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How about some vintage French mag scans? Guybrush_SF has you covered! I've also added English translations to make the reviews easier to read. I love the part where they gush about the game's rare beautiful and branching gameplay, but the text is only part of the appeal. It's also always such a fascinating time capsule to look at how an article like this would have been presented more than thirty years ago. We also have previews from each mag in our archive. Find the Gen 4 preview here and Tilt here (though for the Amiga version, so not a direct relationship).

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Anybody play Secret Ops when it was released episodically? Each one ended with a password based on your performance which changed the fiction on the website. All the codes were nerdy references: here TALOS IV is the planet from The Cage, ACHERON is the moon from Alien.

Episode 2 is two 2001: A Space Odyssey nods. AE-35 is the Discovery's antenna that doesn't need to be repaired and TMA-1 is the formal name for the Monolith on the moon (Tycho Magnetic Anomaly One).

Episode 3: this is the one I don't know! LAUMER is most likely SF author Keith Laumer... but I do not know CAIDEN! Anyone have an idea? [Chris: Maybe a misspelling of author Martin Caidin?]

Episode 4: LEONOV for cosmonaut Alexei Leonov (or the Soviet ship from 2010!) and KASPAROV for chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov.

Episode 5: BISSETTE and VEITCH are Stephen Bissette and Rick Veitch, horror comic creators (and frequent collaborators).

And

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Today we've got a new model to share from Adm_Maverick. The Piranha might not have the cultural gravitas of the Hornet, Ferret or Arrow, but it's a very fun little ship that gets the job done. Its integrated Stormfire cannon is a sweet bonus, and I really like that it has been modeled here on the side of the fuselage. That's a nice touch!

I just spent the last (counts)... 14 hours building a model of the F-106 Piranha in Tinkercad. I went some artist interpretation for some details, like the side mounted storm fire and the sensor array on the left side. Over all, I think it turned out well enough.

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Did you ever want a list of the helmet numbers from the Gold Squadron pilots in Wing Commander III? If yes then I have great news for you:

COBRA - A31
FLASH - A13
FLINT - A72
HOBBES - A99
MANIAC - A27
MAVERICK - A62
VAGABOND - A41
VAQUERO - A65

Vera: Do these numbers have a meaning?

LOAF: None that I’m aware of... save perhaps that fairly limited number of repeating integers suggests the art department bought as few sets of number stickers as they could!

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Ever wonder about the callsigns in the Wing Commander TrainSim? They're selected from a bank of options when you start a new game. They include all the wingmen plus SEGALLION, DIBBER, ZORO, GRYPHON, SUTEK and POTSHOT. These are all the callsigns of members of the dev team.

Segallion gets a star system in WC1, too. Sutek was Paul Isaac’s callsign but I’m not sure who the original Segallion was. Learn about the many variants of the TrainSim here!

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There has been a fair amount of chat about the deadline to buy Wing Commander Arena with many fans confused about what the game is and how to play it. Many have also encountered a bug in which their Xbox does not allow them to buy the game. We hope to help by answering these questions and others with this quick FAQ.

What is Wing Commander Arena?

Wing Commander Arena is a spinoff game set in the Wing Commander universe. It was developed for the Xbox 360 and released on Xbox Live Arcade on July 25, 2007. It was produced by Electronic Arts and developed by the now-defunct Gaia Industries studio. Xbox Live Arcade titles were small and often experimental budget games; they were released digitally for a low price point. Players should be aware that Arena is not a traditional Wing Commander game with a first person cockpit view and an interactive story. It is a top-down shooter with a heavy focus on frenzied