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Greetings WingNuts,Midway represents another decade forward in our exploration of war movies that influenced Wing Commander and while several of us remembered it fondly from our youths what we found was that it was very, very slow. The first hour plus is a lot of Dambusters-style maneuvering to get us to Midway and it just isn't something you'd see in a movie today. And then the battles themselves are nowhere near as spectacular, a mix of colorized stock footage and not-quite-believable airplane props. We haven't gotten to Tora! Tora! Tora! yet but I'm betting it's going to hold up better. I also want to especially thank Dundradal, who showed up for the night to offer his experience as a professional Pacific War historian despite being a new father! Get some sleep, pilot.

While several interviews and other production material notes that Midway was used as reference for the Wing Commander movie's VFX

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This is a reminder that we have another fun #Wingnut movie night planned on Discord this evening! The ongoing theme will be movies that inspired Wing Commander in some way. Tonight's film is Star Wars (1977), a movie that needs no introduction. You can find details on that as well as how to watch along with us in the announcement post here. Note that we are watching the "de-specialized" version of the movie which is available for download online. The movie will start about 7 PM PST/10 PM EST but feel free to drop by and hang any time!

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You know, everybody always complains about the hairless Kilrathi in the Wing Commander movie...

... but nobody ever talks about this guy from Walking Wounded, a Kilrathi that clearly has a receding hairline!

According to the episode's script he is the WEAPONS OFFICER of the Kamekh-class corvette Nir'Runinh. And here's something you might not have noticed in a regular watch: he's also the leading kil in the boarding party that tries to capture the Pleiku. He's the one that stops at the window and is then sucked out into space by the explosion!

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We've created a new timeline that shows you almost day-by-day (sometimes hour-by-hour!) what happened in Wing Commander IV! Since 2025 and 2673 have the same 'layout' of a year this means we can track Wing Commander IV 'as it happens' starting at the end of July. You can study the new timeline in Spreadsheet form here or read below for notes about how it was created and why it is different from previous attempts.

A New Approach

The issue determining a coherent day-by-day timeline for Wing Commander IV has always been the need to fit the events of the story into two weeks. This requirement derives from Paladin's line in the introduction: "...The Assembly looks forward to the results of your investigation. We shall decide a course of action within a fortnight…" The issue is that when the obvious time references in the novel are collected and the other references in the game are pinned together that

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This month's analysis of the influence held by key figures in the core systems has arrived, courtesy of Conrad Sterling of Vox Galactica.
His latest survey of system populations suggests the following five powers enjoy the largest sphere of influence:
Rank 1: Edmund Mahon – 1,403 systems
Rank 2: Aisling Duval – 1,383 systems
Rank 3: Arissa Lavigny-Duval - 1,269 systems
Rank 4: Yuri Grom - 995 systems
Rank 5: Li Yong-Rui - 724 systems
Vox Galactica will provide another update on the state of the powers next month.

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In yesterday's update about connections between Wing Commander and Star Wars, we mentioned that the Hellcat takeoff scene from the Wing Commander IV intro had been the last one created. It turns out that that story hasn't been widely told… and it answers a small mystery the fandom has wondered about for almost thirty years!

Here's the story: As Wing Commander IV was preparing for launch, Chris Roberts wasn't happy with the game's introduction. He felt that the game's cinematic introduction wasn't doing enough to capture the player. A long standing philosophy at Origin was that the most effort (and by implication money) should be spent on the opening of a given game because that more than anything was what could guarantee a title would capture the player's attention. And Wing Commander IV had a spectacular intro… although it was one already compromised by the film shoot running out of time for the

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The Wing Commander movie club has faced the enemy at Midway and returned (relatively) unscathed. Now we're going to make the jump to hyperspace to watch a movie that was absolutely foundational for pretty much every aspect of Wing Commander: the original 1977 Star Wars (aka A New Hope). And we're going to watch the original version in order to understand exactly what Chris Roberts grew up wanting to turn into a game! You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

We probably don't have to expend too many pixels explaining what Star Wars is. George Lucas' unexpected masterpiece combined the pulpy sci-fi serials of the 1930s with the most modern filmmaking technologies available. The result has become both modern mythology and a major basis for how and why movies are made.

We also probably don't have to spend much time pointing out the Wing Commander connections: from the very start of the

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We often remember Wing Commander Prophecy and Secret Ops as being almost the same game; we tend to think of Secret Ops as almost an expansion, reusing Prophecy's assets almost exclusively. But one place Secret Ops didn't settle for the status quo was guns: it replaced five of the player guns with new, experimental options and it completely redid the VFX for four of the alien bolts!

Gun bolts fly by so quickly and after Wing Commander Academy or so there are so many to keep track of in your head... so we thought we'd show off the jump from WCP to WCSO AND provide an easy reference chart for anyone who wants to learn their lasers by sight. Enjoy!

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Last week we reported on the new Wing Commander II and Wing Commander Academy albums from Xeen Music. The albums are absolutely wonderful, including newly uncovered versions of tracks that no one has heard in almost 35 years! We've noticed some confusion about the different albums and versions currently available, so we've put together a quick cheat sheet and a master index to purchase or stream each version where available. Here's a quick cheat sheet:

Wing One - Music from Wing Commander I (27 tracks): This is The Fatman's 2016 release of the Wing Commander I music recorded from an authentic MT-32. This is NOT the release put together by Xeen Music.

Wing Commander I - Complete Original Soundtrack - MT-32 Archival Edition (55 tracks): This is the 2022 Xeen Music release of the Wing Commander I score. It is offered by The Fatman directly on some services. Every release listed below has the same music.

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Greetings WingNuts,

The Wing Commander movie club is ready to turn in our collective multipass! We watched The Fifth Element last week and it's just as strange and beautiful an experience as many of us remember from our youths. It represents such a fascinating moment in our culture when such a strange, not-like-anything-else film could get a blockbuster budget and a huge theatrical release. Whether you're interested in discussing deeper meanings or if you just want a completely unique audiovisual experience it's one heck of a film.

We loved the movie but there aren't many Wing Commander connections to report! We talked all about the cinematography of Thierry Arbogast and his team in the intro post and it was certainly on full display here. There's no question that his incredible talents are what made this movie look so incredible… and they're a significant reason why Wing Commander remains so

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This is a reminder that we have another fun #Wingnut movie night planned on Discord this evening! The ongoing theme will be movies that inspired Wing Commander in some way. Tonight's film is Midway (1976), a movie with both creative and historical ties to Wing Commander. You can find details on that as well as how to watch along with us in the announcement post here. The movie will start about 7 PM PST/10 PM EST (with a bit of pre-show starting 30 minutes earlier), but feel free to drop by and hang any time!

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Well, everyone knows Babylon 5 was the last of the Babylon stations. What this update presupposes is... maybe it wasn't. The Confederation starbase seen here should be pretty familiar: it's Blackmane Base, which appears in Wing Commander III. Depending on your performance in the game, you will either fight to resupply or to evacuate the base relatively early in the game. Canonically, the latter missions are flown and the base is disassembled.

What may surprise you is that there's a nerdy reference hidden deep in the bowels of the game: internally, the station is stored as BAB6… for Babylon 6, a clear nod to the television series that surely inspired its design:

And while the mesh is named BAB6 in the PC version of Wing Commander III the 3DO release makes the reference even more clear by storing the station's textures as BABYLON6.TXM (accessible via the game's debug mode):

In fact, the 3DO release even

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Aegis has confirmed that HIP 22460 shows zero sign of Thargoid activity following a blockade organised by AXI and XSF forces.
It is theorised that the Thargoids have maintained a varying presence in the HIP 22460 system since at least 3303, due to reports recovered from the now-abandoned Fort Asch laboratory. After the Proteus Wave weapon in the system in 3308, Thargoids aggressively swarmed the system until recently.
But AX forces sought to change this over the past few weeks, and the signal from Aegis' military advisor Aden Tanner indicates that the system is now fully under human control. Tanner himself provided a message of thanks:
"The impeccable efforts of AXI, XSF and allied AX pilots have finally brought peace to one more system. I only wish I was young enough to join these heroes out on the front lines. These pilots have provided a great service to humanity, and all here at Aegis

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Here's a short but fascinating followup to our article on the partnership between Origin and Intel: st3lt3k added that an Internet Archive contributor named Star Raider has uploaded beautiful scans of all five of the 1994 CES posters! Origin wasn't promoting Wing Commander at the time but these is artwork worth studying nonetheless...

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Welcome to 2025, where retro gaming is "hip". And when something becomes popular it can start to generate a lot of useless, hastily assembled money-grabbing crap. Case in point is this 2025 "Retro Games Classic Gaming Calendar" from Red Rock Publishing:

The ultimate gaming calendar for all gamers, whether young or old! Here, the most legendary games of all time are brought back to life, whether for PC, Amiga, SEGA, PlayStation, XBOX, or other platforms - all through the new year!

Classics like WarCraft, Doom 3D, Monkey Island, Pacman, StarCraft, Super Mario, Quake, Diablo or Dune: In this calendar, the unforgettable giants of gaming history will accompany you throughout the new year, 365 days in a row.

Including a fold-out mega poster, all public and religious holidays as well as plenty of space to add your own notes, birthdays, etc. Format: Large Wall Dimensions: 59cm x 29.5cm

Sounds great, except…

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The Wing Commander movie club watched The Fifth Element on Friday and it certainly wasn't Boron! (everyone laugh) Next up, we're going back to World War II… but in the Pacific this time! We're going to be watching the 1976 film Midway and you can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

Midway is a star-studded, big budget war movie about the 1942 Battle of Midway, a naval engagement that changed the direction of World War 2 in the Pacific and which enshrined the aircraft carrier as the centerpiece of naval doctrine. Midway attempts to tell the story of the battle, a challenging thing for a conflict where the two sides rarely encountered each other.

Wing Commander's Kilrathi War has always been patterned after World War II in the Pacific so it's not a surprise that there are some clear connections to look out for! We'll talk about some connections to the real battle shortly, but first the 1976

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Sad news today: French voice actor Benoît Allemane passed away on Sunday. To say that M. Alleman was prolific would be an understatement; he performed the French voices for characters from Doctor Claw to Baloo and in the process dubbed countless film and genre roles over the years. He was likely best known as the official French voice of actor Morgan Freeman, who paid tribute to him on Instagram.

You can find an obituary here. He is best known to Wing Commander fans, however, as the French voice of Captain William Eisen in localized releases of Wing Commander III and IV. Here's a briefing from Wing Commander IV showing his dub work in action:

Our thoughts are with M. Allemane's family, friends and fans.

Thank you to Sergorn for reporting this news.

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A few weeks ago, we reported the welcome surprise that The Fatman had released the "Just the FAT" edition of the Wing Commander II soundtrack… and we mentioned that a complete release was on the way from Xeen Music! And now, that release is here!

• Wing Commander II Soundtrack
• Wing Commander Academy Soundtrack

These are, in a word, incredible. Andrew Harrington of Xeen Music has spent months researching and restoring the music of Wing Commander II and Academy and has produced an incredible collection with everything you know… and whole a lot you don't! He has reached out to the original composers, tracked down cut music and music that was simplified to save disk space… and he's collected it all alongside comprehensive notes about what you're listening to. And it's all properly licensed through Electronic Arts, this is an official release. This is surely the isometal standard for video game music releases!

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Greetings WingNuts,

We are back from our long sea tour! After two weeks, the Wing Commander movie club has watched the director's cut of Das Boot. Most in attendance had seen at least the theatrical version before so we had a good idea what we were getting into… but it was certainly a tough watch! Unlike some of the war films we've watched in this series, Das Boot's impact has not diminished over the years. It's a hard edged story that portrays the reality of warfare: that most of the people fighting aren't there supporting an ideology but because society offers them no other choice. It's not an easy watch but it's a valuable one.

Of course there were a lot of Wing Commander connections to discuss given the film's importance in inspiring the Wing Commander film's look, feel, specific scenes and even… well, its captain. AD provided this excerpt from Chris Roberts' original Wing Commander film pitch

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This is a reminder that we have another fun #Wingnut movie night planned on Discord this evening! The ongoing theme will be movies that inspired Wing Commander in some way. Tonight's film is a fun one: The Fifth Element, a movie that shares a cinematographer with Wing Commander! You can find details on that as well as how to watch along with us in the announcement post here. The movie will start about 7 PM PST/10 PM EST, but feel free to drop by and hang any time!