Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

It's time for another thrilling edition of the monthly Wing Commander cartoon party… with a real cartoon included this time! This month we'll be stepping back in time to 1992 to imagine what it was like when Wing Commander: Privateer was being made… and we'll be enjoying some of the truly ridiculous nonsense television that defined the era.

Back in 1992, Origin couldn't settle on a name for their space trading game. The developers wanted to call it Free Trader in honor of the Traveller tabletop game that had greatly inspired them, but legal could not clear the name. It went through dozens of suggestions before being announced as the tepid "Trader Commander" and finally being changed to the not-quite-definitory Privateer. The game's storyboard artists riffed on the situation by labeling their work with the names of notorious media including films, TV shows and albums. We've already watched three of the

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

We have seen the horrible future of THX 1138 and said… hey, a world where the government keeps you drugged, happy and working maybe isn't that bad. For next week we've chosen the (current) lone romantic comedy in the queue: a Dean Martin film called Ten Thousand Bedrooms (1957). You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

So what could this possibly have to do with Wing Commander? Look closely at the poster: the female lead is none other than Anna Maria Alberghetti, who will in roughly 700 years have a space cruise liner named after her! And then due to the events of Secret Ops quickly NOT have a space cruise liner named after her. Ms. Alberghetti was a singer who started perforing professionally as a child and then became an actress as a teenager. Ten Thousand Bedrooms is her 'best known' movie and so we thought we'd take the opportunity to try and find out… why did they name a spaceship

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

The SR-51 Seahawk is a three-engine Terran Confederation carrier-based Airborne Early Warning/Airborne Warning and Control Ship (AEW/AWACS) which operated in 2681. They are commonly referred to as an "SWACS" (Spaceborne Warning and Control Ship). It is a specialized spacecraft intended to gather data, translate it using its onboard computers and then transmit it back to a carrier. They are also used as command and control centers, extending the range at which orders can be relayed to other fighters and sometimes guiding friendly ships to targets during strike missions. While performing an essential role, Seahawks are not a preferred assignment for Space Force pilots.

The Seahawk's most distinctive feature is its triangular radar dome which can rotate about its X-axis at up to 60° per second. The radar is an active surveillance system which scans space in three bands. The Seahawk also carries an

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Here's a weird one! Check out this brief mention of Wing Commander for the SNES from the October 1992 issue of Nintendo Magazine System (No. 1), a Nintendo-focused (well, duh) UK-based gaming magazine. Now look at the screenshot: it's not from the finished game! You can tell from the cockpit gauges that this is the redrawn SNES Hornet cockpit... but it's not QUITE right. Even more clear, though, is the blue ringed planet. Wing Commander I does have such a planet but it's green in every port... and it only appears in the Gimle and Dakota serieses, which means it'll never show up in a Hornet. This must be a never-before-noticed pre-release image!

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

A prototype is an initial, representative model of something. Prototype vehicles like ships and aircraft are carefully constructed to test whether or not their designs will function as their engineers intend. Something might have multiple rounds of prototypes as they are tested, modified and perfected on the road to developing the final production model. But in Privateer 2's Tri-System, the word prototype seems to have a distinctly different meaning.

In 2790, the Tri-System military and the Central Intelligence Service (CIS)'s fleets operate an impressive line of battle: the ML4D Salvia-class destroyer, the MCOS Veldor-class carrier, the MDRE Yackard-class dreadnought and the... MCPH Prototype?! It would be unusual for a prototype in the traditional sense to be in active service… and the MCPH is not rare: we see or learn about at least ten of them in the game. What's more, they aren't exclusively

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Air Force One holds up very well! It's a tight, well directed and particularly well dressed action film. You can absolutely understand why Wolfgang Petersen was chosen; his experience creating Das Boot was surely useful in figuring out how to express the cramped quarters on the jumbo jet and his preference for using fast, quick cuts to SFX shots really sets the mood of the movie. It's so incredibly lean, too, with the run time evaporating in front of you. Despite the name there's no ra-ra patriotism and despite the high concept premise it never devolves into a Predator-style battle between superhumans. And there's almost nothing that feels excessive; it's pure drama with no sex and no stopping for philosophy. And of course, Harrison Ford is always great!

We talked about the music from Air Force One that was used to temp track Wing Commander in the intro but maybe the most interesting connection to Wing