Wing Commander

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RedBahamut loves George Oldziey's classic Wing Commander 3 music, but he wishes there was more of it! Since there aren't all that many fan remixes to add to the variety, he's created his own remastered album. Back in 2021 he released a test track, and now he's ready to share the entire composition. I'm listening to it right now. It sticks closely to the tone of the original while adding some refreshing flourishes here and there. Give it a listen below!

I started playing Wing Commander 3 a few years ago and the first thing that really got me was the absolute fantastic soundtrack. After checking a bit on Youtube, I am quite surprised of not finding much music related to WC3 or even remakes from remixers, so here is my take and my contribution to the Wing Commander community, hope you enjoy, Cheers!

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I just thought all four of the supertitles from the Wing Commander movie would be a good post. And I was right.

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Doubles is best! Or at least so says the April 1996 issue of GamesMaster, a UK-based gaming magazine that ran from 1993 to 2018. It features a cover story promoting not one but two big Wing Commander reviews: the PlayStation port of Wing Commander III and the original PC release of Wing Commander IV. But the biggest story here is surely the stunning 1990s magazine layouts seen throughout which are sort of like a mesmerizing surrealist landscape that you can't stop from staring it:

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I think I might have found a neat reference. Ultima fans, follow me for a moment. Here are screenshots of (some of) bartenders from Privateer. The heads are animated in front of a background that was rendered in 3D Studio.

A larger version of each background is actually stored in the game which gives you a better view. They're for a cut feature so don't ever actually display. But if you look closely there are four different labels for the liquor applied to a variety of different bottle shapes.

But we can get even more detail because the original 3D models and their textures have survived all these years in dev material we've recovered at the CIC!

So Ultima fans: is that last bottle not a map of Britannia?!

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Klavs has wrapped up the exquisite Sabre and Ferret models that he showed off last month. There are two styles of Ferret - one P-64C in In-Sys colors and a Super Ferret in active Confed gray. The Sabre is also on display with plenty of heavy ordnance. Both have also been posted in high quality on SketchFab for potential fan project use. Klavs has also talked about the texturing process in greater detail. Here's a snippet:

I've started using Substance Painter for the textures, it's really intuitive after you get the hang of it. I'll typically draw panel lines, vents, fasteners, thermal protection materials, and other details. I'm really just trying to think about how the ground crews would access stuff, how the complex shapes would be manufactured, and assembled how the pilots get in and out (hand holds, ladders, etc). I'll then add placards and other details. The grunge is largely determined by

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Crazy find on the Internet Archive: an article from Soft World that's the 1992 Trade Commander press releases translated to Chinese... and the pen-and-ink art has been recolored in pastels! COOL!

Here's the original art. This was the first announcement of what would become Privateer and it features a lot of details about a much earlier version of the game's storyline. It's also the (only) source of 'Grayson Burrows' as the player character's name. I found the Chinese text by searching for "Tolnidan," the original name for the Gemini Sector and a word that's very close to being a googlenope.

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Here's another fun oddity by FekLeyrTarg. He's composed George Oldziey's WC3 Behemoth track in the MIDIS2Jam2 program. The instrument effect is kind of cool, and it sounds great!

George Oldziey's Behemoth theme from "Wing Commander III - Heart of the Tiger", performed by a virtual orchestra in MIDIS2Jam2 using Patch 93's SC-55 soundfont.

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Sylvester found this very fun Wing Commander-adjacent video to share. DCSWorld PL created a impressive high fidelity version of the Strike Commander introduction in the Digital Combat Simulator engine. It's super sharp and features an authentic reproduction of things like the game's iconic F-16s. Strike Commander has many diehard fans out there and it's cool to see what they're churning out almost thirty years later!

Waiting hopelessly for the remake or sequel of one of the most beloved games - STRIKE COMMANDER - I decided to start by myself. Here it is the intro from the original version (floppy disk, not CD), recreated to the letter in DCS World.

I made skins for Wildcats squadron based on Sudden Death magazine included in the big box and added some from myself.

The clip is one to one recreation of the original scenes using Mission Editor in DCS World. The music and sound effects are from Strike

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AD reports that GalaxyCon is hosting another virtual autograph event with a Wing Commander star! Back in 2021, they had an arrangement with Freddie Prinze Jr that included the option to buy autographed WC posters. A similar deal is now running for Matthew Lillard. This time the the artwork has been updated: the Blair offer used the newer blue-tinted "DVD reprint" art while this is the original theatrical poster for Maniac. There are several options ranging from an 8x10" photo for $85, 11x17" mini posters for $100 or custom items that you send for $95-115. Send Ins need to be figured out by March 5, but you have until March 16 to order one of their WC photos or posters. This is a very cool opportunity for autograph collectors!

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Here’s a fun new (to me) type of video! I’m familiar with people making vids about the hauls and treasures that they discover at stores, including retro game retailers. Another emerging scene is where the store owners themselves are growing their YouTube/Twitch/social media presence with videos that showcase impressive or exotic customer trade-ins. Obviously this is a type of commercial advertisement since these go right on to being sold, but it’s pretty cool to see the variety of items that they run across. This particular clip has everything from 8 bit NES games to relatively new Xbox One titles, plus hardware. And the person here absolutely gushes about Wing Commander 3 and 4 for the PlayStation. You can catch that bit just about a minute and twenty seconds in.

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Happy Valentine's Day, Wingnuts! Love is in the air, and so are the Kilrathi! Whether you're spending this special day with your sweetheart or flying solo, we've got some romantic treats for you.

First, check out this passionate animation that LOAF extracted from Privateer, featuring a Gemini Sector couple in a tender embrace. We love how they captured the chemistry between these two star-crossed lovers.

Here's a tiny kiss for Valentine's Day! These lovers can show up in the background of the bar on New Detroit in Privateer.

Second, we've got the fabulous return of the Love Arrow! We hope you enjoy this famous icon and have a wonderful Valentine's Day. Remember, the Heart of the Tiger is always with you!

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Last fall we introduced a creative new project where EmuMusicFan began sketching out Freedom Flight's interrogation of Ralgha nar Hhallas in comic book form. We only had one page to go off then, but now Emu has released an additional six. It's enough to set up a pretty suspenseful scene! Check them out below and give you feedback to Emu at the CIC Forums.

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Today we've got a look back at Ascii Sector. The project began in the 2000s as a novel ASCII art take on Wing Commander Privateer. If you've been following us for a long time, you'll recall that the project actually won Fan Project of the Year for 2008. However, a few years later, the project removed "Privateer" from the name and started to change up the internal assets to avoid a sense of direct copyright infringement/overlap. I would have argued that there was no practical concern, since the project was fairly low-key and EA has a long history of not worrying about fan projects and mods, but I get it. And then we lost track of things for the past decade!

Fast forward today, and I see that development continued into 2016. Unfortunately, the game's website and associated materials appear to have gone offline in 2022, but you can still find a copy and download the latest version via archive.org.

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Here's a video of the vintage Amiga ProTracker software running a Wing Commander module. I'm not super familiar with this program myself, but it's got great WC music and some cool '90s aesthetic going on, so I'm running with it. Have a great weekend and enjoy!

Protracker Modul (mod)
Creator: Mark Knight
Titel: Wing Commander
Year: 1990

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This evening we've got a video from Linus Tech Tips about the reasons why you might emulate old hardware compared with building up a a classic PC of your own. There are pros and cons each way, and it's a good discussion about some of the many challenges than can go into getting vintage games running. I'm not a fan of these goofy thumbnails, but it's a charming video. It's really nice to see someone navigate those retro Windows 95 and DOS interfaces. Wing Commander appears at the 13:55 point in a brief anecdote about how some games could run too fast on newer hardware. It's kind of funny/amazing that that's an obscure enough bit of information in 2023 that it's worth calling out!

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Here's one you might never notice: Privateer has four different gameflow backgrounds for the ship dealers! New Constantinople (stripe), Oxford (wood floor), New Detroit (darker wall) and everything else!

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Again, it should be pretty obvious that this is a photo from the set and not a frame from the movie. But it did get me thinking about Tchéky Karyo headshots...

This picture shows up as a lobby card and in other promotional material... but it turns out it's NOT the same as the headshot that's used in the movie!

But here's some neat continuity: that in universe one DOES match the photo in the Confederation Handbook for Paladin's psychological profile.

I also checked the archive of the movie's official site, which had this little bit of lore we've saved all these years. A third photo!

... but here's another great touch: the signature on the letter at the movie site matches the one used for a letter he authored in the Handbook! Now THAT is attention to detail.

On a separate note, Mr. Karyo was born in Turkey, which suffered a terrible earthquake this week. You can help donate to relief efforts in Turkey and

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Maxi de Sokar has come across another vintage Wing Commander article from the Spanish press. This one is preview of Wing Commander 3 from Issue 78 of Micromanía. It features the wacky Spanish art and early engine screenshots. I always say that you don't have to speak the language to appreciate the artistic and historic merit of scans like these, but I also included a Google Translation to help convey a bit more of what they're saying. As you might expect, they really play up the size and scale - from shipping on multiple (ultimately four rather than two) CDs and featuring a big budget live shoot. It's really hard to recreate the sense of how mind blowing all of this was to gamers in 1994, but this gives you an idea!

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Dominus of Exult is back with another neat Wing Commander collectible find! It's a copy of WC1 localized for Poland. There are several fascinating elements. The blue box denotes the 'deluxe edition' that would normally include both Secret Missions, although the presence of just three disks implies the expansions are not included (unless there are missing disks). Various documentation bits have been translated, including a copy of Claw Marks. Especially cool are the non-graphical blueprints. They're just glossy blue fold-outs with stats! You would have needed them for the copy protection, but omitting the fighter diagrams is an interesting choice.

Found another odd WC in Poland. Slide cover, 3 floppies, even got the blueprints specs translated but no actual blueprints

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StarvingPilot shared this nice catch from a recent watch of Die Hard 2. A techie console from the film appears to be a perfect match to a console aboard the TCS Midway. It's the one that Lance Casey taps on after his missions. There's probably a ton of things like this out there! Companies like Modern Props widely supply futuristic machinery and gizmos to all manner of movies, television shows and game shoots. If anyone spots any other crossovers like this, let us know!