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It's time to mark your calendars! The fact that it's now 2026 means that we will be celebrating the 30th anniversary of quite a few Wing Commander releases. 1996 saw the initial release of three major projects, Wing Commander IV, Kilrathi Saga and Privateer 2... along with lots of related media! It was also the year that gifted us all thirteen episodes of Wing Commander Academy. Who wants to watch them in real time starting in September?!

February 12, 1996- Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom (MS-DOS) Wing Commander CTCG Promo #2: Admiral Tolwyn Origin's Official Guide to Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom

March 27, 1996- Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger (PlayStation)

May 30, 1996- Wing Commander IV Demo (Macintosh) - download it here

June 4, 1996- Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom (MS-DOS DVD)

June 8, 1996- Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom (Macintosh)

Septeber 21, 1996- Wing

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Space Cadet Rewind, the able YouTuber that has done in-depth reviews of several Wing Commander games, is back with a video covering Wing Commander's lesser known cousin: StarLancer! And unlike the Digital Antiquarian, they actually did proper research into Digital Anvil and the making of the game. It's well worth a watch.

And if this inflicts you with a dreaded case of StarLancer fever, be sure to check out our article about how the game reuses assets from the Wing Commander movie in a surprising number of places!

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The Wing Commander movie club had a pretty good time with the Beverly Hills 90210 pilot; it wasn't high art but it was a lot of fun... and gave us a good picture of the pop culture world Wing Commander was born into. This week, we're finishing our TV miniseries by looking at a second pilot that's a little more relevant to Wing Commander's world: The Gathering (1993). It's the telemovie that kicked off the Babylon 5 franchise! You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

Babylon 5 was midway through its first season when Wing Commander III's development was in high gear and we're confident the team included some fans. In fact, the Blackmane base model was a nod to Babylon 5's titular station. It's even stored as "BABYLON6" in the game's files!

The 3DO version even references this in the game: the name "STATION 6" is clearly visible on one of its textures!

And here's Art director Chris Douglas

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There's some pretty exciting news from Remi Leonard's libRealSpace project, an attempt to recreate the RealSpace engine originally built for Strike Commander as an open source platform. They've released a new build of Strike Commander with VR support just in time for 2026! Check out the video below which seems just about perfect.

RealSpace was created for Strike Commander and the game's "virtual cockpit" mode actually lends itself to VR very easily. Pacific Strike and Wings of Glory also had this feature and WoG actually supported 1996-vintage headsets like the VFX-1! But even more exciting, RealSpace was the engine for Wing Commander Armada, III and IV so we can dream about this somehow being adapted to our favorite series. You can download the build here.

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Condé Nast's longtime tech news website Ars Technica has published an article on, of all things, Wing Commander Privateer! It's a short--and to our ears accurate--look back at the game and how it managed to pull of something very special that still hasn't quite been repeated in the genre. Don't expect a detailed history or any shocking news (they're ultimately just trying to collect GOG affiliate sales) but it's nice to see the game celebrated... and thanks the prominence of the outlet there's already been a lot of chatter about Privateer on social media!

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We had some anime superfans in the audience for Arcadia of My Youth but we also had a lot of people who had never seen any anime at all ever. The former knew what to expect and I think everyone else was surprised. From the opening Goethe quote it was was clear this was going to be a serious space opera and not frivolous sex and violence. Just what Wing Commander fans want!

Here's Captain Harlock's distinctive skull logo as seen very, very briefly on Wing Commander Academy!

And here's a great example of how Tim Eldred's Wing Commander Academy storyboards were often inspired by shots from classic anime:

Sully is a young cat so his life is still pretty much Arcadia 24/7.

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