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VGDensetsu was posting about various Origin covers made for the Japanese FM Towns, and that led us to a bit of new info! We know a fair amount about most of the artists who did various WC works over the years, but their Japanese counterparts can be harder to pin down. VGDensetsu clarified who made the covers for the FM Towns and Super Famicon games:

Takashi Asada did the cover art for the FM Towns version of WCII. Yuji Kaida is credited for the cover of the SFC version.

And that gives us an excellent excuse for a Japanese art appreciation post! Here's WC1&2 for the FM Towns and the SFC version of WC1.

And here's some bonus advertisements from Japan where we also see some of this glorious art!

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This is part of a series analyzing newly discovered Wing Commander IV continuity photographs. You can find the previous posts collected here.

We're stepping away from flight suits for today's Wing Commander IV Polaroid post. What we have here is something intriguing: a young woman in a non-standard uniform with a nametag that reads "LOATS". The picture is labeled only "Com. Specialist" and features no visible insignia patches, making this one an interesting challenge... or not, because despite two typos the start to our seach is right in the manual connected right to the text under the photo: "Circle V Comm. Specialist - Saxon Trainer". The 'Circle V' must actually be 'Circe V', an embattled planet you (optionally) visit midway through the game and a short Google search revealed that "Saxon Trainer" is really Saxon TRAINOR.

Who, then, is LOATS? If you tend to side with Panther over Hawk then you may

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The Deluxe vinyl pressing of the WING COMMANDER score has launched! As of this writing, the project has hit almost $3,000, 19% of the total goal. That's a great start, but we'd like to see it higher. Stay tuned for more background and plans for how you can join in on celebrating the campaign in the coming days. For now, we're happy to report that several additional pledge tiers have been added based on folks' responses on the first day: a $150 "Collector's Trio" that comes with all three versions of the album, a $200 "Collectors Trio Deluxe" that has all three versions with the bonus swag and an alite tier $2500 "Dead Wax Dedication" option that will allow one backer to choose what appears on the record's dead wax. If you aren't familiar with this record term, check out this article for details. Basically, it's a chance to insert a sort of Easter egg that will appear on every record manufactured!

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Today we've got a stunning pair of wallpapers that Mac recently put together with Klavs' models. These would look fabulous in the center of a pair of monitors and would look even better if you have a vertically oriented display. They would also work perfectly as your phone's background or lock screen image. Each one is beautiful, but as a pair, they are perfect together!

Hey Kids, Jedi Survivor issues got you down? How about you revisit the other scifi universe Mark Hamill played a major part in where he flew down a trench to destroy a planet sized object that resulted in the good guys winning? - Wing Commander .

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

*Pilots' Federation ALERT*
Exploration of the inner regions of the Maelstroms has revealed the existence of colossal Thargoid constructs.
Alba Tesreau, head of Aegis, published a summary on behalf of the tri-superpower initiative:
"Our pathfinder missions have verified reports by the first manned ships that used the Thargoid pulse neutraliser. We know that the core environments of all eight Maelstroms are consistent in layout and extremely dangerous."
"Once past the energy wave, the initial hazard is an asteroid field that must be navigated. We cannot theorise an obvious reason why the asteroids have been gathered here. Thargoid vessels also patrol this region. Some reports indicate a previously unencountered class of Thargoid combat vessel accompanying interceptors and scouts."
"Beyond these, at the centre of each Maelstrom, is a gargantuan Thargoid structure. They dwarf any singular

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It looks like a certain movie has people talking about a certain war-ending bomb. It just so happens that I took a wonderful senior seminar on the bomb decision and would be happy to walk everyone through the details of what really happened.

Step back in time with me to the '50s. Faced with a seemingly endless standoff, both sides began investing heavily in scientific 'wonder weapons' intended to rapidly upset the status quo of the war.

Black budgets would increasingly fund a rogues' gallery of amoral projects: Project Behemoth, the 'planet-killer' Hopper Drive, the biological warfare laboratory on Greenhouse, the Genetic Enhancement program and others.

In 2659, the task of developing a classified large-scale demolitions laboratory was assigned to Col. James Taggart, a rising star in Special Operations fresh off coordinating the Kilrathi-led rebellion on Ghorah Khar. The effort will cost billions of

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

The Thargoids have unexpectedly abandoned the region around Wregoe BU-Y b2-0, mere days after being discovered.
They were believed to be present due to an ancient site on the planet Wregoe BU-Y b2-0 1 c, which hosted a conflict between Guardian and Thargoid forces millions of years ago. Aegis has confirmed reports that all Thargoids have now disappeared from that area of space. Aden Tanner delivered a summary:
"Our pilots can no longer detect a single Thargoid ship anywhere in that region. In military terms, they have undertaken a full tactical withdrawal. It usually requires overwhelming firepower to drive out Thargoid forces, especially from multiple systems. In this case, there was no fleet action or anti-xeno operation sufficiently large to cause this response."
Dr Jeong-Hui Shin of the Holloway Bioscience Institute observed:
"This is atypical behaviour for the Thargoid species. Their

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

*Pilots' Federation ALERT*
A pulse wave xeno scanner upgrade that can detect human life signs on Thargoid Titans is now available.
Professor Alba Tesreau, head of Aegis, announced the campaign's successful conclusion:
"The upgraded pulse wave xeno scanner will isolate human life signs aboard the Titan motherships. If Seo Jin-ae is correct that some of our missing populations are being stored by the Thargoids, this could be the most important technological breakthrough in the war. I'm deeply grateful to all those who helped make it a reality."
"Aegis is already trialling potential methods to rescue abductees, providing they can be located. I have also accepted Li Yong-Rui's invitation to discuss the recovery methods already explored by Sirius Corporation, following majority approval from our superpower delegates."
Former Federal admiral and current Aegis military strategist Aden Tanner

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Li Yong-Rui, CEO of Sirius Corporation, has addressed the Alliance Assembly as part of its formal inquiry into the strategic defence pact.
The inquiry was proposed by Councillor Nakato Kaine, who highlighted the lack of military support provided by the megacorp against the Thargoids.
When invited to explain why most of Sirius Corporation's plans have not materialised, Li Yong-Rui said:
"Many new anti-xeno ship configurations were designed for the Alliance Defence Force and have been applied to thousands of ships. But we have encountered many obstacles along the way, which have severely undermined our progress."
"Usually these obstacles are bureaucratic in nature, but sometimes we simply cannot communicate effectively with the necessary individuals. I find it hard not to conclude that our progress is being deliberately impeded by forces within government departments. Sadly, not everyone shares

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As the saying goes, great artists steal... and what we're looking at today is a case of great artists stealing from themselves! We thought it would be interesting to take a closer look at StarLancer's cutscenes to pick out assets and finished footage that it reuses from the Wing Commander movie. StarLancer's cinematics were developed by the same artists at Digital Anvil who worked on the Wing Commander movie with the two projects overlapping for a time. As a result, a number of 3D models made it from one to the other and (in the case of the game's various act breaking interstitial news reports) several completed sequences from the movie were used to sort of decorate the background of StarLancer! Let's take a closer look...

Intro

StarLancer's introduction shows the Coalition's dastardly Pearl Harbor-style attack on the Alliance and it includes several reused Wing Commander assets! The cinematic model for

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A favorite Wing Commander legend is currently making the rounds again: the claim that a programmer hex edited a memory manager's crash message with 'Thank you for playing Wing Commander!' so it wouldn't be visible when quitting the game to DOS. The story is not completely true -- the hack happened during development but the bug was fixed before the game shipped -- and we have previously published an in-depth look. But why do people remember 'thank you for playing Wing Commander' so clearly when the game didn't actually say that?

To answer that question, we thought it would be beneficial to conduct a survey that would list out EVERY English-language quit message displayed by a Wing Commander game in MS-DOS. None of these are the result of memory errors, they are simply the executables telling DOS to print text upon exit. Before Privateer, games only displayed a message when they were quit through the UI

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Shout out to the wonderful fan ship illustrations in Secrets of the Wing Commander Universe! They're credited to Elizabeth Creegan. You can access a full collection of Ms. Creegan's ship sketches here.

Secrets of the Wing Commander Universe is the master pilot's guide to all eight Wing Commander games. Every ship and weapon is discussed; every mission is explained; every winning strategy and tactic is detailed; every undocumented feature is laid bare. You get years of Wing Commander experience - without giving up your day job. It's the Bible of the Wing Commander Universe!

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Oh, did your version of Wing Commander III not have a mission where you escort two minelayers?

Lord Thrakhath sacrificed an entire Bhantkara carrier group in a feint at Torgo as part of his strategy to trap the Behemoth. Here: Thunderbolt 300 escorts a pair of dedicated minesweepers as part of the effort to cover the weapon’s approaches.

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We were originally planning to mix up the news a bit to start the week off, but George Oldziey’s campaign is off to such a roaring start that it’s become newsworthy again! In barely over a day since going live, the campaign to create a new live album of Wing Commander music has hit the 50% funding mark! This means more than $8000 of the $16,000 target has been achieved. When combined with Matt Hiltner’s previously mentioned large donation, we are very much well on the way to making this a reality! Things are going so well that George is already starting to firm up plans for some of the hypothetical stretch goals that have been on his mind. No one expected to be talking about that so soon, but it’s a wonderful situation to be in. All of this is made possible by the ongoing support from so many dedicated Wing Commander fans. This is just the beginning; so we’re very anxious to see where

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GOG has kicked off a brand new Sci-Fi Sale to help you complete your Wing Commander collection. Each of the games is marked down 75%. There's actually almost 600 games that fall under the sci-fi definition over at GOG, so I did a check to see where Wing Commander places in the all-time best seller rankings. It looks like WC1&2, WC3, WC4 and Privateer are all in the top ten behind System Shock 2 and Masters of Orion 1&2. Prophecy, Privateer 2 and Crusader are close behind in the top 15. Armada and Academy make the top 25, with Star Trek 25th Anniversary between them. Those are excellent numbers!

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Today we've got a little snippet unearthed by Sash's RetroBytes. It's a segment from the British TV show Bad Influence! that peeks behind the scenes of Wing Commander 3. Most of the footage looks like material we'd have seen on other longer WC3 BTS features, but it's always nice to see times when Wing Commander was showcased on television!

The Heart of the Tiger! Hollywood comes to video games in a big way - as we see in this clip of Bad Influence series 3 episode 4 where they went behind the scenes of the production of Wing Commander III. #Retrogaming #dosgaming #wingcommander #technology #90s#GameTVNibbles pic.twitter.com/kU9j4qkdol

— Sasha's RetroBytes (@SharkaBytes) October 9, 2023

The Heart of the Tiger! Hollywood comes to video games in a big way - as we see in this clip of Bad Influence series 3 episode 4 where they went behind the scenes of the production of Wing Commander III.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Last month veteran Wingnut and game developer Howard Day open sourced his Wing Leader project to recreate a modern game in the style of WC1. He put it out there for fellow fans to take the lead and make progress, but he's also reentered the fray himself. His first new addition is the Scimitar medium fighter. It adds some gorgeous new flair to the game, and you can already see it in action in the online rolling demo here!

I built myself a Scimitar-class medium fighter for Wing Leader! I'm pretty happy with how it turned out so far! I'm building it into the game demo now - pretty much just have to get the numbers right to make it really feel like the Centaurian Mud-Pig. It's been updated in the running demo!

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Here's another nifty teaser for the

WC4 Remaster

fan project. We saw DefianceIndustries' immersive

Hellcat cockpit

a couple months back, and now

Pedro

has integrated it into game for the first time. It demonstrates a neat effect with the game's familiar HUD being projected in front of the cockpit glass. There appear to be some nice lighting effects as well. The team cautions that there's still a lot of work to go, but things already look promising!

First in-game shot of the cockpit. Still early days

Quote from Star Trek Online News-Bot

We are getting closer and closer to Destination Star Trek Birmingham, and the Star Trek Online Away Team is performing our final preparations for the convention! The shuttle is getting loaded with all that is needed to see you in Birmingham from October 24th to October 27th. Our Away Team is bringing plenty of swag for those of you that come say hi, including holographic Landry and Lorca Bridge Officers. And this is your chance to win a 3-day-ticket for Destination Star Trek and to meet the team from Star Trek Online! We can’t wait to meet you at Destination Star Trek Birmingham, Captains. We’ll see you there! Star Trek Online [EN] | Destination Star Trek Giveaway .share-footer a { margin: 20px 10px 10px 0; background: url(d7afaaa14e96d0d973f76157ae31ec5b1466398539.png) no-repeat 0 0; opacity: .5; display: inline-block; height: 60px; width: 60px; padding:

Quote from Star Trek Online News-Bot

Earlier this year, Starfleet Engineers, in conjunction with the finest minds in singularity technology of the Romulan Republic, finally made a breakthrough in investigating the incursions from the Galaxy of Great Sales, which occasionally merges with our own to set off the anomaly known as the “Flash Sale.” This allowed Star Trek Online to put together three great sales during the Earth event known as Black Friday, but during the Intra-galactic Winter Holiday Celebrations, we’re putting together five sales! It’s time for the fourth sale, and it’s a doozy for all of you Antimatter-Heads out there. From December 28th at 10am to December 31st at Midnight PT, you can save 30% on all ships in the Zen Store! Had your eye on a ship, like the brand new Earhart on PC or the newly released Somerville on Console? Now’s the time to take command! .share-footer a { margin: 20px 10px 10px 0;