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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

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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

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Greetings WingNuts,

The Wing Commander movie club has traveled to distant galaxies and lived through some of the most deadly warfare in human history… and now we can add surviving high school in Los Angeles to our list of accomplishments! Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a movie that never quite comes together: it's endlessly promising a slightly better film that you sincerely wish you were watching. It's perfectly pleasant and certainly plenty of fun… but you come away wondering why there wasn't just a little more there.

As previously noted, the Wing Commander connection is slight: the original introductory story for Privateer included a character named Jake Rubio, a sketchy privateer who attempts to take advantage of the player when he is just starting out as an independent operator. Rubio's appearance was to be based on actor Paul Reubens' appearance in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Reubens plays vampire

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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 Star Trek III: The Search for Spock and you can find details on why we're watching it in the announcement post here (it's a weird one!). The movie will start about 7 PM PST/10 PM EST but feel free to drop by and hang any time!

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You all can identify any fighter in space at this point… but what about the small arms? Today we've put together a guide to the smaller weapons of Wing Commander Academy: handguns, rifles, grenades and more! Animated shows like Academy create a sort of visual bible of model sheets of "props" that can be reused from episode to episode… resulting in a consistency where the same weapon can appear each time that type is needed. It's interesting to see where Academy does this and where it creates new weapons for particular stories! We've divided everything by faction: Space Force, Marines, Kilrathi, Dioscuri and then unique weapons that appear only once associated with a particular character. Enjoy!

Terran Confederation Space Force

The Space Force pistol is the most common weapon to appear on Wing Commander Academy, used by six different episodes. Like the similarly prolific Kilrathi Pistol, it has more

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Thirty years ago this month, Electronic Gaming Monthly pulished this short but interesting preview of the upcoming Wing Commander III 3DO. Wing Commander III 3DO had a playable build ready fairly early in development... but a lot of aspects changed before release, including a complete redo of the video player. If you look closely at the gameplay screenshots in this preview you will notice they're a lot darker and some aspects of the interface are closer to the original PC release. And check out that destroyed labeled Exeter, another indication of how WC3 3DO retains some Super Wing Commander DNA!

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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!

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Buffy the Vampire Slayer didn't quite live up to the highs of the franchise that followed but it was an interesting little movie… just one that fell short of the premise or its colorful cinematography. This week, we're returning to space with one more movie in 'part one' of our series: Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

Our connection to the making of Wing Commander once again comes from the March 1992 art list composed for Wing Commander Privateer which notes the following for the external design of Perry Naval Base: "Perry Naval Base: Perry looks very similar to the orbiting base in Star Trek." This would be the massive orbital starbase facility first created for Star Trek III and then reused extensively in later features and serieses. Perry Naval Base is one of the signature designs in the game, making a significant appearance on the box

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Like most people, I constantly find myself needing to refer to the ship sprites from the original Wing Commander games. Four (or five, depending on how you count Super Wing Commander) different Wing Commander games used an engine called 3Space which stored ships not as 3D objects but as collections of sprites that were resized and rotated to simulate 3D. This allowed the earliest games to have ships that appeared to have textures or details beyond what was possible on home computers when they were released.

Over the years, we've collected plenty of orthographics and sprite sheets to show off this material extracted from the games... but it just occured to me: why not just upload all the source images in galleries? So that's what we've done! All 3,362 in game sprites are now accessible via the WCPedia links below! Whether you're studying up on Kilrathi insignia or just need a side view of a Gratha for a

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Here's a little gem from the Internet Archive: scans of a Polish gaming magazine called Computer Studio. This is an April 1993 article covering the current state of Origin Systems. It's largely focused on Richard Garriott's Ultima group but there's an interesting section about Privateer as well. It's cool to have a snapshot of the game from a very different perspective! A translation of the Privateer section is included below.

Another pair of important figures at Origin are Joel Manners and Scott Russo. The former previously collaborated with Roberts during the creation of "Wing Commander" and now he has decided to use the knowledge he acquired to benefit a proven idea. Together with Scott Russo he is currently working on a spinoff game game titled "Privateer". Many aspects of it will come straight from "Wing Commander" but the action of "Privateer" goes further than in Roberts' program: it is not

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Greetings WingNuts,

The Wing Commander movie club has explored Los Angeles of the… recent past… and if there was ever any doubt, we all love Blade Runner. It's an incredible movie whose aesthetic grabs you from the first frame and carries you through even the film's weaker moments (which include the meat of the climactic third act fight and in the theatrical version we watched the well-intentioned-but-poorly-done narration.

The big story when it comes to Wing Commander is Blade Runner's connection to Privateer's New Detroit environment. We thought it would be fun to walk you through exactly how we go from one of Syd Mead's stunning concept paintings to the finished animation in Privateer.

And here's how that concept was realized by director Ridley Scott:

Here is an excerpt from a March 18 1992 art list by Privateer's lead designer Joel Manners. He describes the planet, then known as New Chicago instead of

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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 Buffy the Vampire Slayer and you can find details on why we're watching it in the announcement post here (it's a weird one!). The movie will start about 7 PM PST/10 PM EST but feel free to drop by and hang any time!

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Wing Commander author Dr. William Forstchen has found quite an audience with his most recent writing, the "One Second After" series. The books tell the story of the aftermath of a horrific EMP attack which renders modern technology useless and they've become very in vogue among "preppers" who are concerned about surviving major disasters. And now they're making a movie! Dr. Forstchen is executive producing the film which shoots in September. Here's the press release:

Movie Adaptation Just Announced for Apocalyptic Bestseller One Second After: Shooting to Begin in September

WASHINGTON, D.C., DC, UNITED STATES, April 21, 2025 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Author William R. Forstchen, Ph.D., announced that his New York Times #1 bestseller, One Second After, about an EMP strike against the United States, is being adapted into an MPI Original Film (Motherland, Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game) in association with

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Tensions have erupted between Imperial, Federal, and corporate interests in a contested region of space currently controlled by Princess Aisling Duval.
Following her recent departure from Aegis, Princess Aisling has faced quiet criticism within Imperial circles for allowing her domestic influence to weaken. Analysts suggest her extended focus on humanitarian and scientific pursuits left key territories vulnerable to influence by rival powers.
Shadow President Jerome Archer, fresh from a decisive security victory in Chi Eridani, has announced Federal operations within the region, overriding Duval's objections and citing long-term stability goals. Despite remarks of disapproval, President Felicia Winters has not moved to halt Archer's advance.
Simultaneously, the Sirius Corporation has entered the fray, offering itself as a neutral authority. CEO Li Yong-Rui claimed that "based on our simulated

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... and also he was Prince Thrakhath. The May 1994 issue of Electronic Games magazine brings us a pretty interesting profile of an Origin writer who doesn't get enough credit these days, Gilbert Austin. Credited as G.P. Austin for his work at Origin, he served as a writer on Wing Commander II, Strike Commander and Privateer (and provided voice work for Wing Commander II and Ultima Underworld 2!). At the time of the interview he had just moved on to write and design his own game, Harvester, for a newly formed studio. The most interesting note is that his last project for Origin was an outline for Wing Commander III, which it notes was finished before Strike Commander released. He's not credited on Wing Commander III so I'd be very curious to know what his plan for the game had been so early on!

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Back in August of last year, Wing Commander composer George Oldziey graciously live streamed the orchestral recording sessions for his spectacular new Wing Commander album. If you missed out on the chance to see them, we've added screen recordings of both to YouTube. They aren't a substitute for the real thing but hopefully they'll be useful for reference in the future!

Session One

Session Two

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Origin composer George Oldziey is back with a new status update on the latest vinyl album of Wing Commander music. While CD production was completed earlier this year, the larger vinyl records have been trickier to produce. George is still pushing the producer hard to deliver in a timely manner, but forces outside his control have pushed the timetable of complex modern manufacturing out a bit. In the mean time, see below for a very cool behind-the-scenes look at how Mr. Oldziey worked with the live orchestra in Budapest to craft his latest musical delight!

Greetings all. Just to let you know I'm not "slacking off" here. I'm in contact with the company making the vinyl deliverables. Vinyl is a very hot format these days. Here is the latest reply from the company making your vinyl discs...

Hi George,

I'm so sorry I did not get back your voicemail yesterday, I was unexpectedly out of the office.

I

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What can we say about Blade Runner? No matter how they end it, it's a great movie and it gets the Wing Commander movie club seal of approval (which is technically a sea lion). Now we've got an unusual one this week, the 1992 comedy Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Buffy seemed like a fun-but-light treat at the time but in the ensuing decades it has developed into quite a popular franchise with multiple tv shows (and a reboot in the works now). You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

But how does a comedy movie about fighting vampires from 1992 impact Wing Commander? Wing Commander does have (F-109) Vampires… but that's not it. This is a convoluted one. Manual readers may recall that Wing Commander Privateer has a very elaborate backstory published as a short prose story, "The Frontiersman: Interview with a Privateer". It details the man character's past including a battle with the Retros and

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We've got a fascinating piece of Wing Commander archaeology today: the script for Wing Commander III's "wild lines". What's a wild line? Have you ever noticed distant talking in the background during cutscenes and gameflow aboard the Victory? These not-quite-audible-on-their-own PA announcements play to add a sense of texture to the world, making the carrier feel like it's a living, breathing place. And Origin's audio group too the challenge of recording them very seriously... they aren't nonsense lines but a set of 63 intentionally scripted possibilities.

Actually getting to read these lines gets you an interesting sense of life aboard the TCS Victory, with passengers and cargo coming and going and all sorts of shipboard events. Some of them are even specific to missions in the game, like one announcing Hobbes' escape. Most of the names are in jokes, referencing members of the development team like

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Here's a blast from the past: a preview of Wing Commander Prophecy from the October 1997 issue of Computer Games Strategy Plus. This one really brought back memories for me; there's something very special about the dedication you can see behind the Wing Commander Prophecy team... and it's pretty neat that this article was willing to spend so much time introducing so many of the developers involved. This preview was conducted while multiplayer was still planned for the game and it's full of interesting, half-forgotten facts... like the mention that the Vision Engine was rescued from a cancelled game! There are also some stunning rendered screenshots that should all be familiar to anyone that drooled over every piece of promotional material released during Prophecy's press junket...