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Last month, AllTinker delighted us all by creating a pre-configured release of Origin FX that lets Wing Commander fans explore the oft-forgotten productivity package with a single click. But there's one more Wing Commander-adjacent piece to the puzzle!

In 1993, Origin included their only addon module for Origin FX on disk 8 of the first run of Strike Commander. This small addition adds a Strike Commander mode to Origin FX complete with new MIDIs and movie frames. Marketed as a "demo," the release also gives you the option of adding the new module to an existing Origin FX installation. You can download the Strike Commander module here.

The Strike Commander module looks for the diskette release of Strike Commander's GAMEFLOW.TRE file. It does not work with the much more common CD-ROM edition. We've put a copy online here. I've also put together an updated version of AllTinker's package with the Strike

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Great news from the Portland Retro Gaming Expo: they've announced that this weekend's show will include The Fatman himself, Wing Commander composer George Sanger. He'll be appearing as part of a Sierra On-Line retrospective... but I bet he'd be willing to talk Wing Commander, too! If you're in the area, absolutely check it out; it should be a great time. You can buy tickets here.

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The Wing Commander movie club has returned from Naboo! The Phantom Menace was still a good time and it's pretty fascinating seeing how its creative decisions unconsciously impacted Chris Roberts' Wing Commander movie. This week, we've voted to start a series of three interconnected movies… the first of which is The Terminator (1984), James Cameron's epic story of robots and time travel that launched an endless franchise. Join us Friday at 10 PM Eastern in the Wing Commander CIC Discord!

Our most obvious connection here is that one of the mercenary comm portraits from the original Privateer is clearly based on Arnold Schwarzenegger's T-800 Terminator character from this movie. Just compare him to the poster above!

We've got a shared actor, too! Earl Boen plays both the Academy commandant and the Kilrathi blockade runner commander in the first episode of Wing Commander Academy and here he plays Dr.

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Now we know what the Privateer NPCs have been doing in their spare time! BlueSky user ATMcashpoint recently noticed something interesting while watching a let's play video: some familiar faces! The game in question was German studio Motelsoft's 1995 "Escape from Ragor" and the faces in the game's character select are these handsome fellows:

That's right, they've both been modified directly from character heads in the original Wing Commander Privateer. The female option is Privateer's Mercenary Guild secretary and the male option is starting fixer Sandoval! [Did you know Sandoval's first name is Ernesto? It's in the Playtester's Guide! - ed.]

And they aren't just limited to the character select screen. Whichever one you choose appears throughout your game, in the corner of the screen and in cutscenes.

Then AllTinker noticed that this… borrow… isn't a one-off situation! He found Privateer portraits in

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We've thrown around the expression "that was a weird one" before but… that was a weird one. The Canterbury Tales (1972) is certainly a movie that will stick in your head, with its endless graphic sex scenes and, ah, giant prop devil defecating corrupt friars at the conclusion. But as crazy as it all is, a lot of it is actually a very reasonable adaptation of some of the tales from The Canterbury Tales (including the devil thing). It's a movie that is, at the very least, worth seeing!

Before I forget (because I already did last week), you can read the original text of The Canterbury Tales at Project Gutenberg. Now: Baron Jukaga mentions Chaucer, the author of the Canterbury Tales, and here's director Pasolini playing him in the movie. The adaptation drops the idea that the pilgrims are telling each other these stories and instead has Chaucer writing them. The conclusion is also significantly different:

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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 Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace (1999) 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!