Wing Commander

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AD has been doing a lot of digging into magazine archives lately, and he's found a lot of Prophecy love in the Russian mag Game.EXE. To kick things off, the December 1997 issue had a big WCP advertisement and four page review spread. It earned a 91% score and "Hall of Choice" award by the editors. They followed up in a big way in February 1998. In this issue Prophecy received a big "space simulator of the year" title, they held a contest and also interviewed producer Rod Nakamoto. As I've said before, I just like admiring the interesting and colorful vintage layouts, but if you don't speak Russian, there are still ways to interpret what's been written. A smartphone app with a camera feature such as Google Translate does a pretty good job of converting the text in real time to your preferred language.

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DocteurJ has done lots of Wing Commander videos for Oldies Games TV, but this one's a little different. Rather than streaming a playthrough, this one is an analysis of the romantic relationships in Wing Commander 3. He walks through what happens if you choose Flint, Rachel or neither. J's videos are always in French (using ODVS' high quality French WC3 package in this case), and it's interesting to see how they managed the dub of such a sensitive scene into another language. I couldn't get the built in YouTube universal translator to work, but the smartphone version of Google Translate worked pretty well.

Alors que le colonel apprend la mort d'Angel, Rachel et Flint osent désormais draguer notre cher

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Super Wing Commander has cutscenes showing the Tiger's Claw jumping between (most) systems. There are a couple special versions: this is the unique 'fleet' one that starts SWC's version of The Secret Missions. But do you notice anything funny about it?

The ships that enter the jump point (first picture) are the Claw plus an Exeter destroyer, a Dilligent transport and four Venture corvettes. But out the other end comes... the carrier, Diligent, Exeter, six Hornets and four Raptors. What happened in there?!?!

Here's a clip with all the 'regular' jumps the game actually plays together. Enyo doesn't have one since it's the start, Dakota, Border Zone and Tartarus are skipped in favor of special midgames and Hubble's Star just doesn't play a jump for some reason.

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Last week we shared a cool Australian promotional shirt for Wing Commander 4, and now LOAF's found one from Singapore. The design is markedly different with the Black Lance symbol over the WC4 logo on the front. Classic Blair, Tolwyn and Seether art is featured on the back side on a lightly stone washed background. Very nice!

Scored another great find on southeast Asian shirt sorting Instagram

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AD found a fun trove of Wing Commander goodness in the May 1996 issue of Computer and Video Games magazine. It's naturally a treat to find a WC article in any publication, but this one has two - plus a bonus! Wing Commander 4 initially debuted on the PC on February 12, 1996 while Wing Commander 3 made its way to the Playstation on March 27. Due to publication and newsstand schedules, that put both in back-to-back review slots in this issue. There's lots of lovely screenshots to admire here. Interestingly enough, they actually gave the WC3 PSX port a higher score than WC4, which is pretty surprising. Nevertheless, there's a final tease on the upcoming release list. Wing Commander 4 is showing as an in-development title for the 3DO. While this was briefly the case, the game was not to be!

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Klavs is kicking off the new year with a new model for Wing Commander fans. He's posted this downloadable Centurion design based on popular demand. It's a fan favorite year after year. This one's not totally finished, and the underside is a bit bare, but it's complete enough for many purposes. If this is just what you needed for your next 3D printing project or fan mod, grab the file at Sketchfab here!

Hi everyone, I've had some requests for the Centurion model lately. I've not had the time to finish it, but here she is in her current state. Have fun!

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It's been a big weekend for annual front page posts, and today we've got another! This formally kicks off our "Fan Project of the Year" contest for 2021. In further recognition of the great things Wingnuts did all year long, we're recognizing a sampling of them to win our annual award. Folks sent nominations in during December, and we've added a couple of our favorites to the mix to produce the slate below. Read up and cast your vote! Good luck to the nominees!

• AI/Neural Net Enhanced Wing Commander Videos - ODVS expanded on his award-winning enhanced WC videos by adding new language options for WC3, dabbling in 4K, experimenting with WC2/P2 and pushing image quality even further.
• Bonkus Maximus' Streams - Bonk has been publishing Wing Commander livestreams all year long. He's covered every main game in the series, plus spinoffs like Academy. In the words of his nominator, his streams are "both

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Happy New Year everyone! Our annual January 1 poll is live, so we're giving fans a chance to weigh in on 2022. I know it's hard to be optimistic about things given the state of the world, but I'm very confident Wingnuts will do their best to make the most of the year ahead!

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The last poll asked what your favorite iteration of James "Paladin" Taggart was. He comes to us in many forms, but people tend to like him in his earlier game takes: WC3, WC1 and WC2 respectively.

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Here we are again - another year down. It was yet another very rough year in many ways, but today we won't focus on that. Month after month, Wingnuts made the best of difficult circumstances to build another solid year in Wing Commander.

It wasn't a round number itself, but 2021 marked the 30th anniversary of Wing Commander 2 and the 25th birthday for quite a few 1996 releases: Wing Commander 4, the Customizable Card Game, Academy television show and Privateer 2, to name a few. To recognize the P2 milestone, Jayden Morris remade the Anhur landing scene, which was totally unexpected. There was also this intro audio remaster - P2 got a lot of love this year!

Less surprising perhaps was that it was a big year for streaming and virtual collaboration. Bonkus_Maximum had some fun WC livestreams, and the Gemini Sector RPG had tons of wonderful play sessions. These two even had a crossover livestream/RPG

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Dominus of Exult spotted another uncommon Wing Commander collectible, and he pinged LOAF for the scoop on its origin. "I believe it’s an Australian retail promo sent to stores to promote the release." We don't see this shirt very often, but it's a definite treat each time! And congrats to Dominus on the find - it's good to see you'll be entering 2022 in style!

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Today's video is a Spanish language retrospective of Wing Commander Armada. These days lots of people are streaming the original core Wing Commander games, but Armada content is comparatively rare - non-English versions even more so! I love Armada so much, so I watch every video people want to make about the game, but these unique perspectives are especially fascinating. Keep in mind that YouTube has automatic translation, so you can get captions in your language. If that sounds slightly tedious, just imagine the experience of these fans who had to play the game in a non-native language. From what I gather, I don't actually even think they were huge fans of the game (calling it an "interesting experiment"), but they put together a nice overview nonetheless! You can find more of their videos at Próximo Nivel 2.0.

Próximo Nivel os habla de Wing Commander: Armada, un juego de estrategia aparecido

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Interesting discovery while pawing through Privateer's source models: there are actually FOUR Steltek fighters in the derelict! Two more are attached to the ring and one is floating in the distance. They're the same model as the one you salvage the Steltek gun from but without the crash damage. Not much detailing but you can see the parts that would glow green when active!

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We've had a lot of casual Wing Commander fans dropping in this past week to ask about how to buy Wing Commander and get it running on modern systems. There are a number of ways, but the easiest and most popular is to go with GOG.com. And the timing couldn't be more perfect - they have the entire series discounted as part of the Winter Sale. That means WC1/2 and their four expansions are just $1.49. The entire DOS/Windows series is under $12! If you've got some time off during the holidays here, now's the perfect time to catch up with a replay of your favorite WC games!

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If you're like me and Christmas came and went like a blur, Juris Perkons has a little treat to keep that holiday feeling going a little while longer. He's created a space sim called Rogue Xmas 3D. The program is just a tech demo to practice his coding skills, but it's surprisingly satisfying to watch snowmen and piles of packages explode under your laser cannons. Check out the video below and download it here.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!! I have a Christmas Present for You! Please, download, play, enjoy - ROGUE XMAS 3D

Do NOT take it too seriously, just have fun!

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Rear Admiral Tarsus and the Gemini Sector RPG crew have a special mission tonight! "The team must face their most challenging challenge yet." A fancy Christmas-themed briefing has been created which launches at 6 pm Pacific / 9 pm Eastern US Time. Get in the holiday spirit and visit their Discord server to join the fun!

There's a mission I'll be hosting on the gemini sector Christmas eve (24th) from 9:00 pm to 12:00 am EST.The team (including you) will be facing a dangerous new foe in a challenge of minds, hearts, souls and eyebrows.

If you're reading this before the new briefing has gone live, check out where the story left off here:

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Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone out there! It's another challenging holiday season for most folks around the world, but we hope you're making the most of it and staying safe. EmuMusicFan put together this festive Kilrathi for you to enjoy, so we're not without a fun image for the news this year. We'd also like to thank Will for reminding us to put the Christmas lights up a couple weeks back. They really put me in a wintery mood, and if you'd like to share in the Christmas spirit, drop by #Wingnut on Discord to hang out too!

We're also starting to see reports of people getting their Wing Commander-themed gifts in the wild. Here's Pedro and his brand new 3DO. He can finally play the awesome WC3 port!

Finally able to use my Christmas present, party like it’s 1995

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Here's an early Christmas present for Wingnuts with high res monitors! In response to popular demand, Mac has rerendered his recent End Run wallpaper in dazzling 4K. This version is also uncompressed and the detail is just dazzling. Everything from Klavs' Dralthi fighters to the explosions to the lines on the foreground capship are super crisp. You can even clearly make our the second escort carrier in the distance. Enjoy!

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Here's a couple of Kilrathi sketches to brighten your day. EmuMusicFan has created B'shras nar Caxki as a a dishonored and brooding noble. On the other hand, Uza nar Ki'ra is an intellectual - complete with small round glasses. The coloration really does wonders to complete the look here!

B'shras nar Caxki is the Baron of Caxki from Star*Soldier. For lack of more specific background, I have added some myself: Because of their early out in the Civil War, nar Caxki Clan's status is now very low. Baron B'shras always feels boring in the meetings now.

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Swizzley has posted a vintage video review for Wing Commander 3. This might not sound like a big deal, but in February 1995 this would have been on the bleeding edge of multimedia technology. A full ten years before YouTube first came online, something like this was a very rare treat. Video downloads were painful on dialup, so these were distributed on disc with Interactive Entertainment Magazine. They were one of the first to include CD-ROMs with material like this, so we got some really cool features such as this video review of WC4, an early '90s Richard Garriott interview and neat Privateer 2 / WC4 high tech previews. Today we're used to carefully timed embargoes lifting days before a global launch, but this would have represented a lightning fast turnaround at the time (recorded in December to hit newstands in January). The humor doesn't always age well, but it's still a fascinating time

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Privateer 2 developer Paul Hughes has rescued another prototype box cover from the digital scrap heap. It's got some elements that are familiar from the "City of Lights" art, including the Icarus, Heretic and Clive Owen, but this version also has a really cool Tri-System map layer. The locations are key planets from throughout local space. You can see how a lot of this stuck around for the final box art (in North America).

Trawling through some disks last night, I came across this alternate Privateer 2 (UK) cover, complete with Clive Owen! I kinda like it!