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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

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

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!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

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.