wing Commander Academy story and we've included relevant replies from Mr. Eldred below.

The chain also included posts by artist Bruce Lewis who had been hired to storyboard an episode but had his work rejected at the last minute! He has a great sense of humor about this and by all accounts it wasn't indicative of his

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The seventh and final Baen Wing Commander novel has a pretty famous error: the cover incorrectly credits the novel to William Keith instead of his brother and fellow author Andrew Keith. Fans caught the error just as the book was going to press; it was too late to change the cover. Andrew Keith had a sense of humor about the mistake, Baen apologized profusely and updated all of their digital marketing material. When False Colors was issued as an eBook, a corrected cover was included.

Andrew Keith tragically died several months after False Colors was published. He was a friend of the Wing Commander community and is greatly missed. His brother William provided an obituary for the October 1999 issue of Locus (#465) and took the opportunity to make sure the world knew that False Colors was his brother's work. It's a lovely read:

[John] Andrew Keith, 41, brother of, and some-time collaborator with, William

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It's like the say, everyone loves the theatrical cut of Dune 1984! We had a great time discussing everything Dune last week and this time we're going back to Earth for a pretty fun one: the 1994 action comedy True Lies. It's a movie that's going to make us feel like it's 1994 again… coincidentially when Wing Commander III came out. You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

Once again, this is a case where Chris Roberts used tracks from True Lies score as temp cues during the editing of the Wing Commander film. True Lies' music is by the legendary Shirley Walker who many will know for her work on another heavily Wing Commander-inspired project: FOX's Space Above and Beyond. Two of Walker's tracks were used, the first being Harry Rides Again. It was used for the 'depth charge' scene where a Ralari destroyer is dropping space bombs on asteroid craters in the hopes of finding the Tiger Claw

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A recent hunt for maverick exobiology scientist Terri Tora has only deepened the mystery surrounding her disappearance.
The search began after Professor Frank Raddix issued an appeal to locate his missing colleague, who was last reported pursuing "something big" for the science community. An encrypted trail of messages led search pilots across multiple systems, piecing together encrypted comms data. Thousands participated, ultimately confirming Tora's final location at HIP 87621, a permit locked system.
Speculation about the system is rife as no third party or superpower has claimed ownership of the permit lock, leading to rumours about its true significance and why access has been restricted for so long.
Professor Raddix issued the following statement after the discovery of Tora's last known location: "My thanks go to the many pilots who answered my call. Terri's trail has led us somewhere we

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We are very happy to report that the vinyl albums for Origin composer George Oldziey's Wing Commander album have all shipped out! Fans that originally contributed towards the higher campaign tiers should be receiving a bundle that includes CD copies and anything else they may have pledged for. Fans have been stopping by the Discord to share pics of their goods over these last few days (see LOAF, Bonkus Maximus and AllTinker's hauls below).

Extra items that were left from the crowdfunding effort are now available to purchase in Mr. Oldziey's online store. It's unlikely that new copies of the vinyl record will be ordered, so get them while they last! The first volume of live orchestral music (can you believe that kicked off 11.5 years ago??) is also available as well as the lovely WC jazz album.

I’ve finished packing and/or shipping all the vinyl editions of volume 2, and have around 60 of them left

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We've got a strange one for you today! Background: Megg, Mogg, and Owl is a critically acclaimed comic series by Simon Hanselmann which started in 2014. It's about as 'indie comic' as you can get, full of edgy content and deep meanings. All of that is simply to introduce a single, wonderful panel that was recently published on Instagram:

If you're curious about the backstory (which we must note is extremely profane!) you can read the entire 33-part comic on the account linked above. The Owl character's home and beloved copy of the original Wing Commander were destroyed by a group of violent clowns led by his jilted ex-girlfriend. A physical version will be printed in the future and we'll share when that happens… but the panel on its own is pretty great!

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There's an exchange in End Run where Kevin Tolwyn excitedly claims he has shot down a Drakhri and Bondarevsky points out that it was actually a Sartha. This always felt a little relatable specifically because Wing Commander II's manual had World War II-style 'plane recognition' silhouettes for all the ships. Here's the excerpt:

Jason walked out of the room and back out on to the flight deck. Tolwyn’s fighter was pulled off the flight line and came to a stop. The canopy popped open and an exuberant pilot stood up and climbed out of his ship, joyfully slapping his ground crew chief on the back.
“I got one, I got a Drakhri,” Kevin announced, coming towards Jason.
Jason said nothing, looking at Kevin coldly.
“Didn’t you hear me, sir? I got a Drakhri.”
“First off it was a Sartha, so get your plane recognition straight.”
“I’m sorry, sir. I guess I’m just excited.”
“That Sabre you were supposed to cover,” Jason

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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 are referenced by Wing Commander in some way. Tonight's film is True Lies (1994) 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!

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Dune may fall short of its source material but it's certainly a fun movie to talk about; we were waxing nostalgic about our Dune experiences well into the night! Without further ado, here are some screenshots to match the Wing Commander references we noted last week.

Here's the quote from the movie which appears in Privateer as a 'joke' comm you can make to New Constantinople. In the movie, it's part of Paul's inner monologue when he is training the Fremen to use the weirding modules. It doesn't appear in the book.

Wing Commander doesn't show us any giant sandworms but it does reference them several times!

And here's Princess Irulan, referenced in Privateer 2, played by Virginia Madsen. Her narration opens the movie.

Dune author Frank Herbert and his star system.

And of course Jurgen Prochnow as Duke Leto Atreides!

Sully wasn't so fond of the pugs.

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We've extracted something interesting from the depths of the Wayback Machine. This is a November 1997 chat transcript for a conference with the Wing Commander Prophecy team held by gaming site PsychoNews. These were very special events at the time and the Prophecy team in particular conducted several of them, most of which are sadly lost to history. It's neat to see this one again!

A Chat With the Developers of Wing Commander Prophecy

Recently, PsychoNews, hosted a chat on #PsychoNews between the members of the press and the developers of Wing Commander: Prophecy. Origin is not eager to give up any surprises, but we did manage to get a few tantalizing hints.

Time : 6:30 PM EST - Wednesday, 12th Of November, 1997

WCP Team were :

Frank Roan, Director
Billy Cain, Lead Designer
Mike McCoy, Internet Product Manager for Origin

The Press were ::

CyberGames
Extreme Games Online
Gamesmania
Game-wire
Gamezilla
Impel

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Here's a funny little 'unreadable text' Easter egg found in Privateer's source textures: the instructions for using the Oxford library computer, which appear as only background dots in the final game (shown).

K-MSi Instructions:
1. insert non-metallic objects in the vat.
2. put your finger up your butt.
3. wish real hard.
4. live peacefully and vote for the people's party.

We can also get a closer look at the buttons on the side of the machine, although there's not a clear meaning to them!

[ar] [vr] [vr]
[rr] [rr] [ar]
[vr] [rr] [vr]
[rr] [mi] [vr]
[vr] [rr] [ar]
[vr] [rr] [ar]
[mi] [vr] [rr]
[vr] [ar] [mi]
[ar] [ar] [mi]

There is some text that you're supposed to read! While the device is scanning your artifact, the screen displays:

structure unknown
trace failure
origin unknown

And then you cut to a closeup where you're intended to read all about Dr. Monkhouse. There's some pretty important lore hidden in this

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

The mystery surrounding the permit-locked HIP 87621 system continues, with claims of unusual planetary signatures detected via long-range scan.
Many independent pilots have also reported that all colonisation has been blocked within a 37ly radius, fuelling speculation further.
While authorities remain tight-lipped, multiple independent analysts claim that at least one world within the system is exhibiting anomalous exobiological readings. These findings have prompted the galaxy's wealthiest citizen, Zachary Rackham, to offer a lucrative incentive for explorers willing to examine the puzzle via cross-reference.
Rackham, speaking from his villa on Lake Rackham on Homeland, said:
"Whatever's in HIP 87621 is strange enough to have the boffins scratching their heads. Therefore, I propose scouring every corner of the galaxy for similar planets. With enough data, maybe our top scientists will be able

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

The Wing Commander movie club had a great time revisiting the '90s with True Lies! For our next movie, we're going back to space... the space of a recent future past. That's right, it's finally time for Stanley Kubrick's legendary 2001: A Space Odyssey. You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

The first major reference to 2001 in Wing Commander is that the HAL 9000 actually appears in the SNES port of the original Wing Commander! Watch carefully as you take off, he's on the first 'rung' of the Tiger's Claw. It's so fun to imagine some artist at Mindscape deciding to sneak this into the game.

The passwords provided at the end of the second episode of Secret Ops ("Thickening") are both direct references to 2001. AE-35, the winning password, is the model of the Discovery's antenna which HAL sends the crew to repair. TMA-1, the losing password, is the monolith which is found on the moon in

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GOG's Back to School event is winding down, so now's your last chance (before the next sale) to complete your digital collection. The Wing Commander series is half off, so have at it!