Wing Commander

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Who knew IMDB made little video shorts? They've just posted a clip to celebrate the recent 25th birthday of the Super Mario Brothers movie. It talks a bit about why the film was the way it was and how it was critically panned. Wing Commander gets a funny cameo as the film that's actually ranked one better than Mario Brothers in the all time IMDB ranking of video game-based adaptations. Check it out here.

May 28, 2018, marks the 25th anniversary of 'Super Mario Bros.' The very first live-action adaptation of a video game, ever, was based on the hugely successful series that helped pull the gaming industry out of the 1983 crash. But when it came to its big screen potential, only one man had the vision, producer Roland Joffé.

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There's tons of great Wing Commander fan projects out there, but it's not every day that we get a teaser for a new one.

FekLeyrTarg

has had a hand in quite a few different endeavors over the years, and his latest will be a new short fan film. Projects like these have been proposed a number of times over the years, but we haven't seen very many come to fruition. They have a lot of potential to be pretty cool, and FekLeyr even made a graphic to announce his reveal this Monday, so we're pretty excited to see what's to come!

On June 18 2018, 8 PM Zulu, a new short Fan Film is going to be released.

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Many countries celebrate Father's Day today, and we know a lot of Wing Commander fans have recently become dads out there. My little one just turned 16 months old, and I'm happy to that see she grabs a controller and starts pushing buttons whenever she gets a chance.

The CIC is more of a news site than a blog, but it's also a community hub more than anything, and it feels right to share this personal story with the community. This Father's Day is a tough one for me because my Uncle Jim passed away yesterday.

The two of us used to play NES and Super Nintendo games frequently in the '80s and '90s. The Mario games were big, plus Zelda obviously, puzzle games like Tetris and Doctor Mario and Wing Commander on the SNES, of course. We learned together how to put together PC hardware and how DOS worked. Whenever one of us messed up a sound card jumper setting or couldn't get the drivers right for a game

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DefianceIndustries

has completed the first large scale base for the Secret Ops

Model Upgrade Pack

. This is a cool design, and the tiny little flight deck is a nice touch. In addition to making it much more detailed and gorgeous to look at, he's also significantly amped up the destroyability. There's potential to take out individual components for a future project, which is pretty neat. Enjoy the pictures!

Further updates! Got the first of the major stations imported: the Confed Relay. It plays a larger role than the other stations, especially in WCP where Blair lands on one only to get subsequently captured because Blair and Decker's marines apparently missed the 8-foot tall bug hanging out in the landing bay sipping a Mai Tai - or the obviously alien fighter which launches from the station from one of the two landing bays which are currently full of Tigershark and/or Hercules LC...oh well, it's

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FekLeyrTarg

has released his mini Wing Commander fan film. It takes the form of a recruiting commercial that could be used during the Kilrathi War. There's a nice mix of assets here from a Privateer-style building to Sabre fighters to the hefty Rigakh class cruiser. The clip isn't long, but it's a great example of what kind of potential is out there. We encourage more people to create things like this!

Produced as part of a semester project, I proudly present: "Terran Confederation War Propaganda - A Wing Commander Fan Film" This short film was made to show some of the potential both for "Wing Commander"-based fan films as well as the classic meshes from the "Privateer 3D Archive".

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After seeing the

Spanish WC2

that

Christian Klein

recently acquired, the next natural question was whether DROSoft had also localized the Special Operations. The answer is yes, and it comes in an awesome double pack just like the Spanish

Secret Missions

! Both are in the same box with the game summaries translated side-by-side on the rear of the packaging. The contents within are fairly straightforward, but the combination of the two expansions makes this a very cool collector's item.

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The final countdown starts now for this weekend's big Wing Commander

Flat Universe

tournament. It happens at

16:00 UTC

June 23-24, and interested players should

register

by Friday. There are some very cool multiplayer modes that will be deployed in the new version of the game and even a spectator mode. A few previously

announced

new ships will also be making their debut. Be sure to check it out!

Two days are left before we load our fighters with dangerous arsenals and start to hit each other with guns and missiles. What you already know is the date of the event (23rd/24th of June). What you don't, however, is the hour. We are really sorry for not being able to determine the exact time sooner, but we had to collect enough data from the Enlisted FlatPilots to make the best possible decision for every time zone out there. So let me enlighten you:

Red Flag 2678 starts at 16:00 UTC

Those of you who

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Pilots who were looking to try their luck in this weekend's

Flat Universe

tournament will have to wait a little longer as they work through some lingering issues. The

Maslas

Brothers

have pushed the competition out to next weekend to ensure they have a more stable build for everyone. While you're waiting, check out the

Destiny's Way

in-universe magazine for a glimpse into the backstory behind the game. Or you can stop by the CIC's

Discord server

and see what fellow Wing Commander fans are up to!

Dear WingNuts,

After several days of coding and a lot more of debugging we come to the position to postpone the event for next week (30/06/2018).

Although, we made credible efforts to package FlatUniverse, until this very moment the version suffers from instabilities and bugs that makes it just impossible to deliver on time of the event. We are Really, Really and of course Really sorry for the setback and we

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There's been a lot of talk about the "space force" in the news lately, so we took a look back at the origins of the Terran Confederation Space Force. Where do they come from? Wing Commander's Space Force is a retcon! There's no mention of it in WC1 or 2. It was created for WC3 to explain why the earlier games used a mix of Army and Navy ranks (for instance, General and Admiral.) Here's the design doc that introduced the idea:

In lore, the Space Force seems to be a subset of the Navy. Blair and Maniac attended a Terran Confederation Space Naval Academy and then went on to receive specialized flight training at the Space Forces Flight School. Transfers between the two groups are possible. The Space Navy, then, seems to have developed from the United States Navy rather than some new branch of the military; the Terran Confederation Naval Academy on Hilthros continues many Annapolis traditions and is

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Look at the Korean VHS of the Wing Commander movie! What the heck is that cover art?! This is what happens when the movie's Rapier is the most familiar looking object in the frame. Check out more international variants

here

.

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Christian Klein

has found Spanish translations of most of the Wing Commander games from the first few years of the series, so missing Privateer would be a big omission. But, he's managed to finally locate a copy so he can cruise the Gemini Sector en Español. It includes a full suite of translated documentation too, which is one of the coolest parts. Check it out below!

Woohoo! Another rare Wing Commander version to add to the archive. It's Privateer localized for Spain. I never saw one before. #DOSgaming

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CirclMastr

has previously

set the record

for the fastest winning and losing times for Wing Commander on the SNES. Now he's bested his previous run from Enyo through Hell's Kitchen by six seconds to 5:24. That might not seem like something to strive for to some, but finding the very fastest time from start to an endgame is a highly sought after milestone in the speedrunning community. Once you crunch this down smaller and smaller, shaving off seconds gets harder and harder! Check out the evidence here:

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I found a copy of Privateer 2 on, of all places, Etsy! Here’s why used big box games can be so much fun... I grabbed this copy because I noticed a neat extra: a patch disk! The original owner had written to Origin and been sent a copy of the patch on a diskette. How could I say no to a Privateer 2 floppy?!

Upon receipt I discovered the original owner had saved some other treasures. Here’s the original receipt Fry’s (in January 97!) and the price tag and seal stickers. He must have been a fellow Thrustmaster fan: he filled out his own HOTAS control sheet and left an enticing joystick flyer (I want that simpit badly...). And he included all of his notes on commodity and ship pricing! Reminder: in any other situation, do not sell your handwritten lists of human organ prices on Etsy.

Finally, this coupon for $10 off Wing Commander IV is pretty swank. And useful since I do buy a few copies of Wing

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Found a couple of Wing Commander-adjacent items at eStarland, which is a hidden treasure for retro gamers in Chantilly, Virginia. The ‘Game Guru’ is a Game Genie-style tool for 3DO games that specifically supports WC3!

Super Wing Commander has a wicked debug mode.

DEBUG MENU: Go to the lounge screen. Press and hold the X button, then press B, B, C, C, A, A. You should hear a sound. Release the X button, press and hold the L and R buttons, then press the P button. The debug menu appears with a multitude of options.
Exit System Menu: Return to the lounge.
Change Sound Volumes: Change the volumes of every sound effect.
Change Music Levels: Change the volume of the background music at every point in the game.
Play Movie: Watch all of the game's video clips, including several that were removed from the game but left on the disc. (FILM.MOV and UID.MOV even have a live female actor.)

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A new poll is up, and this time it asks what your guilty pleasures are in Wing Commander. Everyone knows what the fun things are to do in the most popular games, but there are plenty of fringe activities that fans also enjoy. A sampling has been provided for you to vote on, but if we missed anything good, let us know!

The previous poll asked about the best years in franchise history. There was pretty solid support throughout the '90s, but both 1994 and 1996 came out ahead. Wing Commanders 3 and 4 were major heavy hitters in these years, but it helped that they were bolstered by a wide variety of new products.

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Bazooka Joe

has published an interesting Wing Commander themed music video. It's three minutes of fighter scenes stitched together from Wing Commander Academy to the tune of "Know Why." Wing Commander fan videos like this were common a while back, but they've fallen out of vogue in recent years. It's not really clear what the theme or motivation for this clip was, but it's more than just the intro paired to random music. Someone spent some time editing together all the combat, so here it is for your viewing pleasure:

Wing Commander Know why music video

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We've very happy to announce that Wing Commander End Run is finally released! We've come a long way to reach this milestone as this completes the Baen set of Wing Commander novels - all are finally available to purchase digitally. The CIC has been lobbying the publisher for these for some fifteen years at conventions, on social media and through direct communications. We were extremely happy when it was announced in early 2016 that Freedom Flight was coming. Other books in the series followed, but not End Run. This was disappointing since End Run had a bit of a history as a slightly harder to find book in the later '90s. One even sold at auction for $85 during peak demand. So we got to the bottom of this and helped Baen realize their omission. It took a year for them to find a slot in their publishing schedule, but we're finally there! Pick it up at any of the major storefronts or direct

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Stinger

has released a long-awaited update to his

WCDX

patch for Kilrathi Saga. The program makes a number of critical updates to the game's DirectX implementation in order to improve compatibility on modern computers. WC1 has been the primary focus, but the last couple updates provide initial support for Wing Commander 2. This update refines that and improves stability and smoothness of your WC2 game in Windows. Grab the files

here

and give it a try!

General changes:

• Patcher internals have been completely overhauled. Ideally, you won't notice any difference, but you should now get better error messages when things go wrong.
• Due to implementation divergence in the underlying platform, wcdx now handles scaling of the game's graphics internally instead of relying on the operating system.
• Restored mouse cursor positioning for all games.
• Much better multi-monitor support.

WC2:

• Fixed a couple of

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Today a larger than normal percentage of Wing Commander fans are outside lighting off explosives and various rocketry. If you're among them, please stay safe! Might want to keep a Super Soaker handy... or leave the pyrotechnics to the professionals. It's also Origin founder Richard Garriott's 57th birthday - Happy Birthday!

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Great news for Wing Commander music fans!

George Oldziey

has finished processing the Wing Commander jazz and bar music

recorded

earlier this year by his awesome Latin jazz band, and the digital version is now available. If you backed his

Kickstarter

last year, you should have received a message with download links and a password, so log in and check it out! If you didn't back the project but still want to hear an awesome sample, the Victory's famous tune has been released as a teaser here. It's my favorite - I just love it! More goodies are still in the works, which George details below.

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

Greetings all. I'm terribly sorry for the LONG delay, but I just sent links to the digital media versions of the Wing Commander Bar Music recording to those that contributed at $20 and more to phase 1 of volume 2, so check your inboxes. The