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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)

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Greetings WingNuts,

We weren't going to do after action reports for movies that were just referenced by Wing Commander… but there's so much we noticed in The Empire Strikes Back that we decided to keep it going and at least post what was referenced each week. Plus, we have to have a place for the weekly Sully picture!

Here's the "we found them" line that's quoted in Wing Commander Prophecy:

Hoth itself gets a nod on Wing Commander Academy. Mark Hamill again faces a snow cave in The Price of Victory:

And then there's the appearance of the Super Star Destroyer echoed in Prince Thrakhath's enormous dreadnought. Like the 22km Wing Commander ship, fans have spent decades bickering about the length of the SSD (it's 19 km).

Darth Vader famously executes an officer during the attack on Hoth. Dr. Forstchen first has Prince Thrakhath do the same in End Run…

“Now tell me this, Jamuka,” Thrakhath said quietly,

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I made a terrible discovery while looking through our archive: we have not updated on the incredible Privateer 2 artwork of Jayden Morris (ArtStation) in years and they have recreated at least two truly incredible ships in that time. We reported on their stunning remake of the Anhur landing cutscene and recreation of the Jincilla Veldor using Star Citizen assets... but not their modern-game-quality models of the Straith and the Heron. We'll collect all of it in this update for posterity!

Morris has created a wonderful set of renders and animations of both ships, presenting them similar to a Star Citizen concept sale with different liveries, animations showing how they work and even some associated lore!

Privateer 2 - Straith (ArtStation)

Remake of the Straith light fighter ship from Privateer 2 (1996).

Original: https://www.wcnews.com/wcpedia/Straith_Light_Fighter_PL01

Using weapon models from Star

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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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You will be forgiven if you've never heard of the Keyboard And Terminal Technology (KATT) Game Master Matt. It was a very obscure mid-90s game controller keyboard. Its gimmick was that it was pre-programmed to support specific games and you could buy different layout "matts" (sic) that would customize the device to 'look' like the game you're playing. They might, for instance, show a jet cockpit or an RPG character sheet with the custom buttons labeled. The device was not a success and it's best (barely) remembered for small ads which appeared in magazines like PC Gamer which listed the different game mats available.

We've known that there were several Wing Commander mats sold but none of them had ever been seen before. Enter LiqMatrix who has been researching the Game Master and who kindly stopped by our forum to share what they've learned. They were recently lucky enough to win an auction for what

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The Wing Commander movie club is back from old Detroit and there's no way around it: RoboCop 3 is a bad movie. Like the sequels to Starship Troopers and Showgirls, this is another case of an artful Verhoeven movie being cut down into only its most literal parts. Which is fine: RoboCop said everything it needed to say… following it up with endless sequels focused on how cool it is that there could be a robot cop kind of just reinforces the original message. And you know, it did end up being sort of fun: RoboCop 3 drags in the first half but it has a pretty fun third act that climaxes with RoboCop flying a jetpack and saying absolutely nothing about the human condition.

What about Wing Commander? The only direct connection was a piece of music used in the Wing Commander workprint and we reviewed that in the intro post. But the one thing we couldn't get out of our minds was the Righteous Fire

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The Wing Commander movie club survived our trek to Altair IV! Forbidden Planet was a pretty fascinating movie, a prototype for the modern 'serious' science fiction film… and a huge part of the DNA of Star Trek, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and more. This week, we're headed back to Earth… the Earth of the near future! This week's movie is Demolition Man, an extremely fun action movie from 1993. So plan to order some Taco Bell and form on our wings for a modern… masterpiece, I guess. You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

The Wing Commander connection here is that music from Demolition Man was used during the production of the Wing Commander movie as a 'temp track'. Temp tracking is a process by which a film is given temporary music before it has its own score in order to show everyone a sense of what is being worked towards. In the case of Demolition Man, a Elliot Goldenthal track

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Greetings WingNuts,

Last week, we watched the 1993 action classic Demolition Man. The only major connection to Wing Commander was that Chris Roberts used a track from the movie when temp tracking Wing Commander. Here's the scene in question as it appears in the movie… the music is pretty hidden under the gunfight! Can you imagine the scramble scene in Wing Commander sounding like this?

Sully is a certified fan of both Taco Bell and Pizza Hut; dono't make him choose!

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Here's a neat discovery courtesy of a brief memory someone mentioned on BlueSky. A documentary where Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven played Wing Commander? It sounded too specific not to be real and sure enough, a quick search revealed that the pair appeared in the second episode ("To The Brink of Eternity") of a 1992 British documentary called Pandora's Box.

The documentary itself is about much heavier things than Wing Commander and Pournelle and Niven are appearing not as science fiction authors but because of their involvement in proposing the Strategic Defense Initiative (aka "Star Wars") to the Reagan administration. But as part of their interview, the film crew captured Pournelle very eagerly playing Wing Commander to use as coverage. Here's that clip:

It's worth noting that based on the ship flown (Rapier), the skybox objects (red nebula, blue planet) and the progression of enemy ships (a Gratha

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

*Pilots' Federation Alert*
The Pilots' Federation has confirmed that licensed Commanders will be granted access to the HIP 87621 system by October Consortium.
The unexpected move has followed weeks of speculation surrounding HIP 87621, with growing interest from all three superpowers piling pressure on the megacorp. A spokesperson from within the Pilots' Federation stated:
"The continued delay from October Consortium to relinquish permit control has only created further tension between political and scientific communities. To assuage concerns over the type of research taking place in HIP 87621, we have been invited to grant access to the system to licensed Pilots' Federation members."
However, Lexi October, head of the October Consortium, was less cordial in her statement to Vox Galactica:
"We have done nothing but preserve our discovery within HIP 87621 for security and scientific purposes.

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To the Wing Commander Combat Information Center's 27th birthday celebration! TONIGHT at 7:00 PM Eastern US (4:00 PM Pacific and 11:00 PM GMT). Share a wonderful evening with us all in #Wingnut on Discord!

• A Super Stream!
• An Awesome Archive!
• Return of the Mac!
• Ships and Scripts!
• Fan Fellowship!
• Cake? ...and more!

So join us in Discord, channel #WingNut! See you there!

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The Video Game History Foundation recently announced that they had acquired the rights to Computer Entertainer magazine, a gaming periodical that ran from 1982 to 1990, and made it freely available online under the Creative Commons license. This is an invaluable resource for early gaming historians… but the magazine ended its run in July 1990, two months before the original Wing Commander was released. Nevertheless, Danthrax (amazing Wing Commander Armada reference!) discovered two pretty interesting articles that are relevant to our interests!

The first article is from Computer Entertainer's penultimate issue, June 1990. It's short but it covers a very important point in history: the initial announcement that Origin will show off a space sim named 'Squadron' at the upcoming summer CES trade show.

Origin has two new programs to show at CES

First in series of Ultima spin-offs plus space combat simulation

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It's time for another Saturday Wing Commander cartoon marathon… with real cartoons, this time! These marathons, currently scheduled monthly, celebrate Wing Commander-related media that doesn't quite fit with the Friday night movie club. This Saturday, November 15, we'll be bringing you another themed morning of '90s media and great Wing Commander conversation. This time we'll be taking a look at the management of the real life Cold War… and then the start of a pretty compelling sci fi version!

Pandora's Box, Episode 2: To the Brink of Eternity (1992): Pandora's Box is a 1992 BBC series by documentarian Adam Curtis which looked at various sociopolitical issues facing the world at the time (most of which are still relevant today). The second episode, To the Brink of Eternity, looks at how the United States has managed nuclear security through the Cold War. It's a fascinating show but we're watching

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Years ago, we scanned a copy of what has been referred to as the Wing Commander "series bible" (here, PDF) It's a massive document that records all sorts of information about the Wing Commander series up through Wing Commander III. The copy we preserved came from the actual physical document that the Maverick team maintained and updated over time and which was rescued after the team was disbanded.

The core of this document was what might be called the Wing Commander licensing bible, a hundred page document put together just after the release of Special Operations 1 for the express purpose of being a reference for the writers of the Wing Commander novel series. Dr. Forstchen, for instance, was sent a copy of this initial document and used it for reference during the writing of End Run, Fleet Action and so on. For anyone thinking about that material, it's valuable to have a copy of the original bible so

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The Wing Commander movie club's consensus is that The Right Stuff has the right stuff. It's a movie that tells both a fascinating story and provides a unique look at the psychology behind some of our heroes (we all agreed that we did NOT have what it takes to ride rockets). Despite the three plus hour run time, The Right Stuff remains snappy and modern. It grabs you from the start and despite the complete second act shift in the narrative it feels cohesive and like everything matters. The only aspect that really sticks out as odd today is the flashes of then-modern humor that punctuate it. This was surely something that in the 80s served to distinguish it from big, slow epics but it feels somewhat dated today. But nowhere near enough to drag down this excellent film!

We talked about the literal reference to Casey having 'the right stuff' in the intro but the character you really come away from the

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I don't know about where you are, but here, the weather has shifted and it most definitely feels like fall. In order to help cure some of that seasonal depression, GOG has arrived with its autumn sale. This means the Wing Commander series is 50% off across the board. Fill out your digital collection from the links below!

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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 The Empire Strikes Back 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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You've probably heard talk of some excitement going on in Portland, Oregon and it's all true: Wing Commander I and II composer George "The Fatman" Sanger will be appearing at next weekend's Portland Retro Gaming Expo! The convention runs October 17 to 19 at the Oregon Convention Center.

We were also honored to loan a Wing Commander Prophecy flight suit for display at their FMV Zone museum exhibit. So if you're in Portland next weekend, you can really have some Wing Commander fun!

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When it comes to science fiction, sandworms are everywhere. We largely owe that to the enduring popularity of Dune. Its desert planet is defined by impossibly huge worms which play a major role in the story.. and that has led to decades of sandworms in fiction, from Beetlejuice to a Star Citizen demo. And Wing Commander is technically no exception! We don't ever get a visual of sandworms in the Wing Commander universe but we do know of at least THREE planets that are home to such creatures! Let's take a quick tour of the universe…

Brimstone II: In the Wing Commander I & II Ultimate Strategy Guide, veteran Carl LaFong recounts his first days at the Terran Confederation Space Naval Academy. He includes a note given to him on arrival from the senior class as part of the hazing of new students. It mentions, among other things, that they are "lower than a sand worm in the Brimstone System." Here's the whole

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There's probably no point in reviewing The Empire Strikes Back, but it's safe to report that we all loved it. This week, the Wing Commander movie club is going back to the 1950s to take a look at the beginning of our future. We'll be watching Forbidden Planet, a movie that spawned (among many other things) the original Star Trek! You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

Wing Commander Academy's Lords of the Sky opens with Tolwyn briefing the cadets. He shows a map of the Dioscuri system which they'll be patrolling and if you look very carefully you can see the background painters have added a number of labels to surrounding stars. One of them is a nood to Star Trek (M1701) and one is a reference to Alien (LV442). And at the top left of the image you can find C57D… a reference to the hero starship in Forbidden Planet, the United Planets Cruiser C-57D!

Privateer 2 doesn't just name ships