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The Templin Institute is a YouTube presentation with a neat gimmick: they offer documentaries about different fictional realities! This week they've premiered a new show called 'Audio Log' that presents the history of a fictional institution with a dramatic audio recording. And for the pilot episode they've chosen to talk about Wing Commander's Terran Confederation! It's a neat ten-minute look at Wing Commander's fictional history which you can find here.
Jan
ZOmegaZ continues to make expeditious progress on his Wing Commander challenge coin Kickstarter campaign. The funding phase closed just over a month ago, and he's already gotten the manufacturer to fabricate his designs. So far, it seems like this is moving along just like clockwork - and the coins look cool too! Contributors to the project could start seeing packages arrive soon!
I think they all look fabulous. Now the shipping begins! Again, some of you don't seem to have received a survey link. I can't resend it for some reason, but don't stress, we'll get it worked out.
May
…This has been a really good year for space toilets. AD managed to screen cap some really good shots of the toilets in the Wing Commander Movie a couple months back, and now LOAF has discovered the Wing Commander Academy equivalent. Or rather, since this is Damon Karnes' holding cell from the episode The Last One Left, these are borderline space holes-in-the-ground. He recently got ahold of a concept art piece which shows a pair of basins at the foot of their cell beds. From this angle, their purpose seems fairly obvious. They're actually pictured in the episode itself, but with all the other action going on, nobody has ever called these out as far as we can tell. Now you know!
This is a Wing Commander Academy concept painting. These were done in the US as reference for animators in Japan and Korea painting the production backgrounds. It's from The Last One Left and reveals the pirate prison has
Feb
Bathrooms are treated really weird in sci-fi. Plenty of shows, movies and games just pretend they don't exist at all. Sometimes you might get a sink and mirror aboard a space ship, but almost never a toilet. AD recently noticed that Wing Commander once again broke new ground by including one aboard the Tiger's Claw. Some viewers may have been distracted from the background, since it's in the middle of the Rosie/Maniac romance scene, but there it is! There's even a toilet paper holder with a Confed logo on it, which is amazing. Wouldn't that have made for an amazing collectible/merchandising?
Since everyone loves toilets in space, here's one from the Wing Commander movie. In shot 2 you can spot a TP holder behind Holder's head. Shot 3 shows some junk in Maniac's medicine cabinet. The last is the original opening to Maniac and Rosie's bed scene...
Oct
…
As the Through the Moongate, Part 2 Kickstarter continues to truck along, Andrea Contato has shared the first preview of the exclusive Wing Commander Bookmark that will be given to certain tier backers for the project. This design is being put together by Denis Loubet, the senior Origin artist responsible for art direction on the first few Wing Commanders. Initial elements highlight some of the arrowhead iconography from the WC1 logo as well as a dual Confed/Kilrathi headshots and perhaps even a Dralthi, which would be pretty awesome. The overall campaign is up to around €36,500. The bookmark giveaway will be rather limited, so hopefully everyone who wants one can get their pledge in within the next 10 days!
We are working non-stop to prepare the conclusion of this great project we started two years ago and pieces are already starting to come together. To that end, Denis Loubet has sent us a
Mar
…
The somewhat amorphous length of a generation is, give or take, about twenty-five years. This means that as of today, the Wing Commander movie is a generation old… and, it follows, so are those of us that once eagerly anticipated its coming. I've written extensively about whether or not it was good (it was not) and what it means to me (I love it dearly) and I don't need to relitigate any of that today. In fact, the war movie cliches about old soldiers are more accurate than ever: the guns have stopped, we're the old men, all quiet on the western front and alike. The bickerings and debates and once-so-important battles of our youth have passed us by as gracefully as such things ever do. No one in 2024 could conceive, for instance, of caring about the Tiger Claw's missing possessive or what the Ralari /really/ looks like or even particularly to complain about Freddie Prinze Jr.'s casting.
If anything,
Sep
…Video game artist
Mike Winterbauerhas shown off the first images of his latest project, a Wing Commander Art Portfolio! Mr. Winterbauer was the person commissioned in 1992 to hand paint the
box art for the SNES versionof Wing Commander, among many other cool contemporary pieces. These were showcased last year in a book launched via a
successfulKickstarter campaign. Next month he plans to launch a followup that specifically focuses on the process of creating his well known WC design. Along the way, there will be opportunities to have your name included in the book as well as pick up a very slick metal reproduction. Stay tuned for more info as the campaign approaches!
Hello backers of Classic Game Covers! I hope you all are doing great.Be sure to look for my up coming Kickstarter campaign call Wing Commander Art. It will feature a beautiful hard cover portfolio art book showcasing the art
Oct
…We've got good news to report today for Wing Commander Arena fans! Back in August, people started to notice that the Xbox achievement records for certain games were no longer showing properly. This was distressing to us, since Arena was one of the games that appeared to be suffering from this predicament. Players' total point score seemed unaffected, and the achievements still appeared to show up at third party websites that had access to the source data, so we were hoping that this was just some kind of technical glitch. Additionally, other classic Xbox Live Aracade games like EA's Boom Boom Rocket were still appearing normally. Fortunately, we noticed this week that the game was one again showing up properly in Xbox gamertag profiles. You can now see all 12 Wing Commander achievements on your console, the web or mobile app. Check out how your score stacks up here (may need to log in to an
Feb
…This is a crazy story! Everyone's favorite officially licensed top-down Xbox 360 Wing Commander shooter was released back in July 2007. In the original
press releaseannouncing its launch, EA confirmed that Wing Commander
Arenawas coming out in all markets where Xbox Live Arcade existed - except Japan. Finally, it's now available for
¥ 1,188or about $11.
cached
In confirming this unusual turn of events, Music_Guru was able to find a
copy of the page from several weeks ago that still shows just the theme packs for sale. Interestingly, the Confed and Kilrathi Xbox
dashboard themeswere released in Japan back in 2007, and websites even
reviewed them separatelyat the time. Arena is also listed in various '
new release' listings with a January 24, 2019 debut called out. If you're in Japan and still have your 360 hooked up, we'd love to hear about your experience. Are there any localization tweaks made
Jun
…There has been a fair amount of chat about the deadline to buy Wing Commander Arena with many fans confused about what the game is and how to play it. Many have also encountered a bug in which their Xbox does not allow them to buy the game. We hope to help by answering these questions and others with this quick FAQ.
What is Wing Commander Arena?
Wing Commander Arena is a spinoff game set in the Wing Commander universe. It was developed for the Xbox 360 and released on Xbox Live Arcade on July 25, 2007. It was produced by Electronic Arts and developed by the now-defunct Gaia Industries studio. Xbox Live Arcade titles were small and often experimental budget games; they were released digitally for a low price point. Players should be aware that Arena is not a traditional Wing Commander game with a first person cockpit view and an interactive story. It is a top-down shooter with a heavy focus on frenzied
Jun
…We've been reporting for a while now that Wing Commander Arena's days are numbered in the Microsoft XBox Live Marketplace. The game has had an incredible 17 year run, but all Xbox 360 games that aren't forward-compatible with the Xbox One/Series systems will be delisted from the company's digital storefront on July 29, 2024. The good news is that owners will be able to continue to play online for the foreseeable future, so we've been strongly recommending people buy the game while they have the chance. If you have yet to secure your own copy, there's no time like the present. Microsoft is in the process of heavily discounting a variety of the affected games, which includes a whopping 90% reduction for Arena. It's now only $0.99! You can buy it on the web, but there have been mixed reports of the store hanging and timing out. Try a different browser or return later if you have an issue. See you
Apr
…It's been another productive day for George Oldziey's campaign to make a new live recording of Wing Commander music. We're less than five days in, and the project has hit $13,500. That's 5/6th of the target amount! During the planning phase, it wasn't clear exactly how difficult it would be to reach $16,000, so stretch goals were a secondary consideration. With the continued productive nature of the campaign, however, some of those additional opportunities for the project are coming into focus and will be firmed up very soon.
Ahead of that, I thought it would be nice to walk through some of the different tiers and highlight what is available. I know this information is readily available inside of the Kickstarter interface, but I also know how Exhausted Millennial Brain works. Reposting the details here removes one layer of mental friction so you can more easily see if something appeals to you.
Apr
…
We were originally planning to mix up the news a bit to start the week off, but George Oldziey’s campaign is off to such a roaring start that it’s become newsworthy again! In barely over a day since going live, the campaign to create a new live album of Wing Commander music has hit the 50% funding mark! This means more than $8000 of the $16,000 target has been achieved. When combined with Matt Hiltner’s previously mentioned large donation, we are very much well on the way to making this a reality! Things are going so well that George is already starting to firm up plans for some of the hypothetical stretch goals that have been on his mind. No one expected to be talking about that so soon, but it’s a wonderful situation to be in. All of this is made possible by the ongoing support from so many dedicated Wing Commander fans. This is just the beginning; so we’re very anxious to see where
Dec
The ever-creative Tarsus has created another fun Wing Commander distraction to bring you some holiday cheer. With resources from the new Head Museum, he's created an automatic advent calendar with your favorite original WC characters as the daily reveal. It's a simple concept, but I can't wait to see who's queued up for tomorrow! Check it out for yourself here.
I've taken the liberty of making an advent calendar out of your heads.
Apr
…AD came along an interesting Wing Commander sale at Movies Anywhere. As we reported a number of years ago, Movies Anywhere is a unifying service that allows your digital purchase from one storefront to appear in your library at many others. This includes Apple/iTunes, Amazon, Microsoft/Xbox, Google/YouTube and Vudu. Today's sale offers up free access to one of ten films if you buy one of a corresponding movie, including Wing Commander. Interestingly enough, WC is included in the Disney/Fox category, although the distribution rights have been a bit murky since reverting to Chris Roberts a few years back. Wing Commander briefly disappeared from storefronts and the disc copies went out of print, but it's since become widely available in digital format again for about $10.
As we continue into year two of the coronavirus pandemic, a small number of virtual conveniences have cropped up that I hope are
Jun
There's good news on the streaming front! Last week we reported that a countdown ticker had appeared next to the Wing Commander Academy episodes on the Peacock streaming service. The Peacock support account suggested that this meant the show was moving from a free to a paid tier. However, Zeether noticed that the countdown has vanished and the show appears as it originally did. While it's possible the CIC's considerable clout and influence swayed some executives at NBCUniversal, it's far more likely that this was some kind of mistake or glitch. Note the two comparison shots below of the Exosquad lineup. Random episodes were briefly showing the clock icon, although they've since all gone back to normal. While it's great that everyone will continue to have access for the foreseeable future, it's also still not a bad idea to grab the show on DVD for a more permanent copy.
Jul
It appears that the pending removal of Wing Commander Academy wan't a false alarm. The show is no longer listed for streaming on the Peacock service. With the removal of great shows from a number of platforms and new paywalling/gatekeeping happening all over, it feels like the hits just keep coming. Fortunately you can still pick up the DVD for about $11. And never fear, the Wing Commander CIC remains free and there's no limit the number of forum posts you can view in a day. You can also always join us in Discord #Wingnut!
A peek back at better days:
Jun
The news continues in the world of Wing Commander streaming. Zeether noticed that the Academy television show has a little clock icon next to it on the Peacock service. After some further investigation, it seems that this means the show will be moving from the free to the paid version of Peacock in July. Note that Comcast Xfinity Flex and X1 customers can get the $5/month Peacock Premium plan for free, so that's one way to continue getting your Wing Commander fix. Alternately, the series is available on DVD for $16.49 currently. Owning the DVD is great, but the streaming version has better quality audio.
Oct
…The WC3 footage is great, but the enhanced WC4 footage is absolutely exquisite. This is the game where we have some of the best source material to start with, and it's also super easy to upgrade your copy of the game to play these high res clips. Just drop the files into the video folder of the DVD version of the game. GOG carries the DVD version by default, so it's cheap and readily available. Today's release is the fifth and "definitive" launch. It incorporates all of ODVS' extensive learnings and techniques and even includes some fixes for broken/omitted clips on the DVD. It truly is the definitive way to play the original (at least until the WC4 Fan Remake is finished!).
- Wing Commander 4: version 5.0, English, Pack 1 (3.3 gig zip)
- Wing Commander 4: version 5.0, English, Pack 2 (3.2 gig zip)
- Wing Commander 4: version 5.0, German, Pack 1 (3.2 gig zip)
- Wing Commander 4: version 5.0, German, Pack 2
Oct
We have a small treat for you today: a significantly higher quality version of the Wing Commander IV 'making of' featurette that was released on German magazine cover discs! It's also slightly longer, with an additional minute of behind-the-screens footage. Check it out!
