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Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

This month's analysis of the influence held by key figures in the core systems has arrived, courtesy of Conrad Sterling of Vox Galactica.
His latest survey of system populations suggests the following five powers enjoy the largest sphere of influence:
Rank 1: Aisling Duval – 1,936 systems
Rank 2: Edmund Mahon - 1,674 systems
Rank 3: Arissa Lavigny-Duval – 1,616 systems
Rank 4: Yuri Grom – 1,201 systems
Rank 5: Li Yong-Rui – 1,183 systems
The largest increase in system influence belonged to Aisling Duval who can claim an additional 275 systems as supporters.
Vox Galactica will provide another update on the state of the powers next month.

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Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

The results are in: seven is exactly the right number of samurai for a movie to have. This week, we're moving a few centuries forward in history… to the 1970s! Friday's Wing Commander-connected film will be the classic supernatural horror film The Exorcist. You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

The connection to The Exorcist is a funny one. The concept artists on the Privateer team would label their work with the names of movies and albums as a running joke… so we've added those movies to the movie club pool (that's right, Ishtar is coming)! In this case, The Exorcist was presumably chosen because of the name selected for this room, "refectory". It's a word usually used to refer to meeting rooms in churches. Here, however, it's been chosen for an options screen on Perry Naval Base which was first imagined as a cafeteria rather than another bar. Privateer's original art list

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

It's hard to believe, but today marks 27 years of the Wing Commander CIC! This is the anniversary of the first day we opened our doors at wcnews.com, and it's been a wild ride ever since! As we recently announced, we'll be holding a big event this coming Saturday to officially celebrate with everyone. Visit us on the CIC Discord and the accompanying live stream on August 16th at 7:00 pm EDT (4:00 pm PDT and 11:00 pm GMT). We're looking forward to spending a super fun evening with you!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

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)

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

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!

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 Seven Samurai and and you can find details on why we're watching it in the announcement post here. The movie will start about 6 PM PST/9 PM EST but feel free to drop by and hang any time! Please note that the movie is starting one hour earlier than usual to accommodate its run time.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

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

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Brewer Corporation has issued an urgent call for assistance following a wave of pirate attacks targeting the Minerva based resupply efforts for the Trailblazer fleet.
The convoys, which are transporting historically large volumes of aluminium, steel, titanium and CMM composites, have become high-priority targets for opportunistic raids. Security analysts have noted the coordinated nature of the attacks, prompting speculation that elements within a superpower may be providing clandestine support for the attacks.
A Brewer Corporation spokesperson commented: "The Trailblazer fleet remains a key element in supplying humanity's expansion into the stars and exploiting the opportunities this affords. It's disappointing, if not surprising, that some forces would prefer to see that vision of independence fail."
Pilots are asked to defend shipping lanes by registering for the initiative at Starlace

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

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

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Before Wing Commander was ever an 'interactive movie' it already had a lead actress: Saranya Carr (2629-2688). Though she is barely ever seen, the story of Carr and her daughter Morgana is a constant in the background of Wing Commander's lore. Let's take a closer look…

Saranya Carr was created by Aaron Allston for the original Wing Commander's Claw Marks manual in 1990. She is a young actress who is the lead in what is implied to be a show-within-a-show series of film serials called Luna Jones, Jumpscout. Carr was introduced in the magazine's Comm Relay news section in a story about how the Terran Confederation Service Organization is sending her to the Tiger's Claw as part of a morale-building tour. We suspect her name, an Indian given name and a British surname, is intended to hint at a more blended human culture in the 27th century.

TCSO Show Scheduled

(Tiger's Claw, TCAFCN) - There’s good news for

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Demolition Man gets our seal of approval; it's not anything brilliant but it's endlessly fun and it really compares favorably to Judge Dredd. Our next movie will be Seven Samurai (1954) by Akira Kurosawa. Seven Samurai is regarded as a timeless classic and a film that has had endless influence on films since… so it will be pretty fun to see that and decide how it might connect back to Wing Commander! You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along. Please note that the movie will begin one hour early (at 9 PM Eastern/6 PM Pacific) to accommodate the run time.

The Wing Commander universe has a sea of over a dozen stars named after the sci-fi authors that inspired the series, from Clarke to Niven. But there are only three named after directors: Steven Spielberg and George Lucas (both in the Enigma Sector)... and Akira Kurosawa in the Vega Sector. The system, sometimes spelled Kurasawa, first

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Alias|Wavefront (now a subsidiary of AutoDesk) is a company with a long history of developing industry-focused 3D rendering tools. Origin's FMV Wing Commander games used their PowerAnimator suite for their CG work and the team at Digital Anvil used Maya for working on the Wing Commander film. Every year Alias|Wavefront produced a VHS 'showreel' that was part advertisement and part thank you for their loyal customers. It would include dozens of clips of projects from the previous year and then some longer segments describing how some of the work was accomplished.

DMJC was recently browsing their 1996 demo tape and found a fun surprise: a clip from Wing Commander IV! It turns out that Chris Roberts was eager to have his team's work shown alongside film production groups like ILM and encouraged his artists to submit their best efforts… and guess what, they compare pretty favorably with the ones being

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

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!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Greetings WingNuts,

We'll start our look at Forbidden Planet with a gallery of the ship referenced on Wing Commander Academy, the United Planets Cruiser C-57D. It's simplistic compared to the kind of starships we know today but you can see the influence on the original Enterprise right off…

We'd show you a picture of the Krell, a name borrowed by Privateer 2 for a heavy fighter, but they don't actually appear in the film! All we ever see is their enormous underground machine.

Another enduring impact on science fiction is the prevalence of Altair as a location. Altair is a real star but the fact that it played such a major role in Forbidden Planet is the reason it appears constantly in other science fiction… including all over Wing Commander! The Wing Commander III 3DO port names one of the Confederation depots at Kilrah the TCS Altair:

The Wing Commander IV novelization makes Altair the planet Paladin

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 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!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Today's your last chance to get those summer classics at half price! I couldn't put it any better than GOG themselves:

Relive those late summer nights spent with friends, battling through the games that defined your childhood. Reconnect with the classics you loved and the memories they carry - it’s time to play like you used to.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Here's a little treasure: a Swedish magazine article about flight tactics in the original Wing Commander that has had a series of original maneuvering diagrams commissioned for it! They feature original 3D models of the Hornet, Dralthi and Dorkir (!) that seem to have been created for this purpose and not seen again. Even if you can't read Swedish, this one is worth a look! The article originally appeared in a 1993 issue of Datormagazin (Number 12, July 15 to August 11).

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

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

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

In 1994, Origin Systems recognized that they needed to cash in on the nascent first person shooter craze. For roughly a decade, Origin had been the star of the game development pantheon, known for pushing the limits of technology and making cutting edge games that had no comparison. The long running Ultima series had established the company's street cred and the surprising success of Wing Commander had made their mark legendary.

Now, that was changing. Young upstart Id Software's DooM had set the world on fire and everyone in the industry was racing to follow it up. Origin, now a corporate subsidiary of Electronic Arts, was starting to seem stodgy in comparison. DooM grew the PC gaming audience in leaps and bounds and at the same time conditioned them to expect a new kind of game. What specifically made DooM magic? The snappy gameplay, the clever level design, the aesthetic and its ultraviolence, the

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

In our recent update archiving articles from Aint it Cool News there was a story which mentioned Wing Commander movie storyboards in the January 1998 issue of Ultimate PC, a UK-based magazine. I decided to look up the article and it is... something! It's an extensive and interesting piece on the merging of Hollywood and game development which includes both a focus on Wing Commander Prophecy and a fascinating sidebar interview with Chris Roberts (then in pre-production on the movie). It also features an extremely 1990s layout and what may be the least flattering photograph of Chris Roberts ever published! Most interesting of all, the media is clearly all sourced from the Wing Commander Prophecy EPK... which accidentally included the 'test' storyboards Origin developed for the movie while Chris was still putting it together there. So the AICN report is actually accidentally correcting that error and