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  • 17

    Jul

  • 19

    Jul

    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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  • 21

    Jul

    oldziey_volume2_21t.jpgWe'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
  • 02

    Aug

  • 03

    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!

  • 10

    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)

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  • 08

    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:

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    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
  • 25

    Jun

  • 28

    Jul

  • 19

    Apr

  • 23

    Jul

    I'm always excited to discover a new piece of Wing Commander-related advertising... and we've got a big one today! Baen ran these unique magazine advertisements for Wing Commanders End Run and Fleet Action in Science Fiction Chronicle in December 1993 and January 1994, respectively. There's some pretty unique copy in here: "soil words from a soft Kilrathi mouth." (?!) It's crazy to think that there was a time when the two biggest Wing Commander novels came out just months apart; the Wing Commander universe certainly grew by leaps and bounds in 1994!

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  • 02

    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!

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  • 19

    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!

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  • 05

    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 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!

    BattlestarGalacticat.jpgAnd don't forget our Warrior King Cartoon Party is early tomorrow!

  • 04

    May

    The physical copies of Origin composer George Oldziey's new Wing Commander album are now being mass produced, so Mr. Oldziey has shared a few samples of what to expect. He's posted the finalized graphics files for both the CD and vinyl album art. There's also sample audio copies of the vinyl album so you can get a taste of what it will sound like in long form! Backers can log in to the project's Kickstarter updates for the links.

    Greetings all, and thank you for your amazing patience. Both the CD and vinyl products are (finally) in production as we speak. In the meantime I want to share all the cover art as well as the vinyl audio files for you to check out. The vinyl audio is obviously divided into two long audio files which will give you the opportunity to listen to the tracks in sequence without having to click on individual files. One note about the side A file; it starts with a 60 second
  • 19

    Jul

  • 03

    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!

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  • 02

    Jun

  • 03

    Jul

    Origin composer George Oldziey is back with a new status update on the latest vinyl album of Wing Commander music. While CD production was completed earlier this year, the larger vinyl records have been trickier to produce. George is still pushing the producer hard to deliver in a timely manner, but forces outside his control have pushed the timetable of complex modern manufacturing out a bit. In the mean time, see below for a very cool behind-the-scenes look at how Mr. Oldziey worked with the live orchestra in Budapest to craft his latest musical delight!

    Greetings all. Just to let you know I'm not "slacking off" here. I'm in contact with the company making the vinyl deliverables. Vinyl is a very hot format these days. Here is the latest reply from the company making your vinyl discs...
    Hi George,

    I'm so sorry I did not get back your voicemail yesterday, I was unexpectedly out of the office.

    I