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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
May
…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.
Download MP3
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
Apr
…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
Apr
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!
Oct
…Brewer Corporation has confirmed the success of its recent campaign to acquire construction materials, with independent pilots delivering vast quantities of resources to meet its clients' order.
CEO Madelyn Teague released a statement from Brewer's Minerva headquarters:
"Our sincere thanks go to the many pilots who supported this campaign. The required stocks have been secured in record time, enabling us to meet the terms of this urgent order."
Independent observers believe that the concentration of megaship traffic and the secrecy surrounding the order, together with the reported direct messages to pilots pledged to one of the twelve Powers, are strong indicators of an intention to rapidly construct a science and security enclave around HIP 87621.
Analysts have concluded that given the sheer scale of Brewer Corporation's logistical operations deployed for this project, the enclave could be
Oct
Full version of Freelancer The Nomad Legacy is coming. Also in English!
Jun
…What's in a name? One of the great, small innovations in Wing Commander II is that any ship can be assigned a custom name. The game's mission designers took great advantage of this, naming all sorts of background spacecraft… including 23 different human transports across the three campaigns! WC2 did an excellent job of coming up with 'unusual' names for its ships; while many future settings simply put classic warships into space, WC2 found more unique choices… especially for the Clydesdales and Free Traders.
I recently made a surprise discovery while playing Special Operations 2: a Clydesdale which we had always listed as the "Coatmain" was actually the "Cootmain". Which obviously got me thinking: what the heck is a Cootmain? I wasn't able to find the term anywhere, not on Google, not in old Usenet posts and not even in the sum total of human knowledge stored at the Internet Archive! From there I
Aug
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.
Jul
Here's a little treasure: a Swedish magazine article about flight tactics in the original Wing Commander that has had a series of original maneuvering diagrams commissioned for it! They feature original 3D models of the Hornet, Dralthi and Dorkir (!) that seem to have been created for this purpose and not seen again. Even if you can't read Swedish, this one is worth a look! The article originally appeared in a 1993 issue of Datormagazin (Number 12, July 15 to August 11).
Jun
…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
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
Jun
…
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!
Wing Commander Movie Soundtrack
This is the Wing Commander movie soundtrack plus the diagetic music and alternate recordings of the overture.
Wing Commander Prophecy Soundtrack
This is our attempt to recreate the Edel Wing Commander Prophecy OST CD. The
Aug
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!
Nov
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 Right Stuff (1983) 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
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!
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 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!
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!
Jul
…
We've got a couple of updates for Origin composer George Oldizey's Wing Commander album project. First is the news that the vinyl albums continue to suffer extended delays. Work is continuing, but certain elements need to be redone and all of this takes time. To me, this sounds like pretty typical stuff for a project of this nature, but it will means fans on the higher tiers of the original Kickstarter campaign will need to continue to hang tight. On the bright side, the digital and CD versions of the music are complete and they are just wonderful. Now that people who pledged for just these products in the campaign have been taken care of, Mr. Oldziey has added the items for wide scale purchase from his website. Stop by here if you'd like to pick up the album files for $25 or on disc for $50. The first orchestral album as well as the jazz spinoff are also available!
Just thought I’d pass
Apr
…The team at GOG recently announced that Wing Commander I & II and Privateer 2 would be joining their GOG Preservation Program. Now they've issued updated versions of both releases which gives us a look at what this actually means!
The answer seems to be 'not a lot, but not nothing'. The patch notes are reprinted below. All of the "verified" and "validated" items just mean they checked to see if the game still loads, so those aren't particularly interesting (or even accurate in the case of Privateer 2, which suffers fro crippling slowdown issues in space). But there are a couple of gems in here, including the addition of the French version of Privateer 2 the re-enabling of Wing Commander I's transfer utilities and Wing Commander II's installer options.
Privateer 2: The Darkening:
Added French localization.
Validated stability.
Verified compatibility with Windows 10 and 11.
Verified Cloud Saves support.Wing
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)
