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The Wing Commander movie club has charted the evolution of man all the way to the distant future of 2001… and it's obvious why this is such an important film both for cinema and science fiction. Next week we've voted to continue the story going with a VERY different sequel: 2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984). It's a case of a different filmmaker picking up the toy box and doing something different in just about every way. I can't wait to share it! You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

2010 is a little bit like Wing Commander Prophecy: the same world but adapted by a different director once the creator was wholly gone. And it makes a lot of the same choices! But the real connection to Wing Commander is the Soviet spaceship Leonov which appears in Wing Commander Secret Ops in the form of a Murphy-class destroyer. What's more, the Leonov was designed by Syd Mead… the mind behind

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Mac (of Mac's Lore) is back with some more... let's say unusual Wing Commander renderings. They mash up stunning models of Wing Commander spacecraft with characters from "Girls Frontline 2: Exilium". I don't know Girls Frontline 2: Exilium so I'm not in on the whole joke… but those starfighters are pretty sexy!

Wing Commander X Girls Frontline 2: Sharkry (ArtStation)

A imaginary crossover between the ships of Wing Commander and the T-Dolls from Girls Frontline 2: Exilium.

When the Border Worlds started getting Rapiers for their Space Forces, many pilots nicknamed them XCRs due to the BW's fascination of an ancient Earth trend called "Weebery".

The meaning of XCR was "eXtremely Cute Rapier".

Wing Commander X Girls Frontline 2: Klukai (ArtStation)

A imaginary crossover between the ships of Wing Commander and the T-Dolls from Girls Frontline 2: Exilium.

Klukai x Hellcat V

The popular phrase "She is all I need",

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Sad news to report today: French actor Emmanuel Karsen passed away on Thursday. M. Karsen had a lengthy list of film credits but he is best known for his voice work, which included performing the French dubbing for actors Sean Penn and Norman Reedus. You can find an obituary here.

Wing Commander fans–French ones, at least–knew him for his work on Wing Commander III as the voice of "Radio" Rollins. Rollins is actually one of the biggest roles in the game since he appears in unique videos at the end of nearly every mission! Here's a sample of M. Karsen's work, the start of Rollins' first one-on-one with Colonel Blair outside the elevator:

Thank you to Sergorn for reporting this news.

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Foxhound noticed a neat Wing Commander nod in a recent PC Gamer preview of an upcoming game called MENACE. The game is a turn based strategy from Overhype Studio in the vein of Jagged Alliance. But as this screenshot shows, its briefing room has a familiar inspiration!

To learn more about MENACE you can check out its Steam page.

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The Wing Commander movie club enjoyed True Lies! It holds up very well, although a lot of what we remember as having been ridiculous action actually seems pretty mild compared to the average blockbuster today. We already talked about the music in the intro post but we did notice one interesting Wing Commander connection in the opening credits: the film's production designer was Peter Lamont. James Cameron would famously tap him again for Titanic… and then he would go on to work for Chris Roberts on the Wing Commander movie! You can read more about his work (and watch an interview) in our memorial post.

Sully didn't appreciate the little black dress; that's his look all the time!

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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 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and you can find details on why we're watching it 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!

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Creative Labs is… back? It looks like the legendary sound card company is preparing to launch a Kickstarter campaign for… something. The description made available so far is incredibly vague: "Sound Blaster RE:Imagine is built for creators, gamers, audiophiles, and tinkerers. It's a bold reimagining of a classic. Designed to adapt, expand, and evolve with you." It's hard to imagine what any of this could be as sound cards are no longer a key separate component of PCs like they were when Creative was powering Wing Commander II's speech accessory pack.

What is interesting, though, is that they are using the original Wing Commander in their ad campaign. A BlueSky post provided a screenshot from an email promoting the project that features a screenshot directly from the Enyo System:

Further search discovered a video version complete with Wing Commander-specific ad copy posted by the project's product

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GOG's Back to School event is winding down, so now's your last chance (before the next sale) to complete your digital collection. The Wing Commander series is half off, so have at it!

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The Wing Commander movie club had a great time revisiting the '90s with True Lies! For our next movie, we're going back to space... the space of a recent future past. That's right, it's finally time for Stanley Kubrick's legendary 2001: A Space Odyssey. You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

The first major reference to 2001 in Wing Commander is that the HAL 9000 actually appears in the SNES port of the original Wing Commander! Watch carefully as you take off, he's on the first 'rung' of the Tiger's Claw. It's so fun to imagine some artist at Mindscape deciding to sneak this into the game.

The passwords provided at the end of the second episode of Secret Ops ("Thickening") are both direct references to 2001. AE-35, the winning password, is the model of the Discovery's antenna which HAL sends the crew to repair. TMA-1, the losing password, is the monolith which is found on the moon in

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The mystery surrounding the permit-locked HIP 87621 system continues, with claims of unusual planetary signatures detected via long-range scan.
Many independent pilots have also reported that all colonisation has been blocked within a 37ly radius, fuelling speculation further.
While authorities remain tight-lipped, multiple independent analysts claim that at least one world within the system is exhibiting anomalous exobiological readings. These findings have prompted the galaxy's wealthiest citizen, Zachary Rackham, to offer a lucrative incentive for explorers willing to examine the puzzle via cross-reference.
Rackham, speaking from his villa on Lake Rackham on Homeland, said:
"Whatever's in HIP 87621 is strange enough to have the boffins scratching their heads. Therefore, I propose scouring every corner of the galaxy for similar planets. With enough data, maybe our top scientists will be able

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Here's a funny little 'unreadable text' Easter egg found in Privateer's source textures: the instructions for using the Oxford library computer, which appear as only background dots in the final game (shown).

K-MSi Instructions:
1. insert non-metallic objects in the vat.
2. put your finger up your butt.
3. wish real hard.
4. live peacefully and vote for the people's party.

We can also get a closer look at the buttons on the side of the machine, although there's not a clear meaning to them!

[ar] [vr] [vr]
[rr] [rr] [ar]
[vr] [rr] [vr]
[rr] [mi] [vr]
[vr] [rr] [ar]
[vr] [rr] [ar]
[mi] [vr] [rr]
[vr] [ar] [mi]
[ar] [ar] [mi]

There is some text that you're supposed to read! While the device is scanning your artifact, the screen displays:

structure unknown
trace failure
origin unknown

And then you cut to a closeup where you're intended to read all about Dr. Monkhouse. There's some pretty important lore hidden in this

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We've extracted something interesting from the depths of the Wayback Machine. This is a November 1997 chat transcript for a conference with the Wing Commander Prophecy team held by gaming site PsychoNews. These were very special events at the time and the Prophecy team in particular conducted several of them, most of which are sadly lost to history. It's neat to see this one again!

A Chat With the Developers of Wing Commander Prophecy

Recently, PsychoNews, hosted a chat on #PsychoNews between the members of the press and the developers of Wing Commander: Prophecy. Origin is not eager to give up any surprises, but we did manage to get a few tantalizing hints.

Time : 6:30 PM EST - Wednesday, 12th Of November, 1997

WCP Team were :

Frank Roan, Director
Billy Cain, Lead Designer
Mike McCoy, Internet Product Manager for Origin

The Press were ::

CyberGames
Extreme Games Online
Gamesmania
Game-wire
Gamezilla
Impel

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Dune may fall short of its source material but it's certainly a fun movie to talk about; we were waxing nostalgic about our Dune experiences well into the night! Without further ado, here are some screenshots to match the Wing Commander references we noted last week.

Here's the quote from the movie which appears in Privateer as a 'joke' comm you can make to New Constantinople. In the movie, it's part of Paul's inner monologue when he is training the Fremen to use the weirding modules. It doesn't appear in the book.

Wing Commander doesn't show us any giant sandworms but it does reference them several times!

And here's Princess Irulan, referenced in Privateer 2, played by Virginia Madsen. Her narration opens the movie.

Dune author Frank Herbert and his star system.

And of course Jurgen Prochnow as Duke Leto Atreides!

Sully wasn't so fond of the pugs.

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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 True Lies (1994) and you can find details on why we're watching it 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!

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There's an exchange in End Run where Kevin Tolwyn excitedly claims he has shot down a Drakhri and Bondarevsky points out that it was actually a Sartha. This always felt a little relatable specifically because Wing Commander II's manual had World War II-style 'plane recognition' silhouettes for all the ships. Here's the excerpt:

Jason walked out of the room and back out on to the flight deck. Tolwyn’s fighter was pulled off the flight line and came to a stop. The canopy popped open and an exuberant pilot stood up and climbed out of his ship, joyfully slapping his ground crew chief on the back.
“I got one, I got a Drakhri,” Kevin announced, coming towards Jason.
Jason said nothing, looking at Kevin coldly.
“Didn’t you hear me, sir? I got a Drakhri.”
“First off it was a Sartha, so get your plane recognition straight.”
“I’m sorry, sir. I guess I’m just excited.”
“That Sabre you were supposed to cover,” Jason

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We've got a strange one for you today! Background: Megg, Mogg, and Owl is a critically acclaimed comic series by Simon Hanselmann which started in 2014. It's about as 'indie comic' as you can get, full of edgy content and deep meanings. All of that is simply to introduce a single, wonderful panel that was recently published on Instagram:

If you're curious about the backstory (which we must note is extremely profane!) you can read the entire 33-part comic on the account linked above. The Owl character's home and beloved copy of the original Wing Commander were destroyed by a group of violent clowns led by his jilted ex-girlfriend. A physical version will be printed in the future and we'll share when that happens… but the panel on its own is pretty great!

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We are very happy to report that the vinyl albums for Origin composer George Oldziey's Wing Commander album have all shipped out! Fans that originally contributed towards the higher campaign tiers should be receiving a bundle that includes CD copies and anything else they may have pledged for. Fans have been stopping by the Discord to share pics of their goods over these last few days (see LOAF, Bonkus Maximus and AllTinker's hauls below).

Extra items that were left from the crowdfunding effort are now available to purchase in Mr. Oldziey's online store. It's unlikely that new copies of the vinyl record will be ordered, so get them while they last! The first volume of live orchestral music (can you believe that kicked off 11.5 years ago??) is also available as well as the lovely WC jazz album.

I’ve finished packing and/or shipping all the vinyl editions of volume 2, and have around 60 of them left

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A recent hunt for maverick exobiology scientist Terri Tora has only deepened the mystery surrounding her disappearance.
The search began after Professor Frank Raddix issued an appeal to locate his missing colleague, who was last reported pursuing "something big" for the science community. An encrypted trail of messages led search pilots across multiple systems, piecing together encrypted comms data. Thousands participated, ultimately confirming Tora's final location at HIP 87621, a permit locked system.
Speculation about the system is rife as no third party or superpower has claimed ownership of the permit lock, leading to rumours about its true significance and why access has been restricted for so long.
Professor Raddix issued the following statement after the discovery of Tora's last known location: "My thanks go to the many pilots who answered my call. Terri's trail has led us somewhere we

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It's like the say, everyone loves the theatrical cut of Dune 1984! We had a great time discussing everything Dune last week and this time we're going back to Earth for a pretty fun one: the 1994 action comedy True Lies. It's a movie that's going to make us feel like it's 1994 again… coincidentially when Wing Commander III came out. You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

Once again, this is a case where Chris Roberts used tracks from True Lies score as temp cues during the editing of the Wing Commander film. True Lies' music is by the legendary Shirley Walker who many will know for her work on another heavily Wing Commander-inspired project: FOX's Space Above and Beyond. Two of Walker's tracks were used, the first being Harry Rides Again. It was used for the 'depth charge' scene where a Ralari destroyer is dropping space bombs on asteroid craters in the hopes of finding the Tiger Claw

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The seventh and final Baen Wing Commander novel has a pretty famous error: the cover incorrectly credits the novel to William Keith instead of his brother and fellow author Andrew Keith. Fans caught the error just as the book was going to press; it was too late to change the cover. Andrew Keith had a sense of humor about the mistake, Baen apologized profusely and updated all of their digital marketing material. When False Colors was issued as an eBook, a corrected cover was included.

Andrew Keith tragically died several months after False Colors was published. He was a friend of the Wing Commander community and is greatly missed. His brother William provided an obituary for the October 1999 issue of Locus (#465) and took the opportunity to make sure the world knew that False Colors was his brother's work. It's a lovely read:

[John] Andrew Keith, 41, brother of, and some-time collaborator with, William