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Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Today has been exhausting, and we know many of you are exhausted too. We'll be back with some more upbeat Wing Commander stories tomorrow, but for now, here's the topically relevant angle on current events: the owner of the WC franchise, Electronic Arts, has announced tepid support for abortion rights in the US. Although they didn't come out and use the word "abortion" in their public-facing statement, they have internally communicated to employees that they "will soon offer expanded travel health benefits" to employees seeking basic healthcare that they will only be able to access out of state. They join a number of other game developers and tech companies who have announced similar measures today. With the competitiveness of the industry at a fever pitch these days, these types of benefits will be critical incentives in the future.

Anyhow, take care of yourselves out there. Hit us up on Discord

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It looks like fans of older games may have a lot to look forward to from EA next year. The company recently released its prepared remarks for investors following the release of its quarterly financial results, some of which held some hints at what fans can expect from 2020 and beyond. Some of these upcoming offerings will be new IPs, while others will apparently be “fan favorite” remasters.

EA’s Blake Jorgensen spoke at length about what can be expected from the company next year, revealing that the plan is to “add at least one more sports title to our annual slate” and that it has “two new unannounced EA Partners titles coming from third-party developers.” Jorgensen also revealed that the plan is to “deliver some exciting remasters of fan favorites, including the Command and Conquer game we’ve already disclosed.”

EA has for the most part been hesitant to delve into remaster territory, which makes

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Electronic Arts is expanding its Origin Access service. It first launched in 2016 to provide players with the chance to play unlimited amounts of certain EA catalogue games as well as a discount on digital purchases. Now a new Premier tier also gives people access to EA's brand new games. It also gives subscribers the ability to start new titles five days before the official release date.

The new higher end level will cost $14.99 per month or $99 for a whole year up front. The original Origin Access plan is staying at the same $4.99 per month or $29.99 for the year. Wing Commanders 1 through 4 and Privateer are included with either option. The company also offers a similar setup on Xbox One called EA Access with comparable features to the Basic Origin Access, but WC is not available there. The new Premiere details have many similarities to Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass, which has surged in

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Most of the Wing Commander games may be excluded from the holiday sale at GOG this year, but Electronic Arts didn't forget about them! The five WC games sold directly from EA.com (formerly the Origin Store) have been marked down as a part of the Player Favorites Sale. Each game is only $0.99, which is a pretty slick 80+% discount. Other Ultima and Origin games are included in a similar price range. There are some other hot titles as well like Star Wars Squadrons for $1.99 and the Command & Conquer Remastered package for $4.99, which are also good pickups!

• Wing Commander
• Wing Commander 2
• Wing Commander 3
• Wing Commander 4
• Privateer

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Electronic Arts has relaunched its Origin Access and EA Access services as EA Play. The big change is a unification of the subscription across four platforms: Xbox, Playstation, the Origin storefront and Steam. There are two tiers: Play for $5 per month and Play Pro at $15 per month or $99 per year. Both give varying levels of access to specific EA Games with the more expensive level obviously granting more and newer content. As far as Wingnuts are concerned, both tiers include five Wing Commander games in their library: Wing Commanders 1 through 4 and Privateer. Most people reading this probably already have these titles at their fingertips, but this is a major boon to more casual players. As EA has upped the value proposition and reach of the service, an even greater number of people now can easily try out the WC series. Chances are that you already know someone who's a subscriber but doesn't

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

It's been widely reported this week that Electronic Arts has been holding talks with various companies about a potential acquisition or merger. The possible partners that are mentioned include "Disney, Apple, Amazon, and Comcast - NBC Universal." That's quite a list of suitors, although conversations with Comcast/NBC seem to have gotten the farthest. This has come to the forefront with Microsoft's recent acquisition of Activision/Blizzard and Sony picking up Bungie. With so much consolidation in the industry this past year, EA is apparently feeling the squeeze of going it alone.

As Wingnuts are well aware, EA is the primary rights holder for the Wing Commander franchise. What could this mean for the series? While it's an easy gut reaction to feel like WC could be further buried behind much more high profile IPs, I don't know that a shake up on this scale is necessarily a bad thing. Current EA

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Various news outlets are reporting that Electronic Arts has patched a major security flaw in its Origin gaming storefront/launcher program. Apparently it was possible to execute remote code, which is a scary issue, but has fortunately been resolved. Be sure to update your launcher to remove the vulnerability. The appropriately named Origin service, along with GOG, is one of the easiest ways to buy and play Wing Commander games on modern systems today.

The story brings to mind another famous Origin security threat. Back during the August 1998 launch of Wing Commander Secret Ops, reports began to immediately surface of infected files on one of the download mirrors. This began to spread to other sites hosting a copy. Within hours, fans rallied to identify the CIH virus and provide countermeasures to remove the bug. Origin posted this statement on the issue and ultimately the damage was fairly

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Electronic Arts has announced that they have stopped sales to Russia and Belarus as a result of the ongoing war in Ukraine. This is on top of their plans to cut Russian and Belarusian teams from upcoming FIFA and NHL games. As a result, this effectively means that digital Wing Commander sales (via the Origin store) are being used as wartimesanctions. It is of course not lost on us that withholding Wing Commander will not stop the tanks on the ground, but it's one small part of the larger effort to step up pressure on the Putin regime. You can find a list of ways to more directly support relief efforts in the region here.

Quote from Mass Effect

BioWare is one of the most beloved studios in gaming for their story-driven focus and attention to detail when it comes to the RPG genre. Of the many series under their belt, Mass Effect and Dragon Age are arguably the most popular, but the two adventures may not have gotten off the ground had things gone a bit differently. In fact, we may have Electronic Arts’ notable BioWare acquisition to thank for either franchise being made at all.

This past weekend saw the LGBTQ-themed gaming convention HavenCon take place in Austin, Texas, where attendees were greeted by a few writers that worked on past BioWare projects. Speaking at the event, former Mass Effect lead writer Patrick Weekes, lead editor Karin Weekes, and Dragon Age writer David Gaider disclosed a number of interesting tidbits regarding the BioWare franchises with conversation eventually landing on the topic of Electronic Arts.

According to a Reddit user,

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Admiral Aden Tanner has confirmed reports that Aegis's Eagle Eye installations are offline.

The development is the result of Thargoid-sensor related interference at Dantec Enterprise, home of Aegis Core, which has neutralised Aegis's ability to transmit data to the orbital installations.

The Eagle Eye installations play a vital role in countering Thargoid aggression by monitoring energy-level fluctuations at Thargoid surface sites. The data allows pilots to determine which systems the Thargoids intend to attack.

Admiral Tanner elaborated on the issue in a brief statement:

"With Dantec Enterprise experiencing widespread technical issues, it's impossible for us to communicate with the Eagle Eye installations. And unless the installations are fed a continuous stream of data, they are essentially useless."

"The Eagle Eye installations are one of the most effective weapons we have in our war

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

LOAF recently made an amazing connection through an unlikely source. As an avid follower of the 1994 Corel Gallery Clipart Bot, he saw the June 9 "Falcan.bmf" and immediately zeroed in on its relationship to Wing Commander. This early '90s file obviously forms the basis of Hunter's movie nose art. Do kids these days even know what clip art is? Do they still make new clip art?

Each of the pilots in the film got a unique emblem based on their callsign. Here's the full spread! You all knew that Rosie's callsign was Sister Sassy, right?

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LOAF recently ran across this nifty issue of Computer Games Strategy Plus. It's positioned as a preview of Privateer just prior to its imminent launch, but the "article" is provided by Origin itself. I wonder when it was written, because it's pretty aspirational for being published just a few weeks before the game shipped. It's interesting to spot the differences between this and the final game!

Did we ever figure out ethics in game journalism? Here's a case where the magazine just let one of Privateer's designers straight up write the preview... and it's totally reasonable and promises only what they end up delivering.

Here's a nice visual comparison of when CGSP also had covers of Privateer 2 and Privateer 3!

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Found this in the guts of Wing Commander Armada today! Looks like an early game select menu mock-up. The ship art is from Academy, WC2 and Privateer! That’s a Privateer Gothri.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

We've seen a ton of Rapiers out of Klavs' hangar over the years, but this one's a little bit different. It's the CF-117 Rapier from the Wing Commander Movie! There are a handful of Wingnut versions floating around, but this is probably the most beautiful one yet. The gritty wallpaper really gives you a nice sense of how these might have looked zipping around Vega Sector outside the context of the film. You can download a 3D model version for yourself here. Klavs' other recent designs are available on Sketchfab.

So... I couldn't sleep and then THIS happened. Also, if anyone uses Substance Painter and wants to have a go at your own markings, the spp file is here.

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The Art of Nintendo Power and thepmann shared this delightful version of the famous sketch where Wing Commander is featured in Nintendo Power. It was pretty awesome to be skimming the magazine in 1992 and run across this! Now you can see what it looked like in ink before being colorized.

LOAF has some additional insight below. It's very impressive that they nailed the ships!

Super cool to see the original artwork for this!

• You can identify five distinct ships from Wing Commander I in the strip: Rapier, Hornet, Bengal, Dralthi and Krant.
• With two drawings of Kilrathi this comic strip technicality has more art of them than the actual SNES port (where they only show up on the VDU).

The terrible punch line also kind of happens on Wing Commander Academy.

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Greg14 found a really cool video from the inaugural issue of the French gaming mag PC Fun. In November 1994 this would have been one of the first magazines to include CD-ROMs that packed in "multimedia" enhancements like recorded interviews. Chris Roberts and Mark Hamill are included together here, and their responses are all in English with French translations on the screen.

There are some lovely vintage touches to see. The footage is a "postage stamp" - taking up just a quarter of the screen in what's already a classically low res interface. Each answer is prompted by clicking a giant red button with the question on it. And just listen to Chris Roberts talk about how the game will run at 8-10 frames per second in SVGA on a 486/33 - those were the days!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Back in 1999 a trailer for the Wing Commander movie leaked and broke the internet... or at least the website! This 3 minute trailer featured not just a sneak peak at the highly anticipated video game based movie, but ended up also hiding alternate takes and snippets from deleted scenes that ultimately didn't make it into the final film. That video has only been available in very low quality (and low framerate) DivX video (10 meg avi). First, here's a raw export of the VHS:

...until now. A recently recovered VHS contained an slightly earlier version of this same trailer!While the actual edit on this tape is the same, keen observers will note that this is a slightly earlier version of the trailer than was leaked online as it also features some less-finished CG effects in a few places. I spent some time and effort to remove color noise left over from the VHS capture (over which I had no control or

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

What connects the Terran Confederation and the Tri-System? A love of Duck Dodgers, of course!

egr10 on the forums pointed out that ESK stands for Earth Shattering Kaboom and I feel like such an doofus because I hadn't figured that out in 32+ years.

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Did you ever want a list of the helmet numbers from the Gold Squadron pilots in Wing Commander III? If yes then I have great news for you:

COBRA - A31
FLASH - A13
FLINT - A72
HOBBES - A99
MANIAC - A27
MAVERICK - A62
VAGABOND - A41
VAQUERO - A65

Vera: Do these numbers have a meaning?

LOAF: None that I’m aware of... save perhaps that fairly limited number of repeating integers suggests the art department bought as few sets of number stickers as they could!

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Ace1000ks1975 recently posted the endgames for Secret Missions 1, and that led me to an interesting discovery. Most people are very familiar with the winning endgame to SM1 where the Emperor executes Prince Gilkarg for his loss of the Sivar Dreadnought. What happens when you lose? There's a devastating cutscene that shows enslaved humans working away at the Kilrathi Illudium Mines... "forced to work in misery until dying from the radiation in the ore... their toil fueling the Kilrathi advance towards the Human homeworlds." Yikes!

But what the heck is illudium, and where else do we see it in Wing Commander? It's actually first referenced on the blueprints included with WC1. Our missiles are powered by an Illudium PEW 36 warhead. Neat. I dug a little deeper and found a third Wing Commander reference in the most unlikely place: one of the Privateer 2 news bulletins references mining for