Wing Commander

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The Now Playing Podcast's latest episode is all about Wing Commander. They are obviously a movie show, but this installment actually approaches the subject from a comprehensive Wing Commander franchise angle. At least one of the commentators has a long history with the series including the games, knowledge of the TV show and the back story of the WC Movie itself. They poke fun at some of the sillier elements of the film, but they credit things like its pioneering first use of time slice "bullet time," which is cool. They spend a full 90 minutes hashing everything out, so they cover quite a bit of ground. Check it out for yourself

here

.

Game developer Chris Roberts was on course to deliver the first major science fiction film of 1999 when he personally piloted his massively popular flight simulator Wing CommanderPhantom Menace and The Matrix. Do fighter pilots Freddie Prinze Jr. and Matthew

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Friday night score! Happened across several pre-release Super Wing Commander screenshots. Note the older VDU graphics and the early cockpit that's more TIE Fighter than Hornet!

A preview build seems to have been provided to magazines in early 1994... wonder if it's floating around somewhere! Here's what the finished cockpits looked like.

And here's some footage of a pre-release build, from a VHS trailer. You can see the same WIP VDU images... plus a cut enemy ship at the 28 second mark!

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George Oldziey

checked in again to provide fans an update on his Wing Commander jazz album, which was

recorded

a couple months ago. He's recently overcome some delays and is now ready to check off some of the few remaining production-related tasks. One thing he's asking fans for help on is the cover art. Anyone who has ideas or input should hit the comment button below and let him know. The sooner this gets finalized, the sooner fans who supported his recent album

campaign

can get their music! Listen to a preview below.

Your browser cannot play this file. Click here to download the track.

Greetings WC music fans! Firstly, I have to apologize for not being very present here. Some life's challenges took my attention, but they have been resolved and I now have the music for the WC bar music CD ready to be manufactured.

But first! I would love suggestions for art work for the CD. If you have

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Death^_ tipped us off about a really cool advertisement for Dragon Con 1996 posted by Wade Haddock. The sheet shows off the various celebrities that would be in attendance, including Mark Hamill! Note that this is not "Star Wars' Mark Hamill." In fact, Star Wars isn't mentioned at all, which is funny since this appeared in a Star Wars comic. He is simply billed as

Colonel Christopher Blair in Origin Systems' Wing Commander IV.

Right on! That's what springs to my mind first too... Of course, this appearance happened just four months after WC4's release, so it was particularly relevant at the time.

Scan of an ad from the April 1996 issue of the comic adaptation of the Star Wars EU story "Splinter of the Mind's Eye" (third of four issues). Notice the Special Guest announcement on the bottom-right corner of the ad.

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On topic today

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The final missing ebook from the Baen Wing Commander catalog continues to march towards release. As previously mentioned, the Milk Run story is available as a sample chapter to help get fans excited. Since we last reported, the novel has been added for preorder on Kobo, and we've added links to Google Play as well. End Run fully releases on July 3, 2018. Also check out our new the new and improved Book Grid that Kris and LOAF made. All the digital options you could want in your WC novel life are now at your fingertips! (except Freedom Flight on Google Play, apparently)

- Baen Ebook
- Amazon Kindle
- Apple iBooks
- B&N Nook
- Kobo
- Google Play

- Baen Ebook
- Amazon Kindle
- Apple iBooks
- B&N Nook
- Kobo
- Google Play

- Baen Ebook
- Amazon Kindle
- Apple iBooks
- B&N Nook
- Kobo
- Google Play

- Baen Ebook
- Amazon Kindle
- Apple iBooks
- B&N Nook
- Kobo
- Google Play

- Baen Ebook
- Amazon

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You only get the Golden Sun the first time...

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LOAF recently found a nifty marketing prerelease snap of the Wing Commander 4 box. As the story

goes

, the stark geometric pattern of the main box eventually gave way to a slipcase sleeve with a more action-oriented center. You can see in the shot below that this bears a fairly strong resemblance to the final design. The core art and even font are in place, but the lettering was repositioned a bunch before production. Note that it just says "Wing IV" on the side though!

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Michael Dürr makes very cool science fiction and fantasy sculptures, and his latest design is a Wing Commander classic. He's crafted the Exeter destroyer in pewter and then painted it with acrylics. There's a lot of wonderful detail here in everything from the hull plating and gun turrets to the windows and lights. There's even a starry black stand. It would fit right in to any collection alongside some of the higher end 3D prints that people have had made. Fans in the EU can actually make this happen and order a kit for themselves from his website

here

. Even if you're not located in the EU, check out his site for some of his other awesome designs!

This is my take on a model of a Exeter-Class-Destroyer. I sculpted it from green-stuff and casted it from pewter. It is made in the scale 1:5000 giving the model a length of 7,2 cm. The model consists of eleven parts. Once assambled I coloured it with

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It's Friday, so listening to some grumpy gripes seems like a fitting end to a rough week.

Gray Ghosts

Old Grizzled Gamers

has written a quasi-review of Wing Commander 3, and as you might expect, they have some strong thoughts about it. The author is actually harkening back to the 3DO version of WC3, which has some

exciting differences

compared to the PC and Playstation editions. He starts off making fun of all the repetitive transitions, and while most of us quickly turned these off, I don't actually recall off the top of my head if this option was readily available on consoles. Of course, even those transitions were jaw-dropping back in 1994. Despite a few other aspects that haven't aged particularly gracefully, it's clear that they have a soft spot for the game and all its everlasting charm. Check out the full article

here

.

The space combat is what made the game engaging, but it isn’t what made the

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The prince doesn't like to be mocked

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Several years ago we

reported on

a video that just contained the previews attached to the front of Wing Commander on VHS. It was an oddity at the time, but apparently there's a market for everything. Fast forward to 2018 and that clip has nearly 15,000 views on YouTube. His similar segment for

Toy Story

has more than 700,000 views and here's a

Lion King II

version that's pushing a million. So apparently this is a real thing. As such, a competing YouTuber with a similar idea has just posted the WC VHS previews again. This time it's a shaky cam recording of a CRT television that blurs in and out of focus. This is even worse than the earlier version, so there's no need to watch it, but I'm just amazed it exists. Maybe check out the swanky flair involved as he slides the case into view right at the beginning. That's art. He has 1300 subscribers and 1.6 million total views, so while still an up and

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That was a great scene

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This is the last in a series of interesting video features published in the mid '90s by the CD-ROM "magazine" Interactive Entertainment. Their Wing Commander 4 review appeared in issue 23. The CD-ROM interface displayed screenshots from the game and overlaid them with low resolution videos. That experience has been recreated here rather than displaying the videos full screen. Again, while it looks pretty dated today, the setup was really cool for the time. The vast majority of internet access out there was still dialup, so this was the only practical way to experience something like this!

Text article that accompanied the video review on the CD:

The Commander Returns to Battle

A rogue band of pilots from the border worlds descends upon an innocent civilian transport and its escorts and destroy them by unleashing a mysterious device. Cut to our hero, Christopher Blair, once again played by the

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Welcome to the Vega Sector! Here's the original

star map

sketch that became a page of Wing Commander's Claw Marks manual. The map was redone for several ports and even included as a poster in the FM Towns release (the blue one). The only problem: it's supposed to be to scale but the distances change in each version! Note that "Hell's Kitchen" becomes "Apocalypse" in the SNES version because Nintendo.

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Avid Wing Commander collector

Christian Klein

has found another rare artifact. He managed to locate a British copy of the game on 5.25" low density disks that may be an earlier release than the mass produced copy most of us are familiar with. In it, Hunter is named "Dart," which we know was an original placeholder name for the character. The first screenshot below shows this, and the second is from the British 3.5" high density disk release. LOAF points out that the name change came late in development, and both Hunter and Maniac actually have "Dart" and "Joker" nameplates on their helmets in all versions of the final game!

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But let's just say he could hypothetically cruise at a cool 500 kilometers per second...

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To beat Kurasawa 2, you just have to believe...

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The Secret Ops

Model Upgrade Pack

has a new Nephilim transport. Thanks to some graphical magic by Dark Sentinel and DefianceIndustries, the Triton goes from being an ugly gray

tube

to an exotic alien worm. It looks like a lot of fun to blow up!

Here's the explodey version!

Update time true believers! Today we are showcasing another great Nephilim ship brought to you by Dark Sentinel. The Triton (aka Leatherback) transport. Essentially a giant cigar case with guns, DS has done a great job making it look more like the original concept art, good and buggy! He's also bringing spines back. That's right spines! This ship is loaded with them! If you don't like spines, go home! Also I got the fun part of blowing it up, and so can you! Look for this and other exciting Nephilim additions in the next patch - Coming soon!