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The CIC staff is frantically making preparations for tomorrow night's big birthday party, and now we've got a perfect set of ASMR music to help us focus! Scribbler has just released a pair of ambiance videos that skip ahead to Wing Commander 3. You can hear the hum, beeps and chirps of the TCS Victory's flight ops or gunnery control centers. Or find a complete list of his WC tracks here!
Aug
Earlier in the summer, we reported on a WC1 retrospective review that was especially comprehensive. At the time, we noted that it was well researched, covered a vast range of topics and was surprisingly entertaining for a lengthy two hour episode. My favorite thing was how earnest the author was about helping new audiences discover Wing Commander. And many people agreed! It's since gone out to rack up 115,000 views. It's been so successful that others have taken notice. In this new clip, vidIQ dissects what made it so popular, which is an interesting meta analysis. I think both creators underestimate how many Wing Commander fans are out there eager for more content! I've relinked the original vid below as well if you missed it in June.
Aug
We highlight a variety of Wing Commander streaming playthroughs from time to time, but I get really excited when fans are showcasing one of the less common entries in the franchise. Mufasa recently kicked off a new series that is going through Privateer 2. And he doesn't just play the games - he's reading portions of the game's unique documentation with each show as well. The first two episodes are linked below, and the next is scheduled for Wednesday evening, 8/17 at 7 PM Pacific time. Give them a watch!
I haven't played Privateer 2 in decades, so I started playing through it again on Twitch on Wednesday evenings. I start each stream reading some of the manual because it's so unique, different and includes some really interesting backstory and design choices.Also, I forgot the days when there was zero in game tutorial. It just starts, and you have to know everything right out of the gate.
Aug
…Some wonderful soul uploaded an entire beautifully preserved Computer Shopper to the Internet Archive! Shall we take a moment to... shop for Origin games like it's 1994?! Let's see what we can find...
Hi-Tech USA has a Wing Commander / Ultima VI CD-ROM for just $18! This would've be an OEM copy published by Software Toolworks, which worked out a deal with pre-EA Origin to offset development costs on three CD-ROM games in exchange for rights to release OEM versions.
Hardware bundler Media Vision has a bespoke multmedia kit that comes with Ultima Underworld and Wing Commander II. EA developed this release and licensed it to a LOT of early PC and addon manufacturers. It doesn't include the Wing Commander II expansions!
Treasure Chest Peripherals is taking first generation OEM CD-ROMs and bundling them together for big bucks! $89 will get you the Software Toolworks Wing Commander Deluxe CD-ROM and a couple
Aug
A mobile game called Ultimate Golf is having an event called ‘Swing Commander’. And so I played 18 holes of internet golf to see if there was anything more to it than the name. And there was not. And I’m terrible at internet golf.
Aug
Today CMDBob has a stellar model of a Wing Commander 3 Southampton class destroyer. We've seen lots of gorgeous examples over the years, but this one goes in a new direction with a wonderful animated style. Even the weapon effect looks spot on. We love it!
I took an old, low polyish model of the Southampton destroyer I'd made a while back, and gussied it up. Ended up with a nice enough animated-ish render style using 3DS Max's ink and paint materials, along with some other material stuff.
Aug
LeHah is back with yet another fantastic Wing Commander collectible! Already the proud owner of such artifacts as a signed movie soundtrack and double-signed movie poster, he's set a new standard for impressive Wing Commander autographs. Here is his Wing Commander 3 poster with (clockwise from top right) Tom Wilson, François Chau, Malcolm McDowell, John Rhys-Davies and Mark Hamill all-in-one. Rhys-Davies was his latest addition, and the actor even added "Paladin" to it unprompted. LeHah has been hitting up various conventions and sending away merchandise for years, but it's getting increasingly nerve-wracking to make progress with this one. While the various autographs have cost some $600 in direct money to obtain, the associated time and effort makes it increasingly priceless. I don't know if I'd be able to put this one in the mail and hope for it to return with a sixth signature!
Aug
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Happy Birthday to us! Today officially marks twenty-five years at wcnews.com! It's been a long road, getting from there to here. It's been a long time, but we're glad you're still here! It's been our privilege to be a part of the Wing Commander community for more than a quarter century, and we're looking forward to many more years here with you.
While today is the formal anniversary of when we first unveiled the Wing Commander CIC, we'll be holding the big birthday party in a bit over a week on Saturday, August 19. The fun kicks off at 7:00 pm EDT (4:00 pm PDT and 11:00 pm GMT) in Discord #Wingnut.
To commemorate today's milestone, LOAF will be hosting part four of four of his exhilarating Wing Commander Confederation Handbook series this evening. You can watch live and see exactly what goes into deep diving WC lore (also targeted to begin at the same 7 pm Eastern/4 pm Pacific). Stop back here for
Aug
A few months back, LOAF took a look at the development timeframes for the Wing Commander games. It's really interesting comparison! Someone asked how these durations correlated with the size of the development teams, which is also a very neat set of data, so LOAF compiled a new table!
This question fascinated me so I decided to put together some rough numbers with the previous chart. I divided credits by modern disciplines... you can see the size of the development teams basically quadruiples in eight years! (Does not include film shoot crews.)
With regards to the expansion packs, they were all very tight 3-4 month productions. A small team of rising juniors would usually develop them while the rest of the group moved to the next big game. They kept it up as long as the concept was profitable!
Aug
It's probably only really interesting to me, but here's two minutes of the Dorkir VDU footage from the various insert shots done for the Wing Commander movie. I rotated, cropped, and did some minor stabilization on this clip to make it slightly more viewable. The best looking section is about a minute in, but the low quality and partially cut-off shots are due to how it was shot or the source tapes it came from. You can see that it's a bit more WC1 Dorkir-looking than we thought before, because you can't really get a good or clear shot of it from the Blu-ray edition.
LOAF added this image for context:
For comparison, here's the Wing Commander I Dorkir design. The movie version looks like they just elongated the 'cab'. But it's pretty neat to watch a movie so many times and still be able to see a new spaceship.
Aug
…Remember the story in the Privateer manual? It’s very well written but it’s a little odd since it opens the booklet with eight pages of uninterrupted text. And none of the backstory is ever referenced in the game!
It turns out Origin had originally commissioned a comic artist to illustrate the story. The work was developed and the contract was doubled after the first delivery… but it was all dropped from the design very late in development!
It’s all this super cool 2000 AD style stuff. Thirty pieces to cover the story! It actually adapts a longer draft which has another act setting up a rivalry between Burrows and another privateer.
So my contribution today is that I have organized it all and matched it to the descriptions from the art list! It’s like a Privateer comic book. It’s in the wiki along with copies of outlines and earlier drafts of the story!
You can also find all the other unused art from
Aug
…Is there anything more thrilling than the Wing Commander I box art? Despite the claim that “what you see is what you play,” it’s not a screenshot but a digital piece carefully composed by the incomparable Denis Loubet.
Back in the '80s, games would commission stunning traditional artwork for their boxes. The biggest purpose was to attract eyes in stores but they also served as a kind of ‘primer’ in an era of simple graphics. That green-and-black smudge you battle is actually a cool dragon!
Of course consumers are fickle and tastes change. By the end of the '80s games were more complex and their art had a much more distinctive style. Origin needed a new way to stand out. And their first answer was… male models.
Luckily, that experiment ended before Wing Commander! It looked so impressive that they felt showing the game itself was the way to go. So Mr. Loubet had to use the graphics that were ready to get
Aug
We've moved into August, and now it's just two weeks until the CIC's 25th Birthday Party! You can join in and celebrate with everyone on Saturday, August 19. We'll be hosting a huge bash in Discord #Wingnut. Discord has rolled out quite a few new features over the last year, and we'll be trying some of them out with the large group. The main event gets going at 7:00 pm EDT (4:00 pm PDT and 11:00 pm GMT). Hope to see you there!
Aug
If you missed the big news earlier this week, be sure to check out the new WC4 Fan Remake demo! There are numerous fixes and updates, better joystick support and new in-flight comms. You can download it here (886 meg exe) and get right to playing! The WC Respace team has posted a full article with instructions and FAQs if you have any questions or issues. If you're not quite ready to jump in yourself, here's a video of The Eradicator checking the demo out. It's actually the original release, so the latest version is even better!
It looks like a team of modders are trying to remaster Wing Commander IV. In this video, we will check their work out.
Aug
Aug
…Development of the WC4 Fan Remake is picking up again, and the team has a new update today on comm videos. If you were thinking the clips that play in the communications VDU were simply upscaled, that's just the tip of the iceberg! It was quite a process for AllTinker to extract the colorful Playstation versions and then sync them with the PC version which are higher resolution. They aren't even cropped to the same frame. Then all of that was given to ODVS for an advanced enhancement based on color channels. It was quite a process, and you'll need to read the full article at WC Respace for the details. There's also a video that walks through the comparison.
Oh, and last - but not least - there's a whole new playable demo! Grab it here (886 meg exe). It showcases these new comms, and also a whole bunch more:
- Prioritize GPU based on maker if multiple are found
- Support for 128 button joysticks
Aug
It's been a while since we've shared Matthew Cushman's awesome SciPubTech cutaway poster, and it's fabulous, so we take every opportunity we can get to put it front and center. The project was officially commissioned to support the Wing Commander Movie, but like the Wing Commander Ride or action figure vehicles, it was never officially released. On the bright side, the gorgeous art is available right here for all to enjoy. Mr. Cushman recently reposted it on Behance with a little blurb. There's no new info, but it's nice to see his 'official' statement on the piece!
Wing Commander’s Tiger Claw Cutaway ArtThis diorama was created with the help of the film’s creator. Reference for this piece was supplied by the movie studio to create an accurate depiction of this vessel, but eventually this was not sold as a poster.
Aug
If you're like me and intensely follow the ups and downs of Wing Commander pricing across the internet, we have some very exciting news today! GOG.com has been regularly discounting Wing Commander games for many years, and for the vast majority of that time it's been very by the numbers: all eight packages discounted 75%. Just a couple weeks ago though, we noted that they were running a "Make Classics Last Forever" sale with Armada and Academy omitted. Now they're kicking off a week-long "Shooter Sale . Fortunately, all the DOS/Windows Wing Commander games are back this time, but Prophecy and Privateer 2 are just 70% off rather than 75%. That means they're $1.79 each instead of $1.49. Bizarre! Still, a wonderful chance to fill out your digital WC collection!
Aug
…Having a grand time tonight flipping through Wing Commander I & II: The Ultimate Strategy Guide. This book is so cool. It’s written as an in-universe memoir with the main character (here named Carl LaFong) at age 73 looking back on his training and military career. There’s a neat meta layer too, he’s writing this memoir because he has just served as the technical advisor for 28th Century ‘holovid’ versions of Wing Commander I and II made by “Tristan Roberts”.
This kind of guide written as a novel wasn’t uncommon at the time. X-Wing and TIE Fighter had great ones, as did a bunch of the Sierra adventure game series.
Whoever owns the rights to these in 2023 should serve them up as ebooks; I bet there’s a mint to be made from retro gamers and general nostalgia fans. Despite being written by an Origin marketing executive the prose is wonderful. It captures the more limitless 1991 version of the IP
Jul
A few days ago, we shared Michael Pretli's slick take on the Midway class heavy carrier. It turns out that he's also built a Murphy destroyer! It's also quite a looker.
My second gem from 2010 I want to preserve here, also done in Truespace 5.xMy rebuild of the Murphy-Class Destroyer featured in the Wing Commander Prophecy games, though I added quite some additional greebles to it since the original model in the limit game engine from that time was rather undetailed. To give it a more offensive looking capability I added addtional torpedo tubes and a fixed bow weapon to it. The ship also features a small landing bay for shuttles and a few fighters.
