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Back in 2021, a wingnut named Rehsin did some incredible work that we covered here including the Wing Commander I Christmas Edition and the Wing Commander I Face Mod. There's egg on our face today because we've realized we never reported on a third project updated just after those: a very nice mission editor for Wing Commander I and Wing Commander II!

I was working on a Wing Commander II-related project and happened across the ModDB page for Wing Commander Editor 1.2 and was shocked to find a fascinating little piece of software! It lets you change (and for my use examine) the campaign files from Wing Commander I and II and all four mission disks. It quickly became part of my daily WC toolkit… and then I realized we'd never posted it here!

We've added a copy to our archive here (2 megs). Resin has a page of their Wing Commander work here (which includes some other neat stuff including a comic and a

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The Wing Commander movie club can report that Ten Thousand Bedrooms was... not spectacular. In spite of it being a pretty bland movie we did make a pretty surprising Wing Commander discovery! But you'll have to wait until Friday to learn about that. This week we're going back to our roots and watching a movie that pretty much anyone reading this will love: Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982). You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

Star Trek II is obviously a massively important movie that clearly helped shape countless IPs including Wing Commander. But what's the specific connection? This one is a bit of a followup to our look at THX-1138: the 'other' jokey credit for a Mandarin pilot in Special Operations 2 is Mandarin #16309... which is a reference to the USS Reliant's transponder code!

We don't have a gender bending mystery here but we do have a bit more audio! Mandarin #16309,

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If you're a fan of Wing Commander composer George "The Fat Man" Sanger or mid-1990s edutainment then you may be interested to learn that he's offering the soundtrack to Pajama Sam 3 on vinyl through his Bandcamp page! These Humongous games are in the middle of a cultural renaissance right now so we'll bet it's going to be a big success. Which leads to the next question: could he put out any of his spectacular Wing Commander soundtracks physically? The fact that his team seems to have registered the 'fatmanvinyl.com' domain leaves us at least hopeful. Here's their initial announcement:

I am so excited to announce we are finally pressing George's delicious so-Fat-they're-Humongous tunes to licorice pizza. He and I both believe every turntable is born to play jazz, so we're gonna make that happen for you.

This is an EXTREMELY LIMITED EDITION (150 units total in this pressing) 12" LP featuring a selection

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This is a reminder that we have another fun #Wingnut event happening on Discord this morning! Join us at noon EST/9 AM PST for a fun filled morning of television... that all connect to Wing Commander somehow! This time around we're traveling back in time to the early 1990s to celebrate some of the terrible shows the original Privateer team apparently enjoyed (or just couldn't look away from). You can find details on the shows included as well as how to watch along with us in the announcement post here. Be sure to download the episodes so they're ready to play with the group!

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By popular demand we aren't going to let February 14 end without a visit from the Love Arrow... now available in three distinct styles!

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I don't know that we would say THX 1138 is a movie that you sit down and explicitly enjoy but it is pretty fascinating. As a work of art, it's superb. It follows in the footsteps of dystopian futures like the ones imagined by Huxley and Orwell mated with the same sort of 1970s washed out tomorrow you'd find in things like Logan's Run or Beneath the Planet of the Apes. There's very little handholding, either; you're expected to figure out the world and what's going on quickly and before the film gets too far away from you. It was also very interesting seeing how much of THX's future ends up in Lucas' Star Wars six years later. It's a bit like playing an early alpha of a beloved video game, in that respect!

The big literal connection to Wing Commander (and many, many other things) was the name of the movie and lead character, THX 1138. THX is played by a much younger Robert Duvall and the designation

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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 are referenced by Wing Commander in some way. Tonight's film, special for Valentine's Day, is Ten Thousand Bedrooms (1957) and you can find details on why we're watching it in the announcement post here. The movie will start at 7 PM PST/10 PM EST but feel free to drop by and hang any time!

And don't forget our seventh Wing Commander Cartoon party is early tomorrow!

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The Distant Worlds 3 expedition has confirmed a series of key achievements as its diverse fleet continues toward an unexplored region of the galaxy.
Expedition control reported that the flotilla has successfully cleared inhabited space and completed its first major staging objective at Colonia, designated Waypoint One of the current route. Colonia served as the fleet's primary logistics and regrouping hub before the start of extended deep-range operations.
While the fleet consolidated in the Colonia area, many independent commanders carried out a hazardous surface insertion on a lifeless rocky world informally dubbed the "Monde de la Mort" by pilots. The landing has been cited by organisers as one of the most technically demanding surface operations of the expedition so far due to its dangerously close orbit around the white dwarf star of Spoihaae XE-X d2-9.
The fleet has since reached

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Here's a deep and useful look at some obscure gear: mkdud1 has posted a control map for the 3DO CH Flightstick Pro and a look at how to restore their potentiometers! The distinct CH Flightstick Pro is probably familiar to a lot of classic fans… but fewer know that a version was also released for the 3DO which was explicitly supported by Super Wing Commander and Wing Commander III! Tracking down (or emulating) a Flightstick Pro makes the 3DO Wing Commandering experience a truly beautiful thing. If you'd like to know more, you can find the original thread on Reddit.

Here is a map for the CH Flightstick Pro controls for 3DO SWC. I have updated this on 1-18-26 to include some of the hat functions; this is helpful during combat when you want to send a quick taunt during combat or a command to your wingman. The slightly hidden red printing for the right shift button reads "Right Shift with B = Brake to 0,

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The work continues! Our exploration of Wing Commander Prophecy's hidden mechanics has been taking longer than we expected but we are ready to premiere the WCPedia pages for the second series... along with a couple of fascinating discoveries! This week we are looking at the G'wriss Series which introduces enemy capital ships and gives you the first look at the multi-wing strikes that make a lot of Prophecy missions so cool! There are six missions in series C but you will only encoutner three of them in any given playthrough. C1 is the same for everyone and we've discovered some cool secrets there. C2 is decided based on how much damage the Midway takes in C1, with more damage meaning more NAV points to visit (just one in C2a, two in C2b and three in C2c).

You can find the individual pages for the first series missions below.

• C1: G'wriss - Convoy Rescue
• C2a: G'wriss - Alien Starship Encounter
• C2b:

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Back in 2024, we made an interesting discovery: we identified that the 'pin up' poster briefly seen in Lieutenant Blair's quarters in the Wing Commander was made from a stock photo that had been reused in other places! This conclusively disproved an old (and already very unlikely) piece of IMDb trivia that it was a photograph of Sarah Michelle Gellar and it brought us to a new question: who was the stock photo model?

As unlikely as it seems, we now have an answer... because she stopped by the forums to tell us herself! Her name is Rae Cline and a portfolio shoot made it into a stock photo collection way back when. Here's her story:

Hi Bandit LOAF. The woman is me. Yes, it is from stock footage. The photographer is Jack Cutler. You can find him on IG @jack_cutler_foto. You can find me on Instagram, too, @raeclineauthor.

I never received any royalties for the stock photo in Wing Commander, of course, but

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Local authorities across several Imperial and Federal colonies have confirmed a sharp rise in pirate activity, coinciding with the military confrontation surrounding the HIP 87621 enclave.
Traders report increased interdictions along previously stable shipping lanes, while independent miners have warned of sustained harassment at long-established extraction sites. System security offices acknowledge that patrol coverage has been reduced, citing the redeployment of forces toward strategic objectives elsewhere.
A spokesperson for the Imperial Internal Security Service commented that "temporary pressure" on border systems was inevitable while major forces remained on standby around HIP 87621. Federal officials echoed similar sentiments, stressing that order would be restored once current campaigns concluded.
Independent pilots have voiced growing frustration, describing a lack of response to

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It's time for another thrilling edition of the monthly Wing Commander cartoon party… with a real cartoon included this time! This month we'll be stepping back in time to 1992 to imagine what it was like when Wing Commander: Privateer was being made… and we'll be enjoying some of the truly ridiculous nonsense television that defined the era.

Back in 1992, Origin couldn't settle on a name for their space trading game. The developers wanted to call it Free Trader in honor of the Traveller tabletop game that had greatly inspired them, but legal could not clear the name. It went through dozens of suggestions before being announced as the tepid "Trader Commander" and finally being changed to the not-quite-definitory Privateer. The game's storyboard artists riffed on the situation by labeling their work with the names of notorious media including films, TV shows and albums. We've already watched three of the

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We have seen the horrible future of THX 1138 and said… hey, a world where the government keeps you drugged, happy and working maybe isn't that bad. For next week we've chosen the (current) lone romantic comedy in the queue: a Dean Martin film called Ten Thousand Bedrooms (1957). You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

So what could this possibly have to do with Wing Commander? Look closely at the poster: the female lead is none other than Anna Maria Alberghetti, who will in roughly 700 years have a space cruise liner named after her! And then due to the events of Secret Ops quickly NOT have a space cruise liner named after her. Ms. Alberghetti was a singer who started perforing professionally as a child and then became an actress as a teenager. Ten Thousand Bedrooms is her 'best known' movie and so we thought we'd take the opportunity to try and find out… why did they name a spaceship

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The SR-51 Seahawk is a three-engine Terran Confederation carrier-based Airborne Early Warning/Airborne Warning and Control Ship (AEW/AWACS) which operated in 2681. They are commonly referred to as an "SWACS" (Spaceborne Warning and Control Ship). It is a specialized spacecraft intended to gather data, translate it using its onboard computers and then transmit it back to a carrier. They are also used as command and control centers, extending the range at which orders can be relayed to other fighters and sometimes guiding friendly ships to targets during strike missions. While performing an essential role, Seahawks are not a preferred assignment for Space Force pilots.

The Seahawk's most distinctive feature is its triangular radar dome which can rotate about its X-axis at up to 60° per second. The radar is an active surveillance system which scans space in three bands. The Seahawk also carries an

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Here's a weird one! Check out this brief mention of Wing Commander for the SNES from the October 1992 issue of Nintendo Magazine System (No. 1), a Nintendo-focused (well, duh) UK-based gaming magazine. Now look at the screenshot: it's not from the finished game! You can tell from the cockpit gauges that this is the redrawn SNES Hornet cockpit... but it's not QUITE right. Even more clear, though, is the blue ringed planet. Wing Commander I does have such a planet but it's green in every port... and it only appears in the Gimle and Dakota serieses, which means it'll never show up in a Hornet. This must be a never-before-noticed pre-release image!

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A prototype is an initial, representative model of something. Prototype vehicles like ships and aircraft are carefully constructed to test whether or not their designs will function as their engineers intend. Something might have multiple rounds of prototypes as they are tested, modified and perfected on the road to developing the final production model. But in Privateer 2's Tri-System, the word prototype seems to have a distinctly different meaning.

In 2790, the Tri-System military and the Central Intelligence Service (CIS)'s fleets operate an impressive line of battle: the ML4D Salvia-class destroyer, the MCOS Veldor-class carrier, the MDRE Yackard-class dreadnought and the... MCPH Prototype?! It would be unusual for a prototype in the traditional sense to be in active service… and the MCPH is not rare: we see or learn about at least ten of them in the game. What's more, they aren't exclusively

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Air Force One holds up very well! It's a tight, well directed and particularly well dressed action film. You can absolutely understand why Wolfgang Petersen was chosen; his experience creating Das Boot was surely useful in figuring out how to express the cramped quarters on the jumbo jet and his preference for using fast, quick cuts to SFX shots really sets the mood of the movie. It's so incredibly lean, too, with the run time evaporating in front of you. Despite the name there's no ra-ra patriotism and despite the high concept premise it never devolves into a Predator-style battle between superhumans. And there's almost nothing that feels excessive; it's pure drama with no sex and no stopping for philosophy. And of course, Harrison Ford is always great!

We talked about the music from Air Force One that was used to temp track Wing Commander in the intro but maybe the most interesting connection to Wing

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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 are referenced by Wing Commander in some way. Tonight's film is THX 1138 (1971) and you can find details on why we're watching it in the announcement post here. The movie will start at 7 PM PST/10 PM EST but feel free to drop by and hang any time!

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The Wing Commander movie club has successfully landed Air Force One! Or maybe we crashed it into the sea. This week's movie will be one everyone knows of but rarely takes the time to watch: THX-1138 (1971). THX 1138 was the first feature film directed by George Lucas who would go on to create Star Wars… so it should already be obvious why it would be of interest to a bunch of Wing Commander fans! You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

While it's obviously going to be interesting to see the connection to something so important to Wing Commander as Star Wars, the reason for choosing the movie is a simple in-game reference: one of the characters in Special Operations 2 is credited as Mandarin #1138. This is in keeping with a long tradition of films, especially Lucas' Star Wars ones, hiding the number in various places.

Who is Mandarin #1138? She is the barely-visible character heard