Wing Commander

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Special delivery: it’s a rare Wing Commander port I didn’t have in my collection! Meet the 1993 ASCII release of The Secret Missions 1 & 2 for DOS/V.

DOS/V is an operating system developed by IBM for PC compatibles with VGA cards that adds Japanese character support. There were also DOS/V versions of Wing Commander, Privateer, Armada and Wing Commander III! This is by far the rarest one at least in western collecting circles. One of the reasons for that is probably that the box looks EXTREMELY similar to the 1991 DOS/V version of the original. Check them out, reunited!:

Another fun thing about Wing Commander for DOS/V is that you can pick it out in the background of an episode of Gridman.

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We're happy to kick off the new week with another exciting update from the WC4 Remastered team! They've posted a new article where they dig into the development of the game's third mission. It's the first time players get to experience a new fighter, so this includes deploying a second cockpit and implementing alternate HUD locations for certain items. There's also new information about the ability to play bespoke music at certain contextually relevant points during a mission. There's even a video about this in more depth! Check out the full article here.

Getting the new cockpit in wasn’t smooth sailing, though. The Hellcat cockpit was held together by a number of hacks from our first trailer. Now, everything is data-driven and reusable, with no hardcoding in sight, making future cockpits much easier to implement.

Each ship can now have its own custom HUD layout, necessitated by the different

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Today we've got an awesome new animation by Mac. You can see quite a few of Klavs' famous models throughout from the large Snakeir carrier to the sleek patrol Ferret. He says he started work on it over a year ago, so he's excited to finally be able to share with everyone. I really can't fathom how much effort it takes to put something like this together, but I definitely enjoy the results!

Well, I got that out of my system. Full-on animation is totally doable, but time-consuming af. Which is why I dont do it often. But I like it nonetheless.

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The first three pages of EmuMusicFan's newest Freedom Flight comic have now been posted! These form the beginning of the story's second chapter. The first chapter followed Lord Ralgha nar Hhallas' interrogation. Chapter 02 is a decidedly different take!

Be sure to check out all the original pages if you didn't catch them last year!

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Last month veteran Wingnut and game developer Howard Day open sourced his Wing Leader project to recreate a modern game in the style of WC1. He put it out there for fellow fans to take the lead and make progress, but he's also reentered the fray himself. His first new addition is the Scimitar medium fighter. It adds some gorgeous new flair to the game, and you can already see it in action in the online rolling demo here!

I built myself a Scimitar-class medium fighter for Wing Leader! I'm pretty happy with how it turned out so far! I'm building it into the game demo now - pretty much just have to get the numbers right to make it really feel like the Centaurian Mud-Pig. It's been updated in the running demo!

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It's been quite a while since we've reported on real life space news, so I'm happy to report that the gang in the CIC Discord was very excited to see the Boeing CST-100 Starliner successfully lift off this morning. It's only the third time in the past fifty years that a brand new crewed vessel has taken off from the US, so to say we don't see this every day is an understatement. The two NASA astronauts aboard plan to dock at the International Space Station tomorrow, where they will deliver a much needed urine pump. We're hoping for an uneventful mission and safe landing over the next couple weeks!

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I was thinking about the Prophecy Advance clip we shared yesterday, and it reminded me that regular Wing Commander Prophecy on the PC rocks too! Here's the exciting cutscene where the Midway fires its massive Nephilim plasma weapon. Did you know that if you fail the final mission and then continue, the ship desperately tries to fire the weapon a second time? This does not work out well for the Terran Confederation!

With that being said, the crew definitely had warning that there could be disastrous results!

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The GamesBay has posted a bit from Prophecy Advance, and that's really got us thinking about this incredible game. We don't share enough about this pocket treasure, so I'm happy to repost it here.

It's definitely Wing Commander, complete with all its strength and flaws. The difference here is that instead of FMVs, you get text. A lot of text. And you don't have the option of a flight stick. That might be a dealbreaker for some.

While there is not a flight stick that you can just plug into the Gameboy Advance, you CAN play Prophecy on the Gameboy Player attachment for the Nintendo GameCube and then plug a GameCube flight stick into that! I'll also mention again that Apple has recently started allowing emulators and iPhones and iPads, and you can connect a flight stick or game controller to these devices when emulating your Wing Commander games.

It's Prophecy that really caught my eye, but GamesBay also

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Today we're sharing the Official Oscarinas "nominations video" for Wing Commander 2. There's lots of retro reviews and playthroughs of games on the internet, but this one stands out in a crowded field. This clip is technically part of an elaborate award season that they put together to recognize various retro games for their accomplishments, but I actually like it just because it's a couple of guys really geeking out about how great the game is for over an hour. I'm not sure why it only has 50 views (as of this writing). That seems criminally low - give it a watch!

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How about some super adventures for your Sunday? Today we're sharing a pair of lengthy overviews from the Super Adventures in Gaming blog. It's really refreshing to see such an old school website operating in 2024, and I'm not just talking about their focus on classic games of the past. Their site itself is still styled after websites of old, not drastically unlike the CIC. They're also still dedicated to the art of long form text articles, which you don't see so often anymore (and if you do, you then need to weed out the AI cruft!). You can find pieces on both Wing Commander II and Wing Commander III at their site (plus Wing Commander I, which we reported on years ago). Both earn the honorable "Not Crap, Would Play Again" award. Don't let my comments about text scare you away, each article is chock full of gorgeous images from each game as well!

• WC1
• WC2
• WC3

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Today we have another very cool find by Dominus of Exult. He happened to stumble across a pin in a vintage collectible shop. It's very possible that this was some kind of localized promotional giveaway in Germany from the '90s. I'm definitely in love with this simple retro design!

Another "LOOK WHAT I FOUND" - a Wing Commander needle pin (or whatever it's called). Sold by a shop that specializes in selling those kinds of things (originals, not reproductions).

For comparison, there was a department store in Germany that included metal dogtags with Wing Commander 4.

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When Maniac and Blair first arrive on the Tiger Claw they're wearing CSS Concordia patches on their peacoats. It's not really clear why unless the only other option was a Tiger Claw one.

He changes sweaters between acts, too! Or I guess maybe he just hot glues a different patch onto the same sweater.

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The clock continues to tick down towards the formal delisting of Wing Commander Arena from the Xbox 360 Marketplace. As of July 29, 2024, all Xbox 360 games that aren't forward compatible to the modern Xbox One/Series consoles will no longer be sold. This is a bittersweet (more bitter than sweet) milestone for those of us who thoroughly enjoyed the game when it launched in the summer of 2007, but it's also pretty incredible that it's had an uninterrupted 17 year run of official support. The good news is that you can still buy the game now and continue to play it online for the foreseeable future. Even if you don't own a 360 console, it's just $10 on the web. Pick it up now, or else you may find yourself chasing down that November 2007 OXM cover disc for the physical copy! It does seems likely that Microsoft will eventually also sunset 360 online support as well, but we're cautiously optimistic

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Tonight we have a serene Hornet flyby arranged and rendered by Mac. The fighter models themselves were originally designed by Klavs. I like this scene for today's news because the color palette seems to match the common tones of Star Trek Discovery, which will be flying off into the bluish purple sunset late tonight. Stop by the CIC Discord with us if you're planning to watch the finale too (we'll be up for the live stream)!

It's a #WingCommander kind of night.

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One of the biggest television shows of the year is Fallout, which is based on the classic video game series. It has a handful of endearing and memorable characters, including Walton Goggins' The Ghoul. But did you know this wasn't his first time acting in a video game-based production? As we reported a while back, Goggins portrayed the character "Moose" in Wing Commander 4! He's a Banshee pilot who's shot down by a flight of Excaliburs. Here's the clip:

More on his appearance:

While the label on the photograph reads "BW Pilot Garret 'Moose'", the actor in question is none other than Walton Goggins (credited as Walt Goggins). Moose appears in the Peleus jamming scene, one of the three Border Worlds Banshee pilots that are ambushed and shot down by a flight of Excaliburs. The Polaroid gives us a great look at a Border Worlds flight suit, which the production dyed grey from the original tan

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Hey, who wants some new Cybot ships and scenes? They might be a little weird, but they're always amusing and some are available now to help kickstart your project! New downloads include the Niven Base and Steltek Assortment. Be sure to let Cybot know if you find any of these designs useful!

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How many people here know about the Maniac?

Some lesser known Maniac variations, pixel edition:

Fine art edition. Wait did he start out as just... Luke Skywalker? And Tom Wilson auditioned for Blair... *X-Files theme*

It turns out a fair number of people were already aware of the Maniac.

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This is probably the best photo of Flint and a Kilrathi extra with tiny hands that you're going to see tonight.

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One of the many exciting fan projects that legendary artist and programmer Howard Day has created over the years is Wing Leader, a modern WC1 remake in the Unity engine. During the 2019-2021 time period, Howie shared a lot of awesome concept material, art and engine demonstrator content, but priorities got in the way and development has significantly slowed these past few years. In order to potentially kick start community development and make sure the source content is available to fans in the future, Howie has now publicly released the project's assets on GitHub. Although he hopes to continue making improvements at some point, other Wingnuts are free (and encouraged!) to take the reigns and see what they can do with what's been developed so far. You can find out more here!

I figure I should do this, since I don't know when I'll get back to it. I've made the project public. Adam's passing has

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Frequent readers of the Tri-System CCN booth news will find about ten stories written about Zakariah_Skintight and his hit band, The Buttock Men. But who is Zak Skintight and why is he featured so prominently? LOAF recently caught up with Privateer 2 developer Paul Hughes and finally got the answer!

I think that was Paul “Stitch” Chapman - the chap that did all the UI and box covers/ manual. He used to play bass in a band in his uni days.

Stitch was a brilliant UI designer - he was so shocked at how bad the box art and manual were shaping up, he took it upon himself to do it and knocked it out of the park. He proper pushed us to make a really cool UI (for 1995!).