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Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Independent pilots have helped eradicate large numbers of pirates in the Dhan system.
Following an unusually high increase in piracy across the system's many planetary rings, local security fleets and skilled freelancers worked to eliminate pirates and show criminals that it would be better for them to relocate.
"Pirates are too foolish to give up a life on the wrong side of the law," said Dhan Empire League head of security Harald Gomes. "It's all they know, and all they're good for. But while we can't stamp out crime forever, we can at least send the message that Dhan isn't an easy target. Attack our mining craft at your peril, ya lugheads!"
Gutamaya, thought to have deployed observers to monitor use of its recently released Corsair craft during the conflict, is said to have been 'very impressed' by its craft's performance and the anti-piracy response force in general.
Participants that

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Back in February when we watched Battle of Britain, people jokingly complained that they would rather watch Paul Verhoeven's disasterpiece Showgirls instead of another war movie. I responded that if we watched all four remaining war movies in the series then we could take a break from Wing Commander-related movies and watch it. Well, last week's screening of Hell in the Pacific made that a reality so this Friday we'll be watching Showgirls!

Showgirls is a 1995 erotic drama which famously bombed at the box office. But it was also the film Paul Verhoeven's similarly underappreciated Starship Troopers, a favorite of movie club. Could it also be underrated? Or at least maybe ridiculously fun? We'll find out this week! Please note that this is not part of the official movie series; there will be no after action report for Showgirls! But it should be a good time, regardless. You can join us this Friday via

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Our archivists have been hard at work! Earlier this year we acquired Wing Commander Prophecy producer Billy Caine's archive of production documents; this consisted of seven folders containing hundreds of pages of internal documentation covering Wing Commander Prophecy's development from March 1996 to November 1997.

These documents, divided into the seven topics below, include correspondence, internal documents and reference material that Billy felt it was important to preserve physically at the time. All aspects of the game's development are touched on, but one document that will be particularly exciting to fans finally explains the intent behind the Aligned People and how it would have played out in future games! There are several early pitches and a long term product plan that includes never-before-seen summaries of canceled projects like Wing Commander 6, 7, Maniac Missions and the first person

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Having trouble reading PALCOMM.S and COMMUNIC.S37 in WC2? Not anymore! AllTinker has released a new bug fix update to Originator. Other recent updates have improved compatibility with WC3/4, Armada, Privateer 2 and even OriginFX and Strike Commander. If you wanted to peer into the code that makes up WC games, this is the app to get. Download the latest version here.

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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 Return of the Jedi which... you know Return of the Jedi, I don't need to explain this! 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!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Here's a piece of fan art I never expected to see: a chibi version of the Kilrathi priestess from Secret Missions 2 by DeKreteOne on DeviantArt!

This is one that is a little less than usual, but I still wanted to try. I've enjoyed the Wing Commander series since my dad showed me the games when I was a kid. The Kilrathi always stuck in my mind as such a neat villain race, and the Priestess of Sivar, one of the only female Kilrathi ever to be seen (in a cutscene in Secret Missions 2 for the first game), has remained in my mind since I first saw her.

I drew this a while back, and just got around to wrapping up the colors/shading. Even though it is a little obscure of a concept, and not everyone enjoys the idea of more than one pair of breasts, I will probably draw some more art of her when I come up with some new concepts. I liked drawing her, and exploring what she would look like under the (admittedly

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

FekLeyrTarg has a beautiful remaster to share with fellow Wingnuts today. He's gone through the Wing Commander Academy game soundtrack and overhauled it with an SC-55 sound font. This is described as giving the game the "Kilrathi Saga treatment" based on the digital audio enhancements that those games received. He's matched up the new tracks with the appropriate in-game clips in a wonderful YouTube vid below. You can also separately download the new album in MP3 (18 meg zip) or WAV (131 meg zip).

Happy 25th Birthday Wing Commander CIC!

What if the PC game "Wing Commander Academy" (not to be confused with the animated TV-series) received a Windows port like the "Kilrathi Saga" version of "Wing Commander I" and "Wing Commander II - Vengeance of the Kilrathi" and George Oldziey re-orchestrated the music again? Find out in this video.

To render each music track with Patch93's Roland SC-55 soundfont in

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Sad news: Game Developer is reporting that veteran Origin artist Thomas Lee has passed away after a battle with cancer. Early in his storied career, Mr. Lee worked as an artist on a range of projects from The Sims 2 to Final Fantasy IX. Later, he entered the business side of the industry as a development executive where he was fondly remembered. And his game career started in our universe!

In March 1994, Origin was staffing up to cover the unprecedented development needs of the Wing Commander III project. They were desperate for artists, TDAs, quality assurance personnel and more. One of their advertisements caught the attention of Thomas Lee's brother, James Lee, at William Paterson University in New Jersey. James applied for a job as an Advanced Graphics Specialist and during the hiring process ended up getting his brother the same job on the strength of his experience with ALIAS.

The Lees' job was to

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 inspired Wing Commander in some way. Tonight's film is Aliens (1986) which was a favorite of series creator Chris Roberts when he was working on the first game. 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!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

A world desperate for good news (or at least news that isn't awful) is going pope crazy this week as the Catholic Church has named Leo XIV as the latest spiritual leader in their centuries-long tradition. Of course this has prompted many in the media to ask the big question: what's going on with the church in Wing Commander's distant future? Are there still popes? Well, the first movie spinoff novel, Pilgrim Stars, confirms that there are when Blair explains that the McDanielist (Pilgrim) church's highest office, called "protur", is their equivalent.

"She's not going to McDaniel to destroy it. That planet represents everything she stands for. Someday she'd like to see it as the hub and governing force in the universe, much like Earth is today. Yes, if I know her, she's going to McDaniel to see somebody, a man named Protur Carver Tsu the Second."

"Protur ..." Blair repeated, reaching into his memory.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

The official Wing Commander movie club is BACK!... and for the record, we did find Showgirls pretty fascinating. But now we're back to movies that have been credited with inspiring Wing Commander and this week's film is a big one, at least visually: it's Firefox (1982). The legendary Clint Eastwood directs and stars in a high tech thriller from the height of the cold war. It's Eastwood vs. the Soviet Union in a race to capture a high tech airplane that should look pretty familiar to veterans of the Vega Campaign. You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

Firefox's influence on Wing Commander isn't a mystery… it's right there in the name! Firefox's titular MiG-31 Firefox super-jet is the very clear inspiration for Wing Commander's own F-44 Rapier II design. The Rapier becomes 'less' Firefox in each iteration but you can still see the inspiration all the way through some of the early

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 inspired Wing Commander in some way… except this week in which the movie did not inspire Wing Commander in any way. Tonight's film is Showgirls and you can find details on why we're watching it in the announcement post here. 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!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Just one more day to take advantage of GOG's latest summer sale. The Wing Commander series is marked down 60% for the whole series, so each package below is $2.39. Act now... or hang tight for their next sale!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

In November, GOG announced something called the "GOG Preservation Program" which aims to make sure the site's most popular offerings are constantly updated to remain available on ever-changing modern operating systems. This week they've added both Wing Commander 1 + 2 and Privateer 2: The Darkening to the program.

As promised, another wave of classics joins the GOG Preservation Program!

To preserve gaming history, we’re adding horror, action, and strategy icons from legendary franchises—ensuring they remain playable in their best versions and yours to keep forever.

Let’s welcome...

Silent Hill 4: The Room – being the only PC version with previously missing content restored.

F.E.A.R. Platinum – honoring Monolith’s legacy by ensuring this legendary FPS horror lives forever.

And alongside them, even more masterpieces:

Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption
Tomb Raider: Anniversary, Legend, Underworld
Alone in the

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Greetings WingNuts,

The Wing Commander movie club is back from Rylos and we're happy to report that it's still pretty nice! The Last Starfighter is a movie that deserves its cult classic status and if anything a modern viewing finds a more balanced and enjoyable film than it once seemed. It's easy to say that all of the cuts back to the robot duplicate on Earth are getting in the way of what you want to see… but in reality they did a pretty good job of making you appreciate the space action. A movie that's all fighter pilots shooting things wouldn't have come together like this!

For the Wing Commander connections, we have to start with the Gunstar which obviously inspired Glen Johnson's design of the Raptor. The recent 4k restoration of Last Starfighter is stunning and it is full of incredibly clear shots of the computer generated Gunstar. We've picked a few favorites here and have included an appendix

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Greetings WingNuts,

What did the Wing Commander movie club take away from Highlander (1986)? Well, if there was just one lesson it pretty much has to be that there can be only one. But we actually found out something pretty interesting with this screening… more on that below! To our modern eyes, Highlander holds up pretty well; it's a very distinct 1980s experience that feels right at home next to films like the original Terminator. It was an era of movies that created their own sets of rules in order to build a universe you could immediately take part in… and here's an example of that formula working very well.

As for the Wing Commander connection, there's no bones about it: Sean Connery's Juan Sánchez-Villalobos Ramírez is a lot like how Paladin was originally presented, from his Scottish brogue to his role as a selfless-but-grumpy mentor for your character. I'd even say there's a pretty clear

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

My teenaged self would never have believed this but piracy is one of the major forces in preserving our history! Case in point: these screenshots compare two copies of the Wing Commander movie. The first is the commercially available bluray and the second is taken from a recording of the movie as it aired on TV with a Farsi dub! Seeing Wing Commander in another language is pretty cool but there's also something more exciting here: compare the top and the bottom of the two pictures. While the dubbed TV copy is much lower quality it's also clearly taken from an "open matte" version of the film not often seen. As a result, you get to see the entire frame without the 'black bars'.

We'll be on the lookout for more unusual versions of the movie wherever we can find them! You can download the full video here.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Back when we were surfing the net at 14.4k bps, the only realistic way to test drive the latest Wing Commander games was by loading it from the cover CD of a magazine. In fact, Wing Commander III's then-massive demo was the centerpiece of the very first PC Gamer cover disc! To honor that history, here are all five of the PC Gamer discs that brought us bonus Wing Commander combat starting with Wing Commander III in 1994 and going all the way to the shocking free release of Kilrathi Saga WC1 in 2000!

December 1994 - Wing Commander III Demo

• ISO Download

January 1996 - Wing Commander IV Demo

• ISO Download

March 1998 - Wing Commander Prophecy Demo

• ISO Download

November 1998 - Wing Commander Secret Ops - Episode One

• ISO Download

July 2000 - Wing Commander I Kilrathi Saga

• ISO Download

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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 inspired Wing Commander in some way. Tonight's film is Firefox which was the origin of the original design for Wing Commander's Rapier fighter. 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!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Last month, we posted some cool Hornet art by ulimann644 on DeviantArt. At the time we wondered what they were going to do next… and now we know, one of my favorite Wing Commander ship designs of all time: the original Fralthi!

Fralthi-class Carrier (DeviantArt)

This is my second WING COMMANDER mesh. The FRALTHI-CLASS Cruiser/Light Carrier of the Kilrathi in WING COMMANDER 1.

Hope you like it.

Software:
- Lightwave 2024
- Photoshop

Ulimann644 also posted two work in progress versions which show how much effort when into this ship.

Fralthi-class Carrier (DeviantArt)

This is a second WIP-Picture of my second WING COMMANDER mesh.

I made some changes at the basic-colors and added a few new details. The Light Carrier/Cruiser has also it's gun-turrets now.

Hope you like it.

Software:
- Lightwave 2024

Fralthi-class Carrier WIP 1 (DeviantArt)

This is a first WIP-Picture of my second WING COMMANDER mesh - a few others will