Wing Commander

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Christian Klein

has found Spanish translations of most of the Wing Commander games from the first few years of the series, so missing Privateer would be a big omission. But, he's managed to finally locate a copy so he can cruise the Gemini Sector en Español. It includes a full suite of translated documentation too, which is one of the coolest parts. Check it out below!

Woohoo! Another rare Wing Commander version to add to the archive. It's Privateer localized for Spain. I never saw one before. #DOSgaming

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Look at the Korean VHS of the Wing Commander movie! What the heck is that cover art?! This is what happens when the movie's Rapier is the most familiar looking object in the frame. Check out more international variants

here

.

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There's been a lot of talk about the "space force" in the news lately, so we took a look back at the origins of the Terran Confederation Space Force. Where do they come from? Wing Commander's Space Force is a retcon! There's no mention of it in WC1 or 2. It was created for WC3 to explain why the earlier games used a mix of Army and Navy ranks (for instance, General and Admiral.) Here's the design doc that introduced the idea:

In lore, the Space Force seems to be a subset of the Navy. Blair and Maniac attended a Terran Confederation Space Naval Academy and then went on to receive specialized flight training at the Space Forces Flight School. Transfers between the two groups are possible. The Space Navy, then, seems to have developed from the United States Navy rather than some new branch of the military; the Terran Confederation Naval Academy on Hilthros continues many Annapolis traditions and is

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Pilots who were looking to try their luck in this weekend's

Flat Universe

tournament will have to wait a little longer as they work through some lingering issues. The

Maslas

Brothers

have pushed the competition out to next weekend to ensure they have a more stable build for everyone. While you're waiting, check out the

Destiny's Way

in-universe magazine for a glimpse into the backstory behind the game. Or you can stop by the CIC's

Discord server

and see what fellow Wing Commander fans are up to!

Dear WingNuts,

After several days of coding and a lot more of debugging we come to the position to postpone the event for next week (30/06/2018).

Although, we made credible efforts to package FlatUniverse, until this very moment the version suffers from instabilities and bugs that makes it just impossible to deliver on time of the event. We are Really, Really and of course Really sorry for the setback and we

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The final countdown starts now for this weekend's big Wing Commander

Flat Universe

tournament. It happens at

16:00 UTC

June 23-24, and interested players should

register

by Friday. There are some very cool multiplayer modes that will be deployed in the new version of the game and even a spectator mode. A few previously

announced

new ships will also be making their debut. Be sure to check it out!

Two days are left before we load our fighters with dangerous arsenals and start to hit each other with guns and missiles. What you already know is the date of the event (23rd/24th of June). What you don't, however, is the hour. We are really sorry for not being able to determine the exact time sooner, but we had to collect enough data from the Enlisted FlatPilots to make the best possible decision for every time zone out there. So let me enlighten you:

Red Flag 2678 starts at 16:00 UTC

Those of you who

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After seeing the

Spanish WC2

that

Christian Klein

recently acquired, the next natural question was whether DROSoft had also localized the Special Operations. The answer is yes, and it comes in an awesome double pack just like the Spanish

Secret Missions

! Both are in the same box with the game summaries translated side-by-side on the rear of the packaging. The contents within are fairly straightforward, but the combination of the two expansions makes this a very cool collector's item.

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FekLeyrTarg

has released his mini Wing Commander fan film. It takes the form of a recruiting commercial that could be used during the Kilrathi War. There's a nice mix of assets here from a Privateer-style building to Sabre fighters to the hefty Rigakh class cruiser. The clip isn't long, but it's a great example of what kind of potential is out there. We encourage more people to create things like this!

Produced as part of a semester project, I proudly present: "Terran Confederation War Propaganda - A Wing Commander Fan Film" This short film was made to show some of the potential both for "Wing Commander"-based fan films as well as the classic meshes from the "Privateer 3D Archive".

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DefianceIndustries

has completed the first large scale base for the Secret Ops

Model Upgrade Pack

. This is a cool design, and the tiny little flight deck is a nice touch. In addition to making it much more detailed and gorgeous to look at, he's also significantly amped up the destroyability. There's potential to take out individual components for a future project, which is pretty neat. Enjoy the pictures!

Further updates! Got the first of the major stations imported: the Confed Relay. It plays a larger role than the other stations, especially in WCP where Blair lands on one only to get subsequently captured because Blair and Decker's marines apparently missed the 8-foot tall bug hanging out in the landing bay sipping a Mai Tai - or the obviously alien fighter which launches from the station from one of the two landing bays which are currently full of Tigershark and/or Hercules LC...oh well, it's

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Many countries celebrate Father's Day today, and we know a lot of Wing Commander fans have recently become dads out there. My little one just turned 16 months old, and I'm happy to that see she grabs a controller and starts pushing buttons whenever she gets a chance.

The CIC is more of a news site than a blog, but it's also a community hub more than anything, and it feels right to share this personal story with the community. This Father's Day is a tough one for me because my Uncle Jim passed away yesterday.

The two of us used to play NES and Super Nintendo games frequently in the '80s and '90s. The Mario games were big, plus Zelda obviously, puzzle games like Tetris and Doctor Mario and Wing Commander on the SNES, of course. We learned together how to put together PC hardware and how DOS worked. Whenever one of us messed up a sound card jumper setting or couldn't get the drivers right for a game

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There's tons of great Wing Commander fan projects out there, but it's not every day that we get a teaser for a new one.

FekLeyrTarg

has had a hand in quite a few different endeavors over the years, and his latest will be a new short fan film. Projects like these have been proposed a number of times over the years, but we haven't seen very many come to fruition. They have a lot of potential to be pretty cool, and FekLeyr even made a graphic to announce his reveal this Monday, so we're pretty excited to see what's to come!

On June 18 2018, 8 PM Zulu, a new short Fan Film is going to be released.

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Who knew IMDB made little video shorts? They've just posted a clip to celebrate the recent 25th birthday of the Super Mario Brothers movie. It talks a bit about why the film was the way it was and how it was critically panned. Wing Commander gets a funny cameo as the film that's actually ranked one better than Mario Brothers in the all time IMDB ranking of video game-based adaptations. Check it out here.

May 28, 2018, marks the 25th anniversary of 'Super Mario Bros.' The very first live-action adaptation of a video game, ever, was based on the hugely successful series that helped pull the gaming industry out of the 1983 crash. But when it came to its big screen potential, only one man had the vision, producer Roland Joffé.

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The

Games on Film

podcast has recorded an episode that's all about Wing Commander. They spend more than 80 minutes talking about the franchise's background and the environment that existed in 1999. Then the commentators spend quite a bit of time talking through the highs and lows of the film itself. One thing that sets this review/discussion apart from the cliche comments you frequently see is that they thought the space action was on the boring side but were actually intrigued by the Pilgrim angle. Since their focus is all about video games that have crossed over into theaters, they make a good point that FMV-centric series seem to have an inherently difficult time gaining acceptance since it's so easy to break with cinematic styles that their fans are used to. You can check out the full episode

here

.

Harry and Rory journey into the deep reaches of space - and the even deeper reaches of the DVD

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FekLeyrTarg

has a neat new audio treat for fellow fans. He's recorded a classic Star*Solder article to test out his new audio gear. If the story doesn't ring a bell, it's the one that details some of the exploits and fate of the final surviving Midway class megacarrier that fought in the Nephilim war. It's a very creative reading with music and sound effects layered in! You can find the original text on page 23 of the manual

here

.

In order to test my new semi-professional microphone and practice my skills in Adobe Audition, I produced an Audio Narration of "Last of the Megacarriers" from "Star*Solder", the manual of "Wing Commander Arena". This is the tale of the TCS Port Broughton, a Terran Confederation Megacarrier and sistership to the TCS Midway from "Wing Commander: Prophecy".

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This is turning into a series!

Christian Klein

has found yet another DROSoft localization for Spain. This time it's Wing Commander 2. This one has a long of box text to translate, and the small instruction pamphlet has a very cool design with watermark silhouettes of all the ships on it. Relatively speaking, there's quite a few copies of Wing Commander 2 out there, but not this version of it! Really cool find!

Thanks Spain! I recently found another neat Wing Commander 2 version to add to my small collection.

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DefianceIndustries

has shared some exciting news about another amazing graphical upgrade developed by the community.

Pedro

and

PopsiclePete

have helped implement emit maps that will allow for proper glow effects in Prophecy and Secret Ops. This is a huge win for a game that's highlighted by dark spaceships adorned with eerie lights. There's also some great benefits for regular spaceships too. Coming soon to a Secret Ops

Model Upgrade Pack

near you!

So...it isn't often we jaded MUP-pers get really excited over something, but this is one of those times. The dynamic graphical duo of Pedro and PopsiclePete have been hard at work performing dark magics and alchemy on the Open/GL patch and have given us a gift long sought after: Emit maps!

Up to this point we've had to be creative in how we do things like glowing windows and engines in the MUP. Kevin Caccamo 's awesome Wing Blender tools for Blender allow

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The updated

Flat Universe

launcher is now available! This is the first step in the release of a special edition of the game that will facilitate the upcoming WCFU tournament. There are some additional bug fixes and compatibility assurances available as a part of this, and the recently hinted-at new features should be coming soon. Grab the update for yourself and start practicing at

Daedalus Station

here

.

Here's the flatulence straight from the

Maslas

Brothers

:

Uninstall the previous version and install the current. Upon launch, it will ask you to download two updates. After that, you are ready to play the old multiplayer version of Flat Universe. For the time being of course.;)

Let me point some of the basic bug fixes that have been made:

• It is tested to install and work correctly on Windows 10 with UAC raised.
• The Launch button activates only when all the patches are fuly installed.
• The news slider

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E3 2018 is unfolding over the next week, and Electronic Arts held its

press event

today to highlight its new games coming in the year ahead.

Battlefield V

and

Anthem

have stirred some of the most interest and look fairly neat. No new Wing Commander games seem to be on the horizon for 2018, but EA did announce another mobile Command & Conquer game,

Rivals

, in the "Clash Royale" style. It's streamlined significantly compared to classic RTS games, but the fast-paced style will probably prove to be pretty popular. It looks fairly sharp graphically, and there seems to be a bit of depth in the form of different commanders and a complementary suite of tactics necessary to win. We shared the news about

Red Alert Online

earlier this spring and spent a lot of time talking about how this franchise seems to keep bouncing back. It doesn't surprise me anymore, C&C has more lives than a Kilrathi!

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I’ve been looking at the multi-game guide books that were popular in the mid-90s. This one has chapters on Wing Commander III and IV... but the very simple walkthrough only covers seven missions of the latter. These seem kind of silly today, but before the internet books like these were a neat way to find out about the games available for your system. They’re as much wishbook as they are hint book!

Prima updated this huge book of PlayStation game guides annually for years. Here’s WC3 and 4 still included the 2000 version!

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Fans getting ready for the upcoming

Flat Universe

tournament

have noticed that the core game download has been temporarily suspended. This is in preparation for major updates set to launch soon that will be highlighted in the impending competition. On top of some major bug fixes, there will also be a host of new features and additions. It sounds really cool - I'll let the

Maslas

Brothers

describe the specifics below. We'll be sure to share when the upgrade is available!

In a couple of days, we will release the final version of the launcher only which is going to be smaller in size and seriously debugged (No UAC problems, no compatibility bugs on Windows 10, no download loops etc). With the release of the new launcher you will, at first, be able to download the previous multiplayer version of Flat Universe, and during the weeks that will follow the launcher will upgrade you to the tournament

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GOG.com has kicked off their summer sale and the Wing Commander series is on the list. The entire franchise is now 70-72% off, which ties the best deals we've seen in the past year. Each individual title is down to $1.79 and the whole package of all DOS & Windows games is just $13.42. Boxed games might be nice for the collection, but digital copies are really quick and easy to download and play. These also make great gifts!