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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 Robocop 3 (1993) 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!
Nov
…Brewer Corporation has labelled the withdrawal of its Trailblazer megaship fleet as a 'vote of confidence' in the self-sustainability of thousands of new colonies.
The Trailblazer vessels were originally deployed to provide logistical support and essential resources to independent colonisation initiatives at the edge of inhabited space and are now being refit for deployment for other purposes.
"The success of the Trailblazer fleet will leave its mark in the history books of human colonisation," Mark Rennik, Chief Operating Officer for Brewer Corporation commented.
"And now, once the crews have taken a well-deserved rest and the internals are refit, they will continue to serve the Brewer Corporation in other duties."
To reinforce the message, Rennik also announced the availability of the newly commissioned Dodec starports for colonisation efforts, which can be built at any available Tier 3 port
Oct
…AD has come upon a pretty fascinating vintage article that had not been in our community consciousness. It's a preview of Origin's product lineup from the April 1991 issue of The One, an Amiga-focused computer outlet. It includes a very early description of Wing Commander II and some rendered images of ships in progress… including one we've never seen before!
We asked Wing Commander II director Siobhan Beeman about the unknown ship and she was kind enough to think back so far to figure it out:
Vaguely. Early drafts of the story had more capital ship engagements, which is why torpedoes were introduced and why the Concordia is a strike carrier with a spinal-mount weapon. I believe this art is for a frigate or destroyer class that would have shown up with multiple names.Awesome! You can certainly see how a frigate with this design would fit right alongside the Gilgamesh destroyer and Waterloo cruiser in
Oct
…
The Wing Commander movie club has made it through RoboCop 3 which, while not a good film by any means, ended nicely. But after two weeks of objectively lower quality films, we asked everyone to vote from a selection of six Oscar winners. And the victor was psychological horror classic Rosemary's Baby (1968), which won Best Actress in a Supporting Role. You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.
Why Rosemary's Baby? We previously talked about directors honored with references in the Wing Commander universe, specifically George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Akira Kurosawa and their associated star systems. We've since picked out two more for the movie pool: Michael Cimino (the TCS Cimino appears in the Prophecy simulator) and Roman Polanski, tuckerized as the Wing Commander movie's "Bishop" Polanski. As with the others, we've selected an additional classic to represent each. We'll be back in
Aug
…The Wing Commander movie club made it through Seven Samurai! Wing Commander never had a 'team up' style story like Seven Samurai... but it ALMOST did! The sequel to Wing Commander Secret Ops was intended to involve a team of seven (six plus the player) elite mercenaries who operate outside the military chain of command. The project went by a number of names and was briefly formally announced as Wing Commander Strike Team... but it's best known as Shadow Force. You can read the original pitch document here. But I thought I'd pull out the character bios for the mercenaries so everyone could get to know them and think about what could have been! The character art was by a young Feng Zhu, who went on to an extraordinary career. (I do have to call out Sliver's "as sleek and lithe as panther, she uses her sexuality as a weapon" as especially goofy; how would this impact space combat? I guess it was the
Oct
…Have you ever wondered why the original Wing Commander's cheat code is referred to as the "finger of death"? Sure, you use your fingers to activate it… but that's also how pretty much every cheat code that exists works. There's a little bit more to the story than you would expect: the term actually goes back to the game's original Quality Assurance team and it's based on a feature cut from the game!
Wait, what? That's right, at one point Wing Commander had a second animated hand in the cockpit. The design was that you would see your 'left' hand react to certain events in combat. If you scored a kill you would make a fist and when your wingman scored you would give them a thumbs up. Here's the original art assignment from the game's production schedule, assigning the task of digitizing the hand artwork to Daniel Bourbonnais.
What does that have to do with the cheat code? As a joke, the team replaced the
Oct
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 Sphere (1998) 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
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!
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
Oct
Display MoreBitterman stopped by the CIC Discord the other night with a cool present for the community: scans of four Wing Commander cover stories from French magazine Joystick. The Wing Commander Prophecy preview is especially interesting... look carefully at the right VDU images in the screenshots and you'll see that some--but not all!--are from the E3 demo.
Joystick 62 - August 1995 - Wing Commander IV preview
Joystick 68 - February 1996 - Wing Commander IV review
Joystick 77 - December 1996 - Privateer 2 review
Joystick 89 - January 1998 - Wing Commander Prophecy review
Oct
…Several years ago, I purchased an unusual Wing Commander shirt from a 'picker' in Malaysia that I found on Instagram. Such sellers dig through unwanted clothing given to thrift stores or otherwise discarded for treasures that will appeal to collectors of vintage clothing. I've found several Wing Commander promotional shirts this way over the years… but this one was different, I'd never seen it before. It simply reads "Wing Commander" in glittery letters. Were it not for the small text mentioning "Wing Commander Productions" I would've assumed it had nothing to do with our favorite franchise.
Then last week, AD thought up the idea to search the Internet Archive for the Japanese website for the Wing Commander movie. It was set up by distributor Gaga Corporation at wc.gaga.ne.jp (now defunct) for the film's local release. It has the usual collection of cast biographies and a brief background… and this
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
Thank you for joining us for the Wing Commander CIC's 27th Birthday celebration! It was a hard year in many ways, but we appreciate the Wing Commander community's constant support; they've been the best of us even when times are rough. We hope you enjoy some of the material below and are having fun with us live on the stream. We also also looking forward to the future. In this year ahead we have a new project coming to collect disk images. More info will be forthcoming, but we'll need the entire community's help to make sure we get everything. Our weekly movie club has been a blast, and that will certainly continue with everything from Heaven's Gate to 2001: A Space Odyssey on the schedule. And we'll have a big focus on Super Wing Commander this year to make sure people get to appreciate a forgotten game. A sample of that is lower down below!
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!
Jul
If you missed out on the original GOG summer sale, fear not, because they've now kicked off sequel summer classics promo. The Wing Commander series qualifies and each title is marked down 50% to $2.99 per package. Improve your summer with just a few clicks!
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
…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
Oct
GOG.com is turning 17 years old! The Wing Commander series is discounted by 50% to celebrate the milestone. We first reported about them back in 2008 when the company was announced, and their first WC title was Privateer in June of 2011. It's pretty wild how long they've been serving up classic Wing Commander!
Jul
Display MoreStarfleetDesign is a prolific and talented illustrator known for recreating obscure Star Trek-related graphics... and sometimes imagining new ones! That's exactly what happened here, with a Wing Commander-styled take on the Star Trek logo.
Star Trek / Wing Commander Mashup Logo (ArtStation)
A custom Star Trek logo in the style of the Wing Commander logo from the original game box art. This is entirely vector art created with Affinity Designer, but wit texturing and other adjustments made using Affinity Photo.Star Trek in the style of the Wing Commander logo. Vector art created with Affinity Designer
A horizontal version, created mainly for anyone that wants to use it as a header image on social media
I actually don't know much about Wing Commander, but I am a fan of the STOP typeface created by Aldo Novarese (1971)
Detail of texture effects
Detail of raw vector art
Nov
It's already been a big month for sales, and Wing Commander discounts are back with GOG's Black Friday Sale. The WC series is once again a familiar 50% off to help ring in the holiday season. Make your gift-buying experience easier with Wing Commander for everyone!
Additionally, Wing Commander Academy is the latest addition to GOG's preservation program of classic games. Here's the update:
What improvements we made to this game:1.01 GOG v2 changelog (25 November 2025)
- Optimized the DOSBox configuration for better performance.
- Enabled Cloud Saves support.
- Fixed a crash that occurred when starting a non-gauntlet game.
- Stability validated.
- Fully compatible with Windows 10 and 11.
May
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!
