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Napoleon famously said that "a soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon" and he was most likely thinking of the original Wing Commander. In addition to its famous medal system, Wing Commander I has something not seen in any of the later games: an accompanying achievement-style system that awards players those bits of colored ribbons for specific in-game achievements like scoring five kills or flying ten missions. We decided to take a closer look at this system… and we were surprised by what we discovered!

Many of Wing Commander's ribbons have been mislabeled online for decades for two very good reasons: difficulties and errors in labeling in Claw Marks and a bug that has been with the game since its original version. Wing Commander I has twelve different ribbons that are awarded throughout the game. Two of them are story-related and have actually been given to you before you fly

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We've said it before and we'll say it again... better late than never! Thanks to your suggestions we now have the official slate of nominees for both of our 2025 awards: Fan Project of the Year and Hall of Fame. For Fan Project, pick the one that you believe is most exciting today and for Hall of Fame put your mind back to the early days of Wing Commander and choose which classic fan or project to honor! We encourage you to vote for your choices before March 15th -- we'll announce the winners on first contact day. We had lots of great suggestions this year and we hope your preferences have made it to this stage.

• Wing Commander AllTinker Overhaul Mod - Origin couldn't do it... a generation of fans couldn't do it... but 36 years after the release of the original Wing Commander, AllTinker has done it! They've produced a beautiful patch that limits the game's speed and makes it function as it was intended

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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!