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If there's one thing we learned from Highlander it's that there can be only one. No, we actually learned the origin of Paladin's ship's name! More on that in the after action report. But next week's movie is even more of a crowd pleaser: Aliens (1986). So get ready to join the space marines and learn what Wing Commander took away from James Cameron's all time classic. You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

We were first inspired to look at Aliens because of another quote from Chris Roberts' original treatment for the Wing Commander movie. Here he compares his goal to Aliens in a way that frankly makes a lot of sense: they're both movies where the characters are stuck on their own in a terrible situation and drama arises out of how they respond differently to that situation.

"The idea behind this project is to create a film that has the feeling of a tight character-driven rollercoaster

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This one isn't strictly WC-related, but longtime Wingnut and CIC visitor Vidmaster has released a free tabletop game that looks pretty neat. It's a work in progress that's ready for prospective players to print and play at home. He describes it as a "near future space exploration board game." The universe is built via a grid of tiles that you assemble, and there are plenty of detailed cards and interface pieces to get acquainted with. Everything you need to go get going is available here. Vidmaster is looking for feedback from Wing Commander fans who might be into this, so you can help follow up at the CIC Forums. It makes me wonder what possibilities are out there for fans who want to take something like this in a WC direction!

I made a super-niche board game again. It is free. This time, it is a solo-experience, that is a board game played by one person only (something I considered ridicolus

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The Wing Commander movie club has kicked off October right with a spooky horror movie: the 1968 classic Rosemary's Baby. We found it to be a stunningly well made movie full of visual texture and nuance. The story is maybe more relevant than ever again, an allegory about society's belief in its right to control women. Now: the Wing Commander connection here was always slight, so we're going to lean right into it and try and collect everything we know about the character named after Rosemary's Baby's controversial director Roman Polanski.

In the 27th century, Lt. Adam "Bishop" Polanski is one of the veteran wingmen aboard the Tiger Claw in the Wing Commander movie. He was played by veteran British actor Mark Powley, best known for a long running role on television's The Bill. He is a Rapier pilot and flies ship number 35. He has been aboard the carrier for about seven months at this point in the

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What's the buzz? More Hornets! An artist named ulimann644 has built a new CG model of the Hornet and posted some wondeful compositions on DeviantArt. You can find a wonderful gallery of their other work here... and we can't wait to see what the next Wing Commander ship will be!

F-36 Hornet (DeviantArt)

This is my first WING COMMANDER mesh - a few others will follow this year.

I've started with the F-36 HORNET from the first WC-PC-Game. I made some modifications in the hope that the fighter will look better than in the templates.

Hope you like it.

Software:
- Lightwave 2024
- Photoshop

Combat Space Patrol (DeviantArt)

This is my first WING COMMANDER Wallpaper with my F-36 HORNET mesh.

KILLER BEE 701, flown from Lieutenant-Colonel Deion "COOL TOUCH" Grafton, and KILLER BEE 707, flown from 2nd-Lieutenant Carrie "SILVER" Langdon, are on patrol.

Hope you like it.

Software:
- Lightwave 2024
- Photoshop
- ImageFX

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Back when we were surfing the net at 14.4k bps, the only realistic way to test drive the latest Wing Commander games was by loading it from the cover CD of a magazine. In fact, Wing Commander III's then-massive demo was the centerpiece of the very first PC Gamer cover disc! To honor that history, here are all five of the PC Gamer discs that brought us bonus Wing Commander combat starting with Wing Commander III in 1994 and going all the way to the shocking free release of Kilrathi Saga WC1 in 2000!

December 1994 - Wing Commander III Demo

• ISO Download

January 1996 - Wing Commander IV Demo

• ISO Download

March 1998 - Wing Commander Prophecy Demo

• ISO Download

November 1998 - Wing Commander Secret Ops - Episode One

• ISO Download

July 2000 - Wing Commander I Kilrathi Saga

• ISO Download

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In November, GOG announced something called the "GOG Preservation Program" which aims to make sure the site's most popular offerings are constantly updated to remain available on ever-changing modern operating systems. This week they've added both Wing Commander 1 + 2 and Privateer 2: The Darkening to the program.

As promised, another wave of classics joins the GOG Preservation Program!

To preserve gaming history, we’re adding horror, action, and strategy icons from legendary franchises—ensuring they remain playable in their best versions and yours to keep forever.

Let’s welcome...

Silent Hill 4: The Room – being the only PC version with previously missing content restored.

F.E.A.R. Platinum – honoring Monolith’s legacy by ensuring this legendary FPS horror lives forever.

And alongside them, even more masterpieces:

Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption
Tomb Raider: Anniversary, Legend, Underworld
Alone in the

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Last week we kicked off the second year of the Wing Commander movie club with an all time classic movie, Casablanca. And this week we've got another one that's a little closer to home: Robert Zemeckis' Contact (1997). It's a stunning adaptation of Carl Sagan's novel about a present-day first contact with an extraterrestrial intelligence. You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

Contact came after almost all of the main line Wing Commander games, so you know this is most likely to relate to the 1999 movie. Indeed, this is another case where Chris Roberts borrowed some of Alan Silvestri for the temp track to the Wing Commander movie. Specifically, a track called Small Moves was used over Maniac and Rosie's postcoital moment.

Of course, Wing Commander has a couple of disastrous first contact stories that we'll take a look at, too… stay tuned for the after action report next week!

Where can I

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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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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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Mac is back with more lore! This time he's taking on the very complicated subject of the F-90 Hellcat V medium fighter, the middle-of-the-road ship that kicks off both Wing Commander III and Wing Commander IV "prepped, primed, loaded, locked and ready to kick some ass." As always, Mac has created literally oodles of cool animation to show off the ship… and his fantastic presentation and serious treatment of Wing Commander's lore is already converting casual observerse to our universe! You can find the Hellcat video here (embedded below) and be sure to check out Mac's previous work here.

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Having trouble reading PALCOMM.S and COMMUNIC.S37 in WC2? Not anymore! AllTinker has released a new bug fix update to Originator. Other recent updates have improved compatibility with WC3/4, Armada, Privateer 2 and even OriginFX and Strike Commander. If you wanted to peer into the code that makes up WC games, this is the app to get. Download the latest version 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 inspired Wing Commander in some way. Tonight's film is An American Werewolf in Paris (1997) which was shot in the same factory as Wing Commander, used the same production company and took advantage of the same tax dodge! 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 Wing Commander movie club has nothing to fear but Sphere itself! The general consensus is that while there's some material of interest in Sphere it doesn't really come together in the end… and it spends a lot of time not quite getting there! In the week before the screening, a lot of people told me that Sphere was a guilty pleasure because they had seen it in theaters when it came out. And there's an argument that that's actually the best kind of movie: one you can enjoy in spite of itself.

... while Sphere may not be a timeless classic, we immediately saw that it had a pretty tangible impact on the Wing Commander movie. We knew going in that this was one of three movies referenced by Digital Anvil's spectacular opening titles… and just like 1492, the influence was obvious in the first seconds of the film. Like 1492, Sphere uses historical drawings as part of the backdrop for the titles… but it

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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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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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My teenaged self would never have believed this but piracy is one of the major forces in preserving our history! Case in point: these screenshots compare two copies of the Wing Commander movie. The first is the commercially available bluray and the second is taken from a recording of the movie as it aired on TV with a Farsi dub! Seeing Wing Commander in another language is pretty cool but there's also something more exciting here: compare the top and the bottom of the two pictures. While the dubbed TV copy is much lower quality it's also clearly taken from an "open matte" version of the film not often seen. As a result, you get to see the entire frame without the 'black bars'.

We'll be on the lookout for more unusual versions of the movie wherever we can find them! You can download the full video 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 inspired Wing Commander in some way. Tonight's film is Aliens (1986) which was a favorite of series creator Chris Roberts when he was working on the first game. 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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In our recent update archiving articles from Aint it Cool News there was a story which mentioned Wing Commander movie storyboards in the January 1998 issue of Ultimate PC, a UK-based magazine. I decided to look up the article and it is... something! It's an extensive and interesting piece on the merging of Hollywood and game development which includes both a focus on Wing Commander Prophecy and a fascinating sidebar interview with Chris Roberts (then in pre-production on the movie). It also features an extremely 1990s layout and what may be the least flattering photograph of Chris Roberts ever published! Most interesting of all, the media is clearly all sourced from the Wing Commander Prophecy EPK... which accidentally included the 'test' storyboards Origin developed for the movie while Chris was still putting it together there. So the AICN report is actually accidentally correcting that error and

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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:

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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