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We recently put together an article covering the names of the different transports in Wing Commander II. A few weeks later I was surprised to discover I had received a pretty fascinating anonymous message about it:

I was just reading the Wing Commander II transports article, and noticing the breakdown with the comm portraits I remembered: have you guys ever written about how those portraits are originally from Ultima VI (Gwenno and Nomaan)? I can't be the only one who noticed that, right?

We had not written such an article because we had never noticed the connection! But sure enough, it's 100% true: both of the VDU images for the male and female freighter pilots in Wing Commander II are reused from NPC portraits in Ultima VI! To the best of my knowledge (and despite the huge amount of crossover between Wing Commander and Ultima players, myself included) I've never seen anyone else point this out.

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Did you know that Cobalt 60's Prophecy album wasn't Wing Commander's first flirtation with electro-industrial music? The band Velvet Acid Christ actually composed a track in 1994 called "Furless Freak" for an album called Dimension 8 that heavily sampled Super Wing Commander. When we say heavily we mean it: you're going to hear the first briefing and what seems to be a playthrough of the following mission. It's weird and cool! Is it worth your time? Yes, this is objectively the greatest song ever recorded.

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Dimension 8 was not released commercially at the time but it was included as a hidden bonus in mp3 format on VAC's 2000 album Twisted Thought Generator. It was later made available for free at the band's website and in 2020 it was remastered for a digital release which you can purchase today! Here's the official description:

Dimension 8 by Velvet Acid Christ follows their previous

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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.

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Spock has been found – and guess what, he regenerated and lived his whole life and happened to end up exactly as old as he was the first time. What luck! In all seriousness, we loved Star Trek III and talked a lot about how important it was in setting up the next twenty years of Star Trek storytelling.

This week, things are changing just a little bit: we're moving from the previous collection of films, which were exclusively ones which inspired Wing Commander, to add a new set of movies that are referenced in Wing Commander stories (either in front of or behind the screens). If we come across another reference to a movie that inspired Wing Commander, we'll prioritize that in future weeks. Until then, enjoy a new batch of films with a little more variety… and some interesting Wing Commander connections that we'll explore in these intro posts.

With that in mind, we're kicking things off with the Star Wars

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Back in August of last year, Wing Commander composer George Oldziey graciously live streamed the orchestral recording sessions for his spectacular new Wing Commander album. If you missed out on the chance to see them, we've added screen recordings of both to YouTube. They aren't a substitute for the real thing but hopefully they'll be useful for reference in the future!

Session One

Session Two

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Origin composer George Oldziey is back with a new status update on the latest vinyl album of Wing Commander music. While CD production was completed earlier this year, the larger vinyl records have been trickier to produce. George is still pushing the producer hard to deliver in a timely manner, but forces outside his control have pushed the timetable of complex modern manufacturing out a bit. In the mean time, see below for a very cool behind-the-scenes look at how Mr. Oldziey worked with the live orchestra in Budapest to craft his latest musical delight!

Greetings all. Just to let you know I'm not "slacking off" here. I'm in contact with the company making the vinyl deliverables. Vinyl is a very hot format these days. Here is the latest reply from the company making your vinyl discs...

Hi George,

I'm so sorry I did not get back your voicemail yesterday, I was unexpectedly out of the office.

I

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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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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 Die Hard 2 (1990) which informed a very minor character in Privateer. 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,

The Wing Commander movie club found the Search for Spock worth the effort! It sometimes feels like Star Trek III gets a bad rap just to fit together the 'even good, odd bad' Star Trek movie joke. The reality is that it only ever falters at the very end with a final ten minutes of dull Vulcan resurrection that loses more and more meaning the further we travel from the tastes of 1980s fandom. But everything else, what a movie! And not only that, Star Trek III takes the world of Star Trek II and twists it into what it will become for the next thirty years. The 'tone' of Star Trek TNG and its spinoffs is born in Search for Spock's first act… as are a huge number of the models, sets and ideas (including the modern Klingon) that will go on to fuel an enormous franchise. And a rousing story, to boot.

The big connection to Wing Commander is that Star Trek III was the origin of the

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The physical copies of Origin composer George Oldziey's new Wing Commander album are now being mass produced, so Mr. Oldziey has shared a few samples of what to expect. He's posted the finalized graphics files for both the CD and vinyl album art. There's also sample audio copies of the vinyl album so you can get a taste of what it will sound like in long form! Backers can log in to the project's Kickstarter updates for the links.

Greetings all, and thank you for your amazing patience. Both the CD and vinyl products are (finally) in production as we speak. In the meantime I want to share all the cover art as well as the vinyl audio files for you to check out. The vinyl audio is obviously divided into two long audio files which will give you the opportunity to listen to the tracks in sequence without having to click on individual files. One note about the side A file; it starts with a 60 second

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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 Battlestar Galactica (1978) which inspired… a LOT of the first two Wing Commander games. 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!

And don't forget our Warrior King Cartoon Party is early tomorrow!

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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 Highlander (1986) which, according to Chris Roberts, inspired the the original character of Paladin in Wing Commander I. 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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The party has been rocking in #Wingnut on Discord, but we're taking it to the next level with a co-stream on YouTube! Check it out here!

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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 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!

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I'm always excited to discover a new piece of Wing Commander-related advertising... and we've got a big one today! Baen ran these unique magazine advertisements for Wing Commanders End Run and Fleet Action in Science Fiction Chronicle in December 1993 and January 1994, respectively. There's some pretty unique copy in here: "soil words from a soft Kilrathi mouth." (?!) It's crazy to think that there was a time when the two biggest Wing Commander novels came out just months apart; the Wing Commander universe certainly grew by leaps and bounds in 1994!

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Greetings WingNuts,

The Wing Commander movie club made it to Monte Carlo! And what a strange movie we saw. Monte Carlo or Bust! (aka Those Daring Young Men in their Jaunty Jalopies) is lush and elaborate, carefully plotted and edited… but to our modern audience, the humor was completely inscrutable. It was clear many things were supposed to be jokes (like how action scenes might speed up suddenly) but it all came off as alien. Such is likely the fate of all comedy, which adheres closely to its times… but it was a little funny (pun not intended) to see how absolutely that was the case here.

And this is an extremely short report because there's not much to say about the Wing Commander connection! Chris Roberts said in his original pitch that the Wing Commander movie's climax was "literally Monte Carlo or Bust!" and it seems that all that really means is that there's an elaborate, multi-tiered race moving

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Back in 2020 we featured some of the Wing Commander fan art of EpytronOmega, who was working on ship models to mod into Sins of a Solar Empire. While looking through ArtStation and DeviantArt I noticed a few of his renders we didn't have in the archive -- enjoy!

Wing Commander: Arrow Class Fighter (ArtStation)

This is my lower poly model of the Arrow Class fighter featured in Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger, as well as Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom.

Model built for a modification for Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion

3,483 Polies

Dralthi4 baked Textures (DeviantArt)

Here is some work that I have been doing with Baking textures. Not to bad if you ask me, hope for more to come.

Kilrathi Fighters (DeviantArt)

Shown here, from right to left, we have the Dralthi MK 2, Darket, Strakha, and Dralthi MK 4.

TCS Vesuvius (DeviantArt)

Here is the final mesh for the Vesuvius.

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Want some Wing Commander music for your commute? We've set up several playlists on popular streaming services so you can effortlessly queue up some of the Wing Commander tracks scattered across the music universe. Each service has a slightly different selection so the lists may vary... and be sure to let us know if there's a different service you use so we can create these lists there.

Wing Commander Playlist

This is the 'master' playlist for each service that includes all of the Wing Commander music we've been able to find. Let us know if you come across anything that should be added!

• Apple Music
• Spotify
• Amazon
• Deezer
• iHeart

Wing Commander Movie Soundtrack

This is the Wing Commander movie soundtrack plus the diagetic music and alternate recordings of the overture.

• Apple Music
• Spotify
• Amazon
• Deezer
• iHeart

Wing Commander Prophecy Soundtrack

This is our attempt to recreate the Edel Wing Commander Prophecy OST CD. The

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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

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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)