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Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Zulu was a more interesting film than we expected; certainly closer to Lawrence of Arabia than The Dambusters. The production values are spectacular, the story isn't a familiar one to Americans in 2025 and the acting is great. It's a big, bold movie that suffers less because it's a boring war movie and more because it's about the sort of war we no longer find familiar. Wing Commander movie club member bob was the person that found the Zulu reference in Action Stations in the first place and he noted that it's one of his favorite movies. We asked him if he wanted to say a few words about the film... and here they are!:

It's fitting that the line "because we're here" was the impetus to watch Zulu: it sums up the entirety of the film. William Forstchen may have reused it but the contexts could not have been more different. The pilots in Action Stations are fighting for not only their own lives but those

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

A BlueSky user named revenant was recently noodling around with the SNES port of Wing Commander and made a pretty exciting discovery and a cool tool for taking a closer look at the game's assets! Revenant turned ROMs of the two surviving SNES ports into in flight object viewers that let you explore the in-game background layers, essentially letting you scroll through the different ships and objects stored in the game! Their first thread starts here.

completely pointless activity of the week: hacking a Mode 7 object viewer into the janky SNES port of wing commander

(d-pad cycles objects/frames, start button exits)

right now this only shows the 'up close' frames for ingame objects (which are background layers rather than the sprites used for distant objects)

also the displayed names of objects come from the list of text strings which doesn't always match the actual object - i.e. unused Venture graphics are

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

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 Westworld (1973) and you can find details on why we're watching it in the announcement post here. The movie will start at 7 PM PST/10 PM EST but feel free to drop by and hang any time!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Today is Thanksgiving in the United States and so the Wing Commander CIC team would like to wish everyone a happy holiday. Thanksgiving is a time to stop and remember what we're grateful for and in these trying times, that is more and more the love and support of the Wing Commander community. Whether you're posting to the forums or watching movies with us on Discord or chatting back and forth on social media, our old group is still a bright light in my life. Thank you all!

Of course, a big part of Thanksgiving is... Pilgrims! With that in mind, we're reprinting the Confederation Handbook's history of the Pilgrim War, complete with the original illustrations. Did you know that the Pilgrims (or should we say McDanielites?) had this much backstory?

| query "pilgrim war, history" media=encyc, level=UNCLASSIFIED sort=bestmatch | return=1

(Excerpts from The Student's Encyclopedia, 123rd Edition, HarperCollins,

Quote from Crossfire News-Bot

Many of you have watched Crossfire evolve from a simple Freelancer extension into a massive, story-rich, visually enhanced universe. Others are only just beginning to explore its new systems, factions, mysteries, and challenges. No matter where you are in that journey, your support has shaped the mod into what it is today.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

The Wing Commander movie club had a good time with Westworld; it's a movie that spends most of its time just explaining its setup... but that's just fine because that setup is delightful. For this week we asked members to select a type of thriller (as defined by the Wikipedia) from our queue and the surprise winner was the 1996 erotic thriller Crash. It's a David Cronenberg movie about people that are sexually attracted to car crashes, so this should be an interesting one! (You know, Star Trek Discovery star David Cronenberg.) You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along. Please note and plan appropriately: Crash is rated NC-17 for "explicit sex scenes" (but not car crashes?).

Crash is another movie that was used to temp track the 1999 Wing Commander movie. A track from Howard Shore's score, Triton, was chosen to play from Blair's fight with Hunter through to his conversation with Angel in

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Here's a great story from Privateer 2: The Darkening screenwriter Diane Duane. She posted the entry below as a reply on her Tumblr back in 2013 in response to a social media post about a man being obnoxious about women that play video games. If you aren't familiar with Diane Duane's incredible body of work, she's written for properties ranging from Star Trek (extensively!) to Marvel, Doctor Who, My Little Pony, Gargoyles, X-COM, seaQuest DSV and many others... all in addition to her own original properties like the ongoing Young Wizards. There's a good bet you have something she worked on in your collection right now! Her story has a timeless message and it manages to share some interesting behind-the-screens trivia about our favorite Privateer sequel:

I had to do this once with Privateer II: The Darkening. It gained a bit when he said "I bet you didn't play it through, I bet somebody just told you

Quote from Freelancer News-Bot

Many of you have watched Crossfire evolve from a simple Freelancer extension into a massive, story-rich, visually enhanced universe. Others are only just beginning to explore its new systems, factions, mysteries, and challenges. No matter where you are in that journey, your support has shaped the mod into what it is today.

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Zorgon Peterson has announced the limited release of the Caspian Explorer, a large vessel purpose-built for deep space and planetary exploration.
Designed from the keel up as an exploration platform, the Caspian Explorer forgoes the "jack of all trades" compromise of many large ship options. Zorgon Peterson claims the Caspian Explorer is an elite choice for deep space voyages: "a dedicated large explorer that outpaces competitors in exploration performance, manoeuvrability and planetary operations while offering jump capability to match the needs of far-reaching expeditions."
Key features setting the Caspian Explorer apart include new Mk II exploration modules, improved landing thrusters that halve gravity influence on high-G worlds, and advanced thermal shielding for faster, steeper atmospheric entries. The ship also comes with a Mk II SCO-enabled frame shift drive that increases neutron jump

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Hopefully you were able to secure some great deals over the weekend, but if you're still looking to check things off the list for the Wing Commander fan in your life, here's a rundown of WC items for sale!

Print Art

End Run Cover by David Mattingly $20-$100 (search for "Wing Commander") Malcolm McDowell Autographed WC3 PSX Print $65 (15% off through December 31)

PC Games ($2.99 each through 12/2)
Wing Commander 1&2 Wing Commander 3 Wing Commander 4 DVD Wing Commander Prophecy & Secret Ops	Wing Commander Privateer Wing Commander Privateer 2 Wing Commander Academy Wing Commander Armada

Movies & TV

Academy DVD: Amazon $10.96 | Walmart $12.86 | Deep Discount $8.16 Movie Digital: Amazon $9.99 | Fandango $9.99 | Google/YouTube $9.99

Novels ($6.99)
Freedom FlightBaen EbookAmazon KindleApple BooksB&N NookKoboGoogle Play	End RunBaen EbookAmazon KindleApple BooksB&N NookKoboGoogle Play	Fleet ActionBaen EbookAmazon KindleApple