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If you missed the big news earlier this week, be sure to check out the new WC4 Fan Remake demo! There are numerous fixes and updates, better joystick support and new in-flight comms. You can download it here (886 meg exe) and get right to playing! The WC Respace team has posted a full article with instructions and FAQs if you have any questions or issues. If you're not quite ready to jump in yourself, here's a video of The Eradicator checking the demo out. It's actually the original release, so the latest version is even better!

It looks like a team of modders are trying to remaster Wing Commander IV. In this video, we will check their work out.

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FekLeyrTarg has a second clip that shows off his modern video editing acumen! He's been experimenting with a variety of tools to enhance his ability to merge Wing Commander settings and live action. This is just the beginning of what he's got planned, but it's already pretty neat!

Happy 25th birthday Wing Commander CIC!

Some work-in-progress test shots combining low-quality live-action footage with renders of Perry Naval Base as seen in "Wing Commander Privateer".

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Did you know that Privateer 2 has two very different sets of manuals? The game had an internally tempestuous release and one side effect of that was that Origin's creative services group completely reworked all of the packaging for the US release.

I thought it would be fun to look at the changes in the introductory letter. And right off the bat you can see it's a lot more than removing the "u"s from the "colours". They even change the name of the writer... flirty Jessica Montpellier becomes straight-laced Ian Esperanto!

Anyway I did a quick diff on the text and here are the results. And my question for readers is: did any of these changes make things better? It sure feels like a lot of change for the sake of change!

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You've probably heard of the famous 'thank you for playing Wing Commander' story. It claims that a programmer on the original Wing Commander was stuck getting an error message when the game unloaded its memory during a quit. Pressed for time, instead of fixing the issue he simply hex edited the memory manager's error reporting to print 'thank you for playing Wing Commander' instead. A funny and relatable story! The anecdote has made the rounds on the internet for the past decade and has even started to make the phrase "thank you for playing Wing Commander" synonymous with a dirty-but-functional hack. The most common version looks like this, sourced from Reddit's /r/shittyprogramming:

Engineers immediately recognize this as a funny and relatable story; it's the exact sort of thing that anyone who has ever worked in software development can recognize immediately. A perfect example of the old aphorism

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Alright, I can't think of a good reason for this, but here's the Wing Commander knife post. To start, WC always loved using knives to show a character was troubled. The one Cobra is sharpening in WC III is a Marto-Brewer Explora, a Spanish survival knife from the 1980s.

Hawk’s thematically similar knife in Wing Commander Prophecy is called a hunting knife in stage directions but the actual prop is a United Cutlery Bushmaster survival knife. These are still made!

Seether’s knife in Wing Commander IV is a Hibben Double Shadow, a design often used in sci fi productions including Star Trek and Babylon 5. The script calls it a “laser-blade” which it describes as “a curved handle with a lethal thread of light that pulses from one end of the handle to the other”. As a result, the novelization refers to Seether’s blade as a “laser knife” and says they are “plunging weapons that could also

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We've got a new project intended to help out Wing Commander fans in 2024: save game archives that allow you to jump as close as possible to any given point in a game! We're kicking things off with a couple of playthroughs of Wing Commander IV which will allow you access to every single mission with every single ship and loadout option possible. We flew as "Maverick" and saved each game as soon as the previous mission ended to allow you to view any cutscene as easily as possible. Simply drop the contents of the archive in your Wing Commander IV folder; they should work on the MS-DOS, Windows 95, DVD and Macintosh versions (including the GOG and non-GOG releases). Please note that if you have your own saves you want to preserve you should back them up first; they're the files with the .WSG extension. (Warning: if you have your own saves you don't want to replace, be sure to back them up first; they're

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Artist and designer Mike Winterbauer is well known for his classic '80s and '90s art that graced the covers of a wide variety of media. He's recently arranged some of the most famous examples to show off the variety of bespoke typefaces that he drew by hand. These include the nameplates for both Wing Commander and The Secret Missions for SNES. It's well documented how he made the whole box art for the SNES WC1, but his SM contribution is news to us! The central sketch for the game was made by Greg Winters.

Some of the cool hand painted game box titles I did in the early 1990s!#illustration #popculture #movieart #boxartBen “LOAF” LesnickWonderful! I did not know that you had done the titles for The Secret Missions.Mike WinterbauerYes I did, I was disappointed I did not get to paint the box cover.

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Welcome to the big event! Here's a wonderful welcome video put together by

Fek'Leyr Targ

.

This year I've once again produced a little birthday video, returning to the Gemini Sector.Do you recognise the scene?

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Check out these awesome trading cards that

DefianceIndustries

made! They're a set of super cool realistic looking cards with images, stats and history. I really like that silhouette identifier box that teases subsequent cards in the series. This makes me really want a printed set!

Attached is my contribution to the festivities, a redo of some super fun old Topps aircraft trading cards. They were the “friend or foe” series from 1952 and they have kind of a fun retro vibe that looked kind of fun when Wing Commanderized.

Enjoy and Happy Birthday!

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We have exciting news! Captains on PC will be able to enjoy a bonus on purchased ZEN! Is there a ship in the C-Store that is tempting you? Now is the perfect opportunity to grab ships, keys, and whatever else has caught your eye. From December 19th at 9am PT to January 2nd at 9am PT, Captains will earn an extra bonus on purchased ZEN when you charge through Direct Credit Card, PayPal, Skrill, BoaCompra, Xsolla, Paysafecard, or Steam. *Please note that this Charge Bonus offer is ONLY available for the following payment processors: Direct Credit Card (Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Discover) PayPal Skrill BoaCompra Xsolla Paysafecard Steam .share-footer a { margin: 20px 10px 10px 0; background: url(d7afaaa14e96d0d973f76157ae31ec5b1466398539.png) no-repeat 0 0; opacity: .5; display: inline-block; height: 60px; width: 60px; padding: 0;

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Thank you for helping us reach AND surpass our goal! Because of your generosity, we raised $12,325! Those who qualified for rewards have been contacted via email. If you donated anonymously, please go here for further instructions on how to claim your reward. Cryptic Studios is proud to participate in the Extra Life Charity Gaming Event once more! On December 7 and 8, from 10am to 10pm Pacific Time, Cryptic Developers will be playing video, tabletop, and board games live to raise money in support of UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals! You can tune in on Cryptic’s Twitch Channel, win in-game prizes, and donate to help children in need! Take a look at our schedule and see below for more details on the event and prizes! You don’t have to wait for the event to donate! Click here to donate right now! PRIZES & DONATIONS During the livestream, players can donate in support of Extra Life.

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The seasonal favorite from years past is returning once more to Star Trek Online! Q proudly invites personnel of all ranks, allegiances, species, cosmological variances, and molecular stabilities (or lack thereof) to ring in the holiday season, and visit his Winter Wonderland for fun, frivolity, and prizes! Participate in your choice of Winter Wonderland Activities to work your way toward obtaining the fabulous new Fek’ihri Fe’rang Dreadnought Carrier [T6]! Complete details of this ship’s capabilities will be obtained in a separate Dev Blog. This year’s festivities will be integrated into our recently released Event Interface, as part of your Mission Journal. Now that this seasonal event has migrated to its new home, it has also undergone a significant update: Beginning this year, Daily Progress toward earning your new starship can be obtained by participating in any of the following

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KEYNOTE ADDRESS COMMISSIONING CEREMONY, U.S.S. SOMERVILLE Stardate 87724.4 Captain Va’Kel Shon, USS Enterprise Commanding Thank you for that lovely introduction, Councilwoman Shull. Good morning, assembled officers, crew, family and friends, honored platform guests, and distinguished visitors. When I realized the Enterprise would be in port this week, I was honored to accept the Councilwoman’s invitation to speak at today’s ceremony. Some of you may know that I’m a student of naval history, as far back as the iron-bowed icebreakers of Andor. I can tell you how special it is to be present when a new ship comes to life. Today, it’s my honor to celebrate the occasion of the U.S.S. Somerville’s commissioning with all of you. It’s rare that I get a chance to participate in a ceremony like this, but I relish the opportunity when it arises. These ceremonies and speeches may

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We've got a new poll up today that asks about your favorite communications options to send while in flight. There's a few tried and true ones that have been around since WC1, and some of the later games introduce a couple more that are less well known. The Comm VDU isn't generally considered a central element of Wing Commander, but I would argue it's a critical aspect to the immersion that we all feel in the game. So now we're giving you a chance to think about what comm selection you rely on or enjoy the most - vote below!

Our annual new year's poll has been running neck-and-neck over the past week, so we decided to call it today with a tie. Overall, the optimistic responses got more votes than the pessimistic ones, and the results were generally typical for the last few years' results. Although there's a fair number of fans who have doubts about what 2020 holds, there's some tremendous potential

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EmuMusicFan has made more progress with his graphical novel project. There's a new update to the mockup website to show the story in action. It now includes an appearance by The Emperor! Otherwise, Emu's up through about chapter 4 in his march through Action Stations. You can follow all the latest updates at the CIC Forums.

A new portrait. Baron Qazkar. "And how will the carriers managed to achieve victory?" Qazkar appeared in Action Stations, Chapter 4.

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Welcome to the CIC's 23rd Birthday Party! When we opened our doors here at WCNews.com in August 1998, we never imagined we'd still be here now. The pandemic still looms and did directly affect a few items we had planned. This has not been the year of recovery that we'd envisioned, but I'm happy that we managed to still pull together a few fun things to share. Like you all, we're still making the best of it and having a blast hanging out (digitally, per social distancing guidelines) with friends. If you're not already there, stop by Wingnut and join the party!

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We'll keep this week of video posts going with a new retro review from SideQuest, who has returned to the Wing Commander series with Wing Commander 4. They covered WC3 earlier in the year, and while they could appreciate the earlier game, they came away as big fans of the sequel. I didn't catch exactly what version this was, but I suspect they were playing the GOG edition with DVD quality videos based on comments about the picture quality. The reviewer appreciated the variety of missions, improvements in storytelling and just overall polish and refinement. As for the extra wingmen, those are just tuckerized Origin developers. A handful of larger sequences need more wingmen, and pilots like George "Blade" Oldziey and Anthony "Yaeger" Sommers are there to answer the call!

Returning to the Wing Commander series now. While I appreciated Wing Commander III Heart of the Tiger a lot, I had heard Wing

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Earlier in the summer, we reported on a WC1 retrospective review that was especially comprehensive. At the time, we noted that it was well researched, covered a vast range of topics and was surprisingly entertaining for a lengthy two hour episode. My favorite thing was how earnest the author was about helping new audiences discover Wing Commander. And many people agreed! It's since gone out to rack up 115,000 views. It's been so successful that others have taken notice. In this new clip, vidIQ dissects what made it so popular, which is an interesting meta analysis. I think both creators underestimate how many Wing Commander fans are out there eager for more content! I've relinked the original vid below as well if you missed it in June.

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There's a joke in there about being old enough to need reading glasses these days, but these are the drinking kind! Back for our sixth birthday in 2004, we had a fun batch of clear tumblers with a Confed logo printed up as door prizes. They were a big hit, and we continue to get frequent questions about whether they are still available. Here's our second edition, which are now full pint size. And we'll be giving them out at the birthday party live on Discord! Our graphical skills are a bit rusty, so thanks to Defiance Industries for making sure our Confed star is on point.

We don't encourage anyone to buy these and we make no money whatsoever on them, but we are sharing the Zazzle link to anyone who might be interested in getting their own. It looks like they're about $15 normally, but there is a 20% off sale this weekend that brings the price down to about $12. If you do pick one up, send us a

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And that's a wrap! We hope you've had a good time checking out what we've posted. And if you're reading this just as it went live, the party's still happening in #Wingnut on Discord. As always, this is a huge team effort. It takes all of the staff, all of the many talented Wingnuts who contribute to projects and submit news tips, and all of the many fans who visit each day to keep the community humming. We'll see you again Monday for the latest Wing Commander news!