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Dennis Mull has posted another exotic Wing Commander find. This one is a Spanish preview compilation disc that includes the demo for Wing Commander 3. This was a big deal back in the day, as the package came in at a whopping 29 megabytes. Since 1994 was still the virtually pre-web era of dial-in bulletin boards, it's not something people could just easily download. It's even bigger than a bare bones install of Wing Commander 2! Even with a fast modem, it would have been tough to finish grabbing overnight. A stack of floppy disks for a demo would also be incredibly cost prohibitive, so this actually spurred the creation of the modern magazine cover demo disc and the very first PC Gamer magazine CD was famously inaugurated with this package. With that being said, a lot of people haven't actually played it before, and it's definitely worth checking out! You fly in an Arrow in a unique patrol

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Christian Klein has posted some lovely pics of the new Spanish Wing Commander Academy that he's recently added to his collection. Aside from the obvious localization, the box also comes in a slightly different shape with different cropping. The local publisher DROSoft logo has been added to the front, but the back is especially interesting. More of the game's holo simulator room is visible - it's not just a case of them stretching the original back cover image. An additional horizontal span of greebles past the vertical frames on either side can be seen. It's very cool!

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We're always up to take a break from posting sci-fi craft and instead share some real life spaceships. This weekend gave us a great opportunity with the first Axiom launch. Last year was big for space tourism and new companies launching their pods and planes up to the edge of space, but this represents the first time a fully private crew has traveled to the International Space Station. Four people launched yesterday aboard a SpaceX Dragon and docked this morning to join seven ISS crew members. This brings the total aboard to 11, which makes for quite a group photo! If that wasn't enough, another Dragon crew mission is scheduled to launch in just over a week. There are six vessels attached right now, including three crew vehicles and three resupply ships. It's really quite a spectacle!

We also need to mention that the first two images below show both the Axiom/SpaceX rocket as well as the Boeing

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For the third time this summer, a spacecraft full of private space travelers reached space this evening. What makes this one different is that it's a full orbital trip. Rather than cross the threshold of space in a suborbital flight lasting minutes, the four people aboard the Inspiration4 mission will be circling the globe every 90 minutes for the next several days. Although each of these trips has had a fortunate billionaire behind it, it really has become the year of the space tourist. Someone has to pay/pave the way and shoulder both the tremendous finance risk - not to mention risk to life and limb - associated with the research and development here.

It seems like people have been talking about this for decades and now it's finally happening. I don't expect to hop on a spaceship any time soon, but it feels really good to know that some people out there are. It's one thing to talk about

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SpaceX made history today by being the first private company to launch astronauts into orbit. We love looking at all of the fantastic sci-fi space ships that frequently appear in the news, but it's worth pausing for a moment to appreciate just how special it is when those ships are real. The CIC has been following the incredibly ambitious SpaceX plans for ten years since we first reported on their ground breaking unmanned launch in 2010. Now it's 2020 and there are people in space right now flying the Dragon capsule. That's just fantastic. The exciting liftoff was streamed live to millions of people, but the crew is still up there beaming back tremendous footage. You might have missed this fun clip where they show off the interior cabin below. Feel free to drop by the #Wingnut Discord tomorrow morning as we watch the ship dock with the International Space Station!

Here's a nice recap for anyone

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Daniel from Spacedock has produced another wonderful profile of a Wing Commander ship. This one covers the Midway from Prophecy. He delves into the design's origins and how Blair was involved with the development. There are comparisons to the Vesuvius class as well as an overview of the ship's role in the Nephilim War (per Star*Soldier!). Spacedock is a wonderful channel with a huge reach, so we're elated to once again see Wing Commander in front of so many people!

Spacedock breaks down the experimental Midway Class Heavy Carrier, as seen in Wing Commander Prophecy.

Thanks to FekLeyrTarg, DefianceIndustries and HotT for the tip! Also check out these previous clips on the Yorktown (TCS Victory), BWS Intrepid and top carrier. Daniel happens to be a big WC fan, and he's previously spoken about how much he enjoys the series like WC that focus on specialized roles for each ship.

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SpaceDock

has once again touched on Wing Commander in one of its frequent sci-fi starship videos. This clip is actually an interesting segment on the role of multi-mission or specialized craft across science fiction universes. The author comes down heavily on the side of mission-specific vessels from both a practical and narrative standpoint. He credits the Wing Commander series for sticking to this concept and making traditional carriers that usually aren't just super ships that can do everything. The prime example are Yorktown light carriers such as the TCS Victory. Sure, dreadnoughts, supercarriers and megacarriers like the Concordia, Vesuvius and Midway are crazy cool, but I can certainly see the point in rooting for the underdogs. The Victory gets bonus points for operating as part of a small fleet as well. Jump to the 7 minute mark below for the part on Wing Commander. You can also find

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Spacedock has posted a new video about the different types of faster-than-light travel in science fiction. It's a wonderful breakdown of the different ways that different franchises do it. The type of visitors that frequent this site are probably going to be familiar with most of this information, but the organization is thoughtful and fairly comprehensive. Wing Commander, of course, gets a nod for its jump drive system. Check it out below!

Spacedock delves into Science Fiction's many flavors of Faster than Light travel.

Thanks to Rattler for the heads up!

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One of Netflix's hot docuseries a few weeks back was the video game chronicle High Score. The show includes six episodes that cover highlights in video game history from the late '70s to early '90s. Although this doesn't leave much room to cover Wing Commander, there is a brief segment in its intro that is decidedly WC-themed. The third episode is also about role playing games, and Origin founder Richard Garriott is featured heavily throughout to talk about the Ultima series. If you missed the hype in late August, it's still a cool diversion to check out now! The intro is below. The Wing Commander style portion is from 0:15 to 0:25.

Netflix’s new game documentary series, High Score, doesn’t cover Wing Commander yet... but their spectacular pixel art intro certainly seems to reference it!

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Nintendo shipped its new aptly named Switch (OLED Model) today, so we wanted to point out a few options for Wingnuts with the new console. These are all perfectly valid for existing owners of the prior revisions as well.

Space Commander: War and Trade is an interesting newcomer. It looks kind of like a modern combination of Wing Commander Arena and Privateer. The game employs a version of Arena's first person mode that sets up some fairly simplistic but engaging space combat. It's also a medium scale Privateer-style sandbox game, which is a novel pairing with this type of engine. The Nintendo World Reports review below describes how the economy isn't set up great, but it's hard to go wrong for just $10.

Rebel Galaxy Outlaw is a fan favorite among Wingnuts. We've talked about it extensively in the past, and if you haven't tried it out on PCs or consoles to date, it's an easy recommendation.

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Today was Microsoft and Bethesda's big summer games showcase was this morning, and they had a big profile on one of the mostly highly anticipated space games of the next year: Starfield. It was first announced way back in 2018 and has been frequently described as "Skyrim in space." Today's reveal is the first time that people have gotten to take a look at the game's actual gameplay. There's plenty of action RPG excitement, but they finally confirmed that there will also be a major space combat element. Ships will be extremely customizable and players will be able to fly to over a hundred star systems and a thousand planets. There are some distinct similarities to No Man's Sky or Star Citizen, although this is purely a single player experience. We know quite a few Wingnuts out there are very excited for this, and we're happy to see more space sims coming out!

We hope you love building spaceships

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Electronic Arts has announced a new space sim set in the Star Wars universe, Squadrons. It's set at the end of the original movie trilogy and follows both Rebel and Empire pilots in first person space combat. There's a story rooted in the events of that era as well as a big 10-person multiplayer component. It comes to all major platforms in October at just $40.

Hopefully this does well. We have to wait a few more days to see the big gameplay reveal, but what's visible in the trailer looks pretty sharp. Games where you fly spaceships are obviously fantastic by default, and it seems like they might have a winner here. At first glance, it might seem like Wing Commander is even further pushed to the side with EA taking full advantage of the Star Wars license, but it's more complicated than that. If they can find a particular angle to slightly differentiate a series, the modern EA doesn't seem to

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Goge stopped by to share a very cool space sim tech demo that he's been working on lately. It's called Squadron: Mercenaries and he's got some very lofty goals in mind! The core portion starts as a traditional Wing Commander style sim, but there are larger secondary element planned as well. One really cool thing that jumped out at me is that it just runs in a browser window. You can visit the website here and be playing in a few seconds without installation. More info is on the page to get oriented. We hope to see some of his ambitious plans come together!

Squadron: Mercenaries

Squadron Mercenaries is a thrilling spacefaring epic that blends the adrenaline-pumping space flight combat simulation of Wing Commander with the intricate personnel and material management aspects of 'Mechwarrior Mercenaries.' In this immersive game, players will not only engage in intense dogfights and grand-scale space

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We mentioned last week that we'd be spending a little more time introducing up and coming space sims, and there's a very big one that's been a glaring omission until now.

Rebel Galaxy Outlaw

is an extremely promising Privateer-style shooter sim by Double Damage Games, which includes huge Wing Commander fans Travis Baldree and Howard Day, among others. The team has been our radar for a couple years thanks to their spectacular 2017

April Fools tease

and

easter egg blueprints

, and now the game is approaching release. It will be available at the Epic Store for PC at around $30 with ports available on at least the Playstation 4 and Nintendo Switch. I could talk about stats and features, but you're probably better off just watching the videos below. The first two clips introduce the gameplay and story, and the third video is a lengthy stream with Travis that goes into lots of juicy detail. If you're

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Gunstar One tipped us off about the sequel to Everspace, Everspace 2. Like its predecessor, it's a slick looking single player space sim in an open world universe full of loot. Players upgrade their ship as they explore the sprawling universe and story. This has been a fairly winning combo these last few years, and it's great to see a resurgence of games like this again. From what we can tell, sales have been decent on most recent space sims, but they're by no means guaranteed blockbusters. In fact, this game is in its final weekend on Kickstarter and is currently sitting at about 90% funded. It's got a real good shot at making it, but if this is the kind of game you'd definitely like to see happen, you can head over and back the project here. If you happen to have the Xbox Game Pass, the original title is available to play on PC or Xbox free. If it's green lit, Part 2 is scheduled to come out

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We haven't covered Elite Dangerous much over the years, but it's had a very good run since its release. The base game has sold more than three million units while a number of additional expansions have kept things going for more than five years. They've just announced another big upgrade for the game that will add planetary missions in early 2021. While not everyone is a fan of mixing genres and gameplay types like this, it seems like a practical way to grow a game that's managed to mature its core experience and is ready for something different. The game is available for PC and PS4/XBox, so it's also a good way to get players of all types interested in space sims. You can check out the new Odyssey teaser below and a fuller recap of the Elite game beneath that.

“Odyssey is our most ambitious Elite Dangerous expansion to date,” said David Braben, Founder and CEO of Frontier. “Extending

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It's been quite a while since we regularly

covered new space sims

as they were introduced, but the industry has still been hard at work putting them together. We're going to try to get back into sharing interesting ones that we come across now and then, which leads us to

Between the Stars

. The game generates random universes, allows for lots of ship customization and is centered around a big single player story. A ship is outfitted with a variety of systems and multiple crew members, and characters are at risk of permadeath based on the decisions you make. Perhaps most importantly, combat looks pretty neat! Check it out below or find it on

Steam

.

Between the Stars is a space action video game with traces of RPG, management and roguelike elements. In it, we’ll live our adventure advancing in the universe and upgrading our ship, Captain and crew in order to be able to withstand the space war that

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centaurianmudpig is back with a new space sim game to show his fellow Wingnuts. He previously released Absolute Territory, which was a more traditional WC-style shooter. Now he's branched out into a hybrid sim that blends newtonian physics and large capital ships with a variety of familiar concepts to WC fans. It sounds like a cool experience for people who would like to try something different just a little bit different! There is a demo you can try out via Steam and a preview video below.

Hey wingnuts, it's been a while since I last posted about my last big update for Absolute Territory, with space fighters and hostile aliens, on here.

Since then I started working on my next game, in keeping with sci-fi space combat, with large warships (corvette sized and bigger). I've been running a public playtest for A-Spec First Assault on Steam for the last year, and now preparing for Steam Next Fest: June

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Over the years we've done brief profiles on a number of non-Wing Commander space sims, but it's been quite a while since the last one. Impressive new space sims continue to be made, however, and an interesting new(ish) one is Chorus. It came out at the end of last year, and I'd say it's had a slow but growing burn since then. FredDude helped bring it to our attention earlier this week, and I'm surprised how many Wingnuts have actually played it and are quite familiar with the title already. The game looks good and seems to have an engaging story. There's an open world with lots of side quests in addition to the main campaign. Your ship has a neat upgrade system and there is a special action mechanic that seems fairly novel in the space sim genre. It's currently on sale for $30 at the Epic Game Store, but an even better deal is its recent addition to Xbox Game Pass. There is a free demo, but

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Centaurianmudpig

has released some new samples from his WC-inspired space combat game,

Project Aries

. The first of the two animated gifs below show off the classic interior cockpit options that you can select during flight. Then there is a demonstration of WC1/2 style flak cannons in action. Finally, there's a clip of a Salthi and Dralthi lookalike escorting a transport. It's nice to see there's still progress being made!

It's been (almost) two years, while development has been on and off (mostly off), work continues.