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Today marks 17 years since the launch of Wing Commander Arena for the Xbox 360! It was a small labor of love by a tiny New York studio called Gaia Industries with support from EA Vancouver. The game pioneered a new generation of digital releases for the Xbox Live Marketplace. Despite the many limitations created by this new mode of distribution, Arena was a stunning pioneer with 16-player multiplayer, high definition graphics and expansive lore packed in anywhere it would fit. And it's available for just THREE MORE DAYS!

Microsoft will be shuttering its Xbox 360 store on Monday, July 29. The game will remain playable on the 360 console after that, but you need to acquire your copy by then. Pick it up directly through the console or on the web here. It's only $0.99! Find more valuable info in LOAF's Arena End of Life FAQ here.

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Today we've got even more new material from Howard Day's Wing Leader project to share. In a pair of new videos, you can see several new special effects. The Firekkan fighter on display has some fancy reflection in place that shows off the cockpit glass. And it's refined a bit further in the second clip with additional haze. The look of the guns in action has also been amped up! You can watch the AI engage in space combat within the game's engine in real time here.

Here's a update to the Wingleader cockpit glass reflections - going far more graphic/streaky and subtle. Lemme know what you think!

Okay, here's a update to the Wingleader cockpit glass reflections - going far more graphic/streaky and subtle. Lemme know what you think! pic.twitter.com/qM4Q6bTibH

— Howie Day (@howieeday) July 20, 2024

  

I've started to add some gun SFX to Wingleader, and did add a little bit of glass haze to the cockpit

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Oh wow, I love this perspective! I post videos from time to time of people playing Wing Commander Prophecy for the Gameboy Advance, but they're usually screen captures. It's very cool to see someone playing it in real time. The white gloves and arctic white console are nice touches too. There's a lot of cutscene and talking head content for the bulk of the video, but the clip includes some solid space combat towards the end too. Note that this unit has a screen mod that makes it really pop. You'd ordinarily need an Advance SP or original Nintendo DS to get a naturally lit up screen.

Handheld gameplay recording of Wing Commander: Prophecy (released in 2003) on the Nintendo Game Boy Advance (with IPS screen mod) without commentary.

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I noticed a detail I’d never picked up on in Action Stations! The book is a prequel about the start of the Kilrathi war that’s strongly based on Pearl Harbor (and At Dawn We Slept in particular).

The Kilrathi are preparing to attack Confed’s major base at McAuliffe. Earth dispatches orders to Vega to go on a war footing, but a series of random occurrences delay them from getting there until the battle is joined.

The first of these is that the officer delivering the pouch to the courier ship misses the hand off as he’s trying to appease his angry date, Nancy.

Chapters and more delays later the pouch finally arrives with Admiral Long at McAuliffe… who ignores it because his wife is furious over gossip regarding her friend… Nancy!

So who is this woman who inadvertently doomed trillions to slavery and death? I have my suspicions.

(For the record my mom is also named Nancy and she would betray Earth to help

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SHARK MOUTHS! Although most famously applied to the Flying Tigers' Warhawks, pilots started painting fierce faces on their aircraft during the first World War... and it continues to this day! So today let's see how that tradition continues through the 27th (and 28th) Century...

Wing Commander's very first shark mouth isn't even human: Prince Thrakhath's Bloodfang fighter has one in both the Wing Commander II demo and when redesigned for Wing Commander II itself.

The first human shark mouth we see is the Arrow in Wing Commander Armada which soon after appeared with a similar livery in Wing Commander III...

Wing Commander IV drops them entirely but they return in Wing Commander Arena! All three Arrow types (Scout, Eclipse, Guardian) have them, which is some attention to detail given you can't really see them in a top down game.

Wing Commander III also gives us the Thunderbolt VII. We see an ensharkened

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In the Wing Commander I & II guide, Spirit ever so briefly mentions that all-women combat missions are normal… but that they weren’t allowed in 2638, sixteen years earlier. This probably seemed progressive in 1991 when the US military did not allow women to fly in combat at all. But by 2011, the USAF was flying all female combat missions a few centuries ahead of schedule!