You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In NowSign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountOct
This weekend is the last chance to grab the Wing Commander games on sale via GOG's 15th Anniversary Sale. Coincidentally, this timed perfectly to overlap with the Wing Commander series' birthday earlier this week. It's also a slightly higher discount than we've seen recently with a full 75% off each title in the franchise. Grab them below!
Sep
Mac is back with a fabulous new wallpaper. It depicts Klavs' exquisite Concordia model with the sun at its back. This casts a dark and moody light on the superstructure of the ship while various running lights, engine components and weapon emplacements light up the landscape. There's also a full complement of Sabre and Rapier escorts in tow to round out this very imposing scene!
It is time.#wingcommander
Sep
German friends! We are still looking for this diskette. Do you know any packrats or collectors?
Requesting assistance from the German retro gaming community! It looks like the October 1993 PC Player cover diskette had a Wing Commander Academy campaign on it. Does anyone have a copy?
Sep
…A certain former president (not Jimmy Carter) recently said some goofy stuff about single-engine fighters recently which got me to thinking: do we fly any single engine space fighters in Wing Commander?
Most Confederation fighters have between two and six engines... but I can think of three exceptions! The Ferret in Wing Commander II and the Piranha in Prophecy are both single-engine patrol ships meant to seem like a cockpit glued to a rocket.
Prophecy's Devastator torpedo bomber also has a single engine but the visual intent is reversed: it's supposed to seem like a powerful ship with a powerplant that's similar to those of a capital ship.
I will also note that the Ferret seen in Wing Commander Academy actually had three engines; must've been the A or B model! Why does the Academy Ferret look so unlike the game one when the other Academy ships are pitch perfect? It's actually modeled on a toy prototype
Sep
…
There's sad news for the Wing Commander family of performers tonight: veteran actor David McCallum passed away earlier today. McCallum, 90, started his career as a leading man on television shows like The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and went on to serve as a jack-of-all-trades who could pop up anywhere and everywhere. His nearly endless resume included a variety of guest appearances on cult genre shows including The Outer Limits, seaQuest DSV and Babylon 5. He joined the Wing Commander universe in 1996 in a short but memorable appearance in Privateer 2: The Darkening. You can find an obituary with a more complete retrospective of his career at Variety.
McCallum appeared in Privateer 2's opening scene as the captain of the doomed freighter Canera. He commands Don Warrington's Helmsman, Nichola Cordey's Second Officer and stuntman Riky Ash's Communications Officer through the game's opening that ends in all of
Sep
Happy birthday to Wing Commander I, which was released 33 years ago today! It marked an epochal shift in how computer games were played, made and sold... and I guess you could say it has been pretty big in my life, too!
It is often hard to assign a single date for when a game was released in the early 90s; it could be days to weeks to go from sign off to duplication to actually arriving in stores. There was no concept of a set ‘street date’ - but Origin celebrated “ship day” internally and that’s what we cite as a birthday when it’s known. Here’s an account of that day from Mike Harrison’s excellent contemporary making of piece:
Sep
…Today we've got a wonderful pile of old reviews from Maxi de Sokar. First up is a WC2 from the Spanish OKPC magazine. They give it a solid 85% and comes with lots of gorgeous screenshots. There's also a Special Operations preview, and although it's short, it packs in tons of great little references that really date game development to the era (1991-1992). Then we shift gears into a PC Review review of WC Academy. The game only gets 5 (out of 10, I suppose), but they had enough to talk about to fill a two page article. We often point out that there was genuine demand for something like this and it filled a niche that was pretty unique back in the day. With all that being said, the same author returns to review Wing Commander Privateer... and he also gave it a 5/10! So maybe that says something more about him than the game. In the end, I guess I'm not mad about Academy being rated on the same
Sep
It's autumn now where GOG is based, but they've already run their lengthy autumn sale. That's not a problem though, because they've just launched a big sale to celebrate their 15th anniversary! The Wing Commander series is discounted once again, and this is a "proper" across-the-board markdown. Each title is its customary 75% off, which means less than $12 for the whole series! Now's a great time to digitize your collection. Thank you to Drachenhannes for the tip!
Sep
Wonderful! This is for Wing Commander III PSX which was localized for Japan.
This was posted by Japanese Magazine Ads and comes from the October 1996 issue of Jugemu magazine. You can find more advertising and promotional material in the CIC Document Archive.
Sep
AD found this one on a new YouTube channel, 3DO World. It's a trailer for the 3DO version of Wing Commander from an in-store video sampler tape. Like the full version of WC3 on this console, the video quality depicted here is pretty good with minimal artifacting and solid colors. The trailer is fairly short overall, and you only get a quick shot of the gameplay at the end. Although the engine might look low res like the Playstation port, a handful of missions and features have been jazzed up in a very compelling way. It's definitely worth giving this one a try if you get an opportunity! You can find our collection of different WC3 trailers in CIC Holovids!
This is a trailer of the 3DO game, Wing Commander 3. This appeared on a VHS tape titled "3DO Video Sampler 5" that was distrusted with retailers circa 1996 in the US.
Sep
…
Here's a new technical update on the Confederation project by AllTinker. He was aiming to deliver a release in time for Wing Commander's birthday on September 26, but that's looking pretty sporty now. Wing Commander fans are nothing if not patient, so we're just happy to get the status update on all the latest progress!
Just thought I'd post a quick progress update, mostly probably-dull semi-technical stuff - sadly some contract work is kicking my butt at the moment, so the 26th is looking kind of dubious... But things are still progressing steadily!I'm currently knee-deep in the revised audio system, which (amongst other things) I'm hoping will be able to render the OPL2 (Adlib) sound effects and music purely from the original data. Things seem positive, but I'm not finished with it yet. My previous effort involved using some external data to send to the OPL chip emulation code, but it was a little
Sep
Today we've got another shortie from Retro Shorts. The Playstation version of Wing Commander 4 is noticeably less crisp in spaceflight than the PC edition, but there are some nice input (joystick) improvements and enhancements to the cutscenes. Also regarding the date, the original Playstation was released in North America in late 1995. It was the WC3 port that was released in 1996, and WC4 made it to the system in 1997.
Sep
…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
Sep
Today we have several new pages from EmuMusicFan's slick retelling of the Hobbes interrogation scene in Freedom Flight. Now that Prince Thrakhath has ended the imminent threat, Lord Ralgha nar Hhallas turns his attention to dealing with Jahkai!
Sep
Today we've got an old recording of Mark Hamill being interviewed on the Craig Kilborn talk show to promote Wing Commander Prophecy. Wing Commander was a rare crossover hit in the mid '90s with promotion on television shows like this. The interviewers would typically not have any experience with the material, which contributes to how out of touch they seem. The humor is super cringe and Kilborn is obnoxious, but it's an interesting look at the time. I do appreciate that it would be lost if not for people like jahwilly transcribing their old VHS tapes!
Sep
…Prompted by a handful of questions at the CIC Forums, AllTinker has provided some updates that detail his ideas and plans for the Confederation project. It's some nice insight into what's in store to expand the capabilities of the original WC1 engine. Here's what he had to say:
I've been working on it on-and-off since 2016 or thereabouts, but posting about it (or more the community response) has been a big motivation boost.
I plan to implement [enhancements] gradually in layers, but yes - ultimately some kind of dynamic/strategic campaign system is exactly the sort of thing I'd like to implement.
The current plan is that the first layers of that will actually be released prior to the WC1 campaign being fully playable; i.e. simple preset or dynamic scenarios to test things out.
Having the WC1 campaign fully playable is the primary goal until it's achieved, but the way we'll get there will be a little
Sep
…Here's a fun review of the Mega CD port of Wing Commander. It's noteworthy for having fully (Japanese) speech similar to its (English) Sega CD counterpart. This piece was originally posted to Twitter by Baller Speeder and ZealousFoX, and I've formatted it into one block of text. I like to encourage people to appreciate Wing Commander across all platforms and media types, so I wanted to acknowledge this here!
Game review: Wing Commander (Sega Mega CD / 1994 Sega/Electronic Arts/Origin Systems/CRI/Game Arts/Bits Laboratory)
Yes, five companies worked on the Mega CD port of a Chris Roberts space flight sim classic. Oh well, the important bit is, this gave me the most fun.
Published by Sega themselves in Japan and ported by Game Arts in collaboration with CSK Research Institute (the guys behind the Mega CD port of Might and Magic 3) and Bits Laboratory (the Mega CD Prince of Persia guys), the player sees
Sep
I did this quick for a Discord discussion and thought it was pretty interesting: the difference in resolution between a Wing Commander III cutscene (320x160!) and a 4K movie. (AKA why they couldn't just reuse the game costumes, props, fx, etc for the movie...)
You can find a complete index of downloadable source videos (again, in the original 320x160 format!) here. On the opposite end of the spectrum, ODVS has used his advanced AI editing techniques to enhance and upscale the footage to HD quality here.
Sep
Sometimes a little shortie burst of Wing Commander just hits the spot, and today is one of those days! This is a look at the TrainSim in the Super Nintendo version of Wing Commander put together by Retro Shorts.
This might look like the TrainSim you're familiar with from the DOS edition of the game, but there are actually quite a few differences! It's fairly distinct on the PC versus Amiga versus Sega CD, SNES and SWC! You can learn more about these variations in LOAF's article here.
Sep
…Up for a little late night Wing Commander lore? Claw Marks includes the earliest published timeline. The late, great Aaron Allston imagined the major battles of the first two decades of the Kilrathi war. Including the 2639 “Enyo Engagement”:
Claw Marks also establishes that Knight is a veteran of the Enyo Engagement and that it was where he earned his callsign. (I know what you’re thinking; Knight was a combat pilot for 15 years?!?!)
Next, the Wing Commander I & II Ultimate Strategy Guide, which heavily references Claw Marks, says that one of Blair’s Academy instructors was Lt. Col. Blakely, the man who planned the Confederation’s counterattack.
Uh, don’t you mean Prankster and not Blair? Regardless of how you choose to deal with that, Blair being in Blakely’s class is mentioned in one of his yearbook signatures in the Kilrathi Saga manual:
The second iteration of the Wing Commander timeline is published
