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... but before you watch, know that it's not an exciting one! We are always on the lookout for USA Network bumpers that include footage from Wing Commander Academy. From just before the show aired in September 1996 until at least the middle of 1997, USA used footage from Wing Commander Academy in a fair number of bumpers for their 'Action Extreme Team' lineup. We started posting them last year and keep watch for new uploads of off air dubs of USA shows from that tmie period. This one, which dates from the week of June 9, 1997, is the latest one we've found... maybe the last time the cadets showed up on TV! It's not super Wing Commander-y--it promotes a USA Kids Club summer vacation event--but it's good to add it to the collection!

If you have a source for USA tapes from that era, we'd love to see it! There are three commercials in particular we would like to rescue from obscurity:

• The original Wing

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Happy summer! It's time for another thrilling edition of our monthly Wing Commander cartoon party! This time around, we're looking at examples of the various television shows that the Wing Commander III team credited for keeping them sane in the game's quotes files… which means it's time to party 1990s style! Last time we looked at thirty years of TV that inspired Wing Commander Armada… but it looks like the WC3 group were younger and more hip! Here's the actual line from the game's hidden credits. We've picked an appropriate episode for each one (that had to have aired before the game shipped).

Mystery Science Theatre 3000; The X-Files; The Tick; Nietzche; Double Dave's Big Fucking Cokes; Not Money ; Not Short Hours; Doom ; X-Com; People On Fire; Two-Fisted John Woo Action; Doom II; Dilbert ; Simpsons; More Doom; Seinfeld; Net Doom; Star Trek (so sue us)

The Tick (s1e07): It's a bit of a surprise to

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The Wing Commander movie club found The Birdcage (1996) to be… absolutely delightful! This week, we voted on a selection of movies from the '90s and once again I'm proud of everyone for forgoing some of the big action movies of our youths to go with a comedy. And that comedy is the Jim Carey classic Dumb and Dumber (1994)! If you don't quote this movie regularly… well, you're just not as old as most of us. You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

The connection to Wing Commander on this one is literal! Dumb and Dumber was front and center in pop culture in 1995… and it was quoted in Privateer 2: The Darkening! One of the generally silly wingmen bios (entirely silly in this case) is for Clevis 'Guts' Nugget and his quote is "Gonna kick your ass, sea bass!"... which comes straight from Dumb and Dumber. We'll see it play out on Friday! In the meantime, here's Guts:

NAME Clevis 'Guts' Nugget

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The United States government is busy trolling its citizens with nonsensical construction in Washington DC so we thought it would be a good time to look a little further ahead in the city's culture. You see, Wing Commander III establishes something that seems increasingly unlikely thirty years on: Washington DC, the capital of the United States of America today, is the seat of government for the thousand star Terran Confederation! We see this in the game's losing endgame, where Kilrathi bombers savage the city as their warships loom overhead.

The United States Capitol opened in 1800, relocating the United States' capital from Philadelphia to the new purpose-constructed city of Washington. It was partially destroyed in 1814 during the War of 1812 but was rapidly restored. The rotunda opened in 1824 and the famous dome seen in this screenshot was completed just after the Civil War in 1866. It's a building

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Here's a neat little detail that I had never noticed before until last night: the canteen vet in the Wing Commander IV introduction is actually wearing a Wing Commander III 'combined forces' patch on his shoulder! Maybe I'm just oblivious but I never picked up on this one! It's a neat way to show that he's a down-on-his-luck veteran… and it seems particularly to tie to his mention that he was a pilot on the TCS Liberty, surely chosen to sound like Blair's TCS Victory where he wore the same emblem. Though like a lot of the details in the cantina set it isn't especially visible when watching the original Xanmovie version of the game's movies. Did you know there's a lizard in a tank in there? A vintage airplane? An African board game> What I wouldn't give to see some set photography!

The character is credited as "canteen vet" and was played by Peter Marquardt, an Austin area actor and game producer who

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How big is Crius, anyway? We've been working on the upcoming Tri-System atlas for the past week or two and one thing I noticed was that there's a very specific diameter listed for each of the planets and moons in the Tri-System… so I thought it might be fun to put together a chart that compared that data to the real moons and planets in our own solar system! And here it is. Turns out Crius is extremely similar to Earth in size!

And how is the atlas coming? We've built pages for all 225 nav points and all of the moons and stations with plenty more material to come. You're welcome to join us working on the WCPedia if you're interested in archiving Wing Commander's lore and history… or just doing some good old fashioned supernerdery with friends.