News categories list

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Here’s why weird eBay listings are so much fun. I took a chance on this “NEC PowerPlayer CD Collection” which claimed to include Mechwarrior 2, Command and Conquer, Descent 2... and Wing Commander IV! I had never heard of this bundle and thought it might be a case of a PC owner storing his game discs in a random booklet. But worth a look for a few bucks. Then I saw the WCIV discs: “not for resale” with a unique EA number! It’s an OEM WC4. By searching for the included games, I discovered that it's a software bundle included with two models of computer in late 1996: the NEC PowerPlayer 2010 and the PowerPlayer 2020!

Here

are some very old stats for the 2020.

As I write about this, the postman delivered two more neat pickups! Here’s a German Wing Commander IV promotional mousepad with a second design I’d never seen before. And here’s the original painting for the Kilrathi “Ram” maneuver card

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Here's a fascinating look at Origin's product plan as of 1989, just before Wing Commander changed things. It's amazing what could have been (a Star Wars RPG by Richard Garriott!) and also how far in advance they planned for projects like Ultima Underworld.

• Bad Blood: released
• Ultima 6: released
• Dinosaur Valley: became Ultima Savage Empire
• Squadron: became Wing Commander
• Time Travel: became Ultima Martian Dreams (?)
• Super Heroes: didn't happen
• Ultima 5 NES: released
• Ultima Gameboy: became Runes of Virtue
• Ultima 7: released
• Car Wars: didn't happen
• Ultima 6: became Ultima 6 SNES
• Star Wars: didn't happen
• The Underground: became Ultima Underworld
• Ultima adventure game: didn't happen
• Ultima 7 Spinoff: became Serpent Isle
• Ultima 8: happened (two years later)
• Blood & Fog: didn't happen
• Ultima 7 Spinoff: went into development as Arthurian Legends, ultimately cancelled

After we initially

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

This conversation provided a good excuse to post some airplane diskettes! Origin could make a handsome disk!

ParadiseRegaind: I’m reminded of the beautiful US diskette artwork for Pacific Strike, and to a lesser extend, Strike Commander.

LOAF: Agreed! Makes you wish there had been a diskette SKU for Wings of Glory...

• Strike Commander
• Disk 1 - F-16 Fighting Falcon
• Disk 2 - MiG-29 Fulcrum
• Disk 3 - Tornado
• Disk 4 - A-10 Warthog
• Disk 5 - Su-27 Flanker
• Disk 6 - F-15 Eagle
• Disk 7 - F/A-18 Hornet
• Disk 8 - F-22 Lightning II

(Note that most copies of Strike Commander include a bonus Origin FX demo on Disk 8; the F-22 art only appears in copies without the demo.)

• Pacific Strike
• Disk 1 (and 9) - F4F Wildcat
• Disk 2 - TBD Devastator
• Disk 3 - F6F Hellcat
• Disk 4 - SBD Dauntless
• Disk 5 - F4U Corsair
• Disk 6 - SB2C Helldiver
• Disk 7 - TBD Avenger
• Disk 8 - F8F Bearcat

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

I was organizing some things into a new cabinet recently and thought you might like to take a peek!

Here's a rundown of what's pictured, starting from the top left.

• Top Row: Wing Commander novels, including three copies of the Junior Novelization and seven Pilgrim Stars
• Second from Top: Super Nintendo versions of WC1 and The Secret Missions in US, UK PAL and Japanese Super Famicon configurations, random publications like the Starlog Movie magazine, printed copies of Star Soldier, Mike Winterbauer art magnet, 35 mm film trailer for WC4, binders with sets of Wing Commander CCGs, a mini bottle of Prophecy water, stack of WC audio albums
• Third from Top: Wing Commander DVDs (1999 Fox release, 2013 Fox reprint and Anchor Bay reprint) and VHSes (WC Movie and WC3 Behind the Screens), WC Blu-rays, Academy animated series DVD, loose promo cards (from Nintendo Power and for the CCG), a handful of 3D printed models

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

This is turning into a series!

Christian Klein

has found yet another DROSoft localization for Spain. This time it's Wing Commander 2. This one has a long of box text to translate, and the small instruction pamphlet has a very cool design with watermark silhouettes of all the ships on it. Relatively speaking, there's quite a few copies of Wing Commander 2 out there, but not this version of it! Really cool find!

Thanks Spain! I recently found another neat Wing Commander 2 version to add to my small collection.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Christian Klein

has found another rare and exotic Spanish Wing Commander translation by DROSoft. His

last

couple

finds were for WC1 and the Secret Missions, but this jumps all the way forward to Armada. It would be a treat to see how they changed the Voices of War manual and how the English and Spanish versions would mesh over multiplayer. The Spanish Victory Streak is just there for fun and wasn't part of this set. Armada was ahead of its time and is a ton of fun, so it's great to see other regions that got it!

Just got this hard to find Spanish Wing Commander Armada. The box is in a good shape and the disks are still readable. It's added to the archive now. #DOSgaming

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

EmuMusicFan recently added a Japanese copy of Wing Commander 3 for the Playstation to his collection. This version has some absolutely gorgeous documentation that I don't think we've posted before, so here's the Combat Guide instruction manual in its entirety! It's in full color, which is really sweet. I always always like to see what bits of the game and interface remain in English after the rest is translated. It's very cool all around!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

EmuMusicFan has another cool Japanese scan to share. This time it's the "Exploration Guide" that covers the gameflow portions of Wing Commander 3 PSX. Emu previously scanned the Combat Guide that details the spaceflight portions. Both are in full color, and even if you're not likely to play the Japanese port of a Playstation game any time soon, it's pretty neat to see how the menus and interface slightly differ. Japanese readers will also get some fun flavor text about the characters!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Yesterday we got a peek at the awesome French lobby cards designed to promote the Wing Commander Movie, and I mentioned that there were several also available in North America. I looked a bit through our archives, and pics of these cards are few and far between. We didn't want to deprive anyone of our heroes' retinal signatures or flight (school) records, so here are updated photos of each one! You also get bonus pilot nose art and shots of the back this time. The backs differ by calling out the actor shown on the front. I wonder if anyone has ever mailed one before?

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

From May 1986 to September 1998, Origin Systems 'owned' the back cover of Computer Gaming World. Their first ad was for Ogre, a tank fighting game and the last was for Ultima IX.

Origin did this marketing in house and got so good at it that instead of shutting them down after the acqusition EA used their team for studios like Firaxis and Bullfrog. Looking at them is a neat way to watch the culture, desktop publishing and the audience change.

Since there are great scans of the full run of CGW, I thought pulling out all the Wing Commander ads would make for a good start to a larger collection. I've collected them all here.

You start out with handmade ads designed to capture the hobbyists of the early 90s...

... then a more prestigious Hollywood look (moving to digital layouts) for the multimedia era that brought in more gamers...

And then some true X-TREME nonsense towards the end!

Privateer 2, which had a

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Here's a really cool find that LOAF recently came across. From the outside, it might look like a nifty WC1 Special Edition autographed by Chris Roberts, but it's what's inside that's pretty rare! The set was originally purchased directly from Origin in 1990, and the included Secret Missions were special mailed in a WC branded envelope instead of the standard slim black box. Not many of these were produced like this, and even fewer still exist today!

I lucked into one of my grails! It’s a copy of the Special Edition of Wing Commander with the Secret Missions mailer! This version was only available via mail order from Origin in 1990. The mission disk came separately in the mailer in December when it was finished.

They hadn’t originally planned to release Secret Missions at retail at all, it was an extra mailed directly from Origin. But there was so much interest they ended up doing a boxed

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

New this month on the Wingkipedia: high res scans of the 1999 X-Toys Wing Commander trading cards! Fans who kept their cards in the packaging could be missing out on some awesome reverse-side lore!

A different trading card was included with each of X-Toys' eight Wing Commander action figures in 1999. The rear card text is largely adapted from the Wing Commander Confederation Handbook.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Dominus of Exult has some more cool collectibles to show off! He's managed to track down a pair of Wing Commander games localized in Portuguese. These rare copies of WC4 and Privateer 2 have a bit of warping and tearing damage, but it's still wonderful that they were saved. I'm still poring over the minute differences here despite not speaking the language! These should look great alongside his Portuguese copy of Privateer 1.

Got some new rarities. Portuguese Wing Commander IV and Privateer 2. Unfortunately the seller stored them in a very humid place. Trying to open the IV he destroyed the slide cover.

LOAF: Are they localized at all?

Dominus: Boxes and documents all in Portuguese. At least the intro has no subtitles. Look like the standard UK CDs. Even the quadruple CD case inlays are the UK ones and not translated (manual etc. are translated).

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Christian Klein posted some cool pictures of a Wing Commander box, and I thought this one was definitely worth sharing. There are many variants of the original "black box" Wing Commander, and most fans are familiar with the Deluxe Edition (with expansions) that come in a blue box. This particular copy, however, is the Software Toolworks Deluxe Edition that comes in a black box on CD! I added a copy of the blue floppy version for comparison. Most of the internal contents will be pretty familiar, but the CD holder itself is a pretty cool artifact! It's by no means the only version of the original game on CD, but many of those are part of other exotic compilations or OEM releases. Check out more of Christian's finds on Twitter.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Here's a couple of unboxing videos for Wing Commander Movie action figures by Nerd4Life. These are Blair in his flight suit and the Kilrathi General. YouTube has a pretty good real time auto translate option now, so if you blow up the videos and turn that on, it's possible to get the message behind what he's saying. I have to say that I almost jumped out of my chair when he ripped the plastic shell off. Not everyone is as terrified about tearing the cardboard it seems, and perhaps the glue has lost some of its stick after twenty years. I'm not sure I ever had the heart to open any of my own figures. At one point I did separately purchase opened ones on eBay to avoid violating my originals!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

There's been a lot of talk in the news lately about the enhanced footage that ODVS has made for Wing Commander 3, 4 and Prophecy, but we've also heard from some folks who haven't downloaded the large (but not too large) file packs with the remastered clips. For all those folks, he's released this dazzling sample: the WC4 cinematic trailer. It's just gorgeous - even with YouTube's compression factored in! Owen made an entirely new set of clips for the CIC's recent birthday, and all the download links are available below.

• Wing Commander 3: version 2.0 (3.7 gig zip)

• Wing Commander 4: version 5.0, English, Pack 1 (3.3 gig zip)
• Wing Commander 4: version 5.0, English, Pack 2 (3.2 gig zip)
• Wing Commander 4: version 5.0, German, Pack 1 (3.2 gig zip)
• Wing Commander 4: version 5.0, German, Pack 2 (3.1 gig zip)
• Wing Commander 4: version 5.0, French, Pack 1 (3.2 gig zip)
• Wing Commander 4: version 5.0, French, Pack 2

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Christian Klein

posted this fun shot of the cover of the Japanese DOS/V user manual. It's an interesting line art digitization of the WC1 box. The typed-in dashboard values mostly match up, although I think the KPS looks more like 2400 than 2480 and the bottom shield stat seems more like an 82 in the original. It might seem obvious at first that this is just the same iconic scene we always see, but this isn't the only time a familiar WC cockpit bears down on three Dralthi! Mike Winterbauer's famous

SNES art

and the

cover of End Run

are just a

few alternate examples

.

Random #WingCommander stuff ...

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

There's a scene with a chess board in the Wing Commander Movie, and that means we need to figure out exactly what set was used in the filming! LOAF studied the footage up close and grabbed some good shots of the pieces. He put a call out online, and surprisingly, fellow fans zeroed it almost immediately. You might have to repaint it, but you too could own the same set as Adam "Bishop" Polanksi!

This came up over the weekend and I have to throw it to any chess experts out there: does anyone recognize the set they use in the Wing Commander movie?

Recreated the board with help from AD. And then Rosie's final move is (I think following one (1) reading of the Wikipedia entry on chess notation) Nxb3.

Also it’s odd that Lt. Polanski is so obviously terrible at the game given that his call sign is Bishop and his nose art is a little chess board.

Bruce Erickson spotted this, which looks like a good match! It

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

The Belgian Chess History website runs a remarkable blog where they analyze and dissect chess games in progress across a variety of film and television. They look at the chess board setups and discuss how the characters (often inexplicably) got into their situation. Wing Commander has been featured, and it got a characteristically brutal scrubbing. Not only do they hate the setup, they're not fond of the characters nor even the chess pieces! You can find the full Belgian Chess History article here.

LOAF actually researched and found the actual chess set used in the WC Movie a while back. He also put together a slightly more accurate placement of the pieces, pictured below.

LOAF: It's just not a situation anyone would reasonably get to. Unless Bishop, a man named after a chess piece with said piece painted on his Rapier, is particularly terrible at chess.

Belgian Chess History: The idiot on the table

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

The Children of Tothos are preparing to destroy Archambault Terminal with a stolen nuclear weapon, sacrificing millions of lives in the name of their deity.

Crime correspondent Ethan Takahashi of the Federal Times delivered this report:

"Ritual sacrifices have now begun, according to a chilling broadcast from cult leader Barnabas Cole. He claims these deaths will lead to a final ceremony, when the Lucifer Device will be detonated. Dozens of the starport's citizens are already feared dead at the hands of cultists."

"Cole also made this statement: 'We welcome new followers who heed my testament by sending one of their siblings into Tothos's light.'"

"Since this message, disturbing reports have been received of newly docked ships killing one of their own crew, so that the rest are granted permission to join the cult."

"Federal authorities are still unsure how to free Archambault Terminal without