Easter Eggs Abound in Squadron 42 Trailer (October 11, 2012)

ChrisReid

Super Soaker Collector / Administrator
Wing Commander fans have been going over the new Squadron 42 movie with a fine toothed comb, and they've found some interesting Wing Commander references! Among the first items that fans spotted was a Kilrathi radar screen symbol, but even more are highlighted below.

The video starts with a text overlay that establishes the setting as the Kurasawa System, home of WC1's grueling Ralari Defense mission. The carrier we see is the same class as the Tiger's Claw, and its name is in honor of the famous Origin artist. Takeoff down the Paul Steed's flight deck also mirrors launch down the Claw's tubes.







The bridge is full of nifty Easter eggs! For starters, the crew's uniforms are straight out of WC4, down to the "Terran Confederation - Unified Space Command" shoulder patches. The display globe includes fun references such as a Confed star logo, pilots Maverick & Deveraux in Alpha Wing, an item denoted as "Black Lance," mention of WC1's 09/26/90 ship date and a debriefing with Colonel Roberts.





In the cockpit, the game's iconic Terran ship is described as the Hornet Light Fighter on the center console. Upon exit, the forward fuselage is very similarly shaped to the Hornet from WC1, and its canopy articulates in a similar way.





Last, but not least, the Squadron 42 logo is a flipped tribute to the classic WC logo!




Thanks to Zeether for snapping some of these shots! What else have you found!? Please share your discoveries at the CIC Forums!

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Original update published on October 11, 2012
 
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And this one too ;-)
 

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I'm sure it was meant in this way, but the description doesn't quite make it clear: the display globe itself is in the style of the WC1/2 briefing and nav map, which was yet another nice reference to the previous games.
 
The name of the officer saluting you when you enter the bridge sounds also familiar: BLAIR :)
 

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When the fighters drop from the asteroid and swarm the Claw, the action moves are very similar to the WC2 intro where the Claw gets destroyed.
 
This is awesome in so many different ways, and its incredibly apparent that he really wants the game to be Wing Commander in everything but name (and who knows, maybe that can change someday).

I plan to spend whatever amount of money is necessary for my computer to run this at maximum graphics....which is also a trademark of a good WC game.
 
I plan to spend whatever amount of money is necessary for my computer to run this at maximum graphics....which is also a trademark of a good WC game.

Is it actually?
Wing commander games could always run on even the cheapest machine available in the stores at the time of release, I bet if you assemble a new high-end system rightnow, the game will be playable on it two years from now. I do hope the final game will be 64bit-only.
 
Did anyone else notice the Kilrathi Empire logo on one of the tactical maps? Oops! sorry just saw mention at the top, lol.
 
The uniforms look more like from WC3, with their shirts tucked into their pants. The patches are WC4 though.
 
The cockpit VDUs in the hornet was Super Wing Commander style.

I also see a touch of Starlancer with the presence of a turret on a small fighter.

A bit off-topic, but the entire concept of a Terran empire seems to be much closer to Chris Roberts' original WC pitch.
 
Is it actually?
Wing commander games could always run on even the cheapest machine available in the stores at the time of release, I bet if you assemble a new high-end system rightnow, the game will be playable on it two years from now. I do hope the final game will be 64bit-only.
You could run the games on a moderately powerful system for the given time, but there were always little shortcomings, or perhaps extra features only available if you upgraded. I think that's what Sylvester was thinking of - that it's a sort of tradition of WC games, or perhaps Chris Roberts or Origin games in general, that upgrades to better hardware was encouraged by the release of the games.

A Sandy Bridge E system with multiple GTX 690s would probably fare well with Star Citizen by the time it's released, but I'm sure it'd be far more economical to wait until then to make your upgrades, unless you have a pressing need to upgrade for something else before then.

And lastly, I'm not sure that being 64-bit-OS-only makes any difference other than it guarantees that there are no limited memory address space issues that are inherent in a 32-bit OS. I'm sure Star Citizen, with its high-end-PC-only target would restrict itself to 64-bit OSs anyway, but I don't imagine this would necessarily be a conscious decision.

I'm probably remembering wrong but I thought his original concept was called "Squadron" then it became "Wingleader" and finally "Wing Commander."
This is my recollection as well. Squadron was the original title in the game proposal, then switched to Wingleader, but I think there was some copyright issues there, so it was changed to Wing Commander. I'm sure one of the more knowledgeable staff will confirm or correct this.
 
hehe.. most of the staff will be sleeping off travel lag from a successful trip to Austin.... I'm sure our regularly scheduled programming will return after a brief rest period.
 
This is my recollection as well. Squadron was the original title in the game proposal, then switched to Wingleader, but I think there was some copyright issues there, so it was changed to Wing Commander. I'm sure one of the more knowledgeable staff will confirm or correct this.

Yup, this is correct. RSI posted the Squadron pitch just a couple weeks ago: https://www.wcnews.com/news/2012/09/26/happy-birthday-wing-commander

And the Wing Leader logo: https://www.wcnews.com/news/2011/08/25/wingleader-logos
 
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