News Collection: On This Day in WC News

2020.264 (September 20, 2020)

Ancient Camcorder Footage Sets Stage for WC Purchase

Here's a weird nostalgia trip! This is a video recording of an old computer store circa 1991, and Wing Commander makes a handful of cameos throughout. We post a lot of retro stuff like this, but rarely do we get so much of the peripheral environment. Everything from the neon clothes at 0:22 to the shirt and tie of the salesman at 0:51 screams early '90s.

2019.263 (September 20, 2019)

Graphics Tablet Unleashes New Wing Commander Artist

Rear_Admiral_Platypus recently got a fancy digital sketch pad, and the first thing he set out to try his hand at were a variety of Wing Commander scenes. Up first is a stylized transport similar to a Diligent about to be met by a boxy WC3/4-era shuttle. It's followed by a flight deck scene stocked with Talons and Arrows. There's also a Privateer asteroid field and a cockpit scene.

2018.263 (September 20, 2018)

Wing Commander Meme of the Day: Alignment Chart

This is pretty good...

2017.263 (September 20, 2017)

Oof, Right in the Listicle

The Animated Times is running one of those list articles that the kids today love: "15 Video Game Cartoons You Totally Forgot." Wing Commander Academy makes the list, at #15:The Wing Commander franchise made a splash when it debuted in 1990, but it was never a series that burned up the sales charts. This, however, didn’t stop the USA Network from turning the space combat games into a short lived cartoon in 1996.Serving as a prequel to Wing Commander, Wing Commander Academy followed a group of recruits as they attended the titular Academy and learned the ins and outs of space combat.

2016.264 (September 20, 2016)

Fleet Action & Heart Of The Tiger Ebooks Partly Released!

Been has officially listed Wing Commanders Fleet Action and Heart of the Tiger in its ebook store! Expect to see them show up for Apple iBooks, Amazon Kindle and more on December 6, 2016. In the Baen tradition of releasing partial manuscripts ahead of time, the first half of each novel is already available for early purchasers. Additionally, there are several sample chapters for each book available for free.

2015.263 (September 20, 2015)

Unknown Enemy Revamp Picks Up Steam

The Wing Commander Unknown Enemy mod for SecretOps turns 15 next year. For some time now, the team has been wanting to release one last major update, to incorporate all the advances the modding community has made over the years. The initiative seems to be gaining traction once again, according to Quarto's recent status update. The OpenGL rendering system from Standoff has been integrated, and there is an in-game fiction viewer.

2014.263 (September 20, 2014)

Game Guides: Secrets of the Wing Commander Universe

While it's not an official publication, Mark Minasi's Secrets of the Wing Commander Universe is one of the better written game guides out there. This labor of love was published by Sybex around 1994 and its hefty 459 pages cover every game and add-on up to Privateer, excluding Righteous Fire. Special Operations 1 and 2 were not yet out when the official guide to WC1 & 2 was written, but this book has them covered. The first six chapters deal with hardware and software issues, background information on the ships and weapons, general flying tactics and strategies, and finally the storyline.

2013.263 (September 20, 2013)

Wing Commander's a Hit!

Privateer 2's release on GOG combined with a stellar sale on Wing Commander titles to create a wonderful looking sales chart today. WC games took the top six slots on the shooters' best selling list. Hopefully you managed to snag any missing members of your collection while they were just a few dollars. I think they did a great job on The Darkening's header image as well.

One More For The Confederation's Archives

GOG took some more good screenshots for Priv 2, and we want to make sure they get saved and seen. It's also fun to see how exactly they summarize the key features. And this is a somewhat new method of presentation: the game page for P2 includes its intro video. If it's been a while since you've fired up the game, give it a watch!

2012.264 (September 20, 2012)

Bridging The Gap

Roberts Space Industries has posted a new fiction teaser, 2380: Together We Rise, about the unification of Earth in the 24th Century. There's also a beautiful closeup of the carrier's bridge and command center. It's a pretty nice design!

Does All That Armor Slow Them Down?

ScoobyDoo's got two new models. The first one merges the Excalibur and Dragon fighters, which introduces a new variable into the long-running Dragon vs Excalibur debate. I would imagine the result is like neither the F-103 nor the F-107, however. The other images all depict a sleek late-model variant of the Rapier II.

2011.263 (September 20, 2011)

Six-Shooter Scares the Spacelanes

Zohrath has completed another fantastic fighter from the original Wing Commander game. He's chosen the Jalthi as the first Kilrathi design of his latest batch. Check out the series of pictures below to see how the ship went from base frame to textured beast!Going with a Jalthi next, it was always my favorite Kilrathi design in wc1.

Treasures of the Archangel Quadrant: AI Fighters

Today's Privateer 3 screenshots show an AI Vaktoth class light fighter in various stages of development--from the initial mesh through texturing to an action scene! It's not known if this is supposed to be the same Vaktoth seen in Wing Commander III and Prophecy... it certainly looks different!

2010.263 (September 20, 2010)

Inspiration & Gratitude Fuels Starcraft 2 Mod

Here's another brief update on the Starcraft 2 mod by CptnEisen. He's got big plans, but the first playable map sounds like an Arena-themed mode similar to the Battlecruiser attack/defense in the XBox Live Arcade game. We're anxious to see that beefy Broadsword in action too!Wow everyone, thanks for the positive feedback!

Last Chance to Grab Wing One!

Don't forget to go and download the Wing One soundtrack ASAP! The Amie Street distributor is going offline by Wednesday, September 22, but you can still grab the whole album for less than $9 right now. Cue the scramble music between the briefing room and flight deck!This is the soundtrack to the first Wing Commander game by Origin Systems.

2009.263 (September 20, 2009)

Bengal Bombers Beat Baktosh's Brood

Howard Day has built on his classic Concordia paint scheme and released shots of his awesome Broadsword painted in Tiger's Claw colors. It looks fantastic! He's also gone back to some of his earlier textures and added some marks to represent wear and tear.Do'h!

GamePro's Most Wanted Franchise Resurrections

NuAngel also spotted an article over at GamePro. The magazine polled its editors about which classic series need to come back... and you can see where this is going. Of course, Wing Commander is at the top of the list.

2008.264 (September 20, 2008)

Collateral Damage Sharpens Its Blade

JasonRocZ recently spent quite a bit of time revising his Rapier Vanguard and has produced an impressive Rapier Blade. The new textures included here emphasize the stabilizers on the forward fuselage to bridge the Wing Commander I and Super Wing Commander designs slightly. This popular Wing Commander Arena ship will appear in his upcoming Collateral Damage mod for WC Secret Ops. Jason is also hard at work on a variety of Nephilim ships with updated textures.

Star*Soldier Gloss: Page 39

This is the Star*Soldier gloss for the Crusader page: CONCEPT: Most Origin games included this type of in-joke, if not in their manuals then in the games themselves. Voices of War advertised the Bioforge movie, Victory Streak had a review of System Shock, etc. I should note that these were in-jokes - no one meant for all Origin games to have a shared continuity. The background is a heavily filtered version of (part of) the Crusader: No Remorse artwork.

2007.263 (September 20, 2007)

Standoff Episode 4 Dated

Here's another important date for you to save: September 26th. The Wing Commander: Standoff mod team has announced that the penultimate episode of their game will be released then! Here's the official word:Things are getting really close to completion now - the missions are in the final stages of bugfixing, we're only missing two pieces of music... and still waiting for quite a few voiceovers (although they've just about all been recorded now).

Special FX

Start your weekend right - with the Wing Commander movie! American cable network FX is airing Wing Commander on Saturday, September 22nd at 9 AM... so tune in! Maybe someday it'll make its way to HDNet...

2006.263 (September 20, 2006)

Meet The Saga Comm Officer

WC Saga's Sphynx wants to show us this screenshot of their custom communications VDU. This guy will give you clearance to land and will presumably scream at you when your carrier is destroyed.One of the areas in which Wing Commander excels is in its ability to personalize its epic stuggle, which it accomplished in part by giving a face, a believable personality, and in many cases a name to the many pilots and crews of the ships that the player encounters throughout the series. One way in which this feeling was generated was through the usage of communication visuals which showed the man, or the Kat, behind the machine.

New Unified Tiger's Claw

Lars has been working on a hybrid Bengal design that incorporates elements from Wing Commander 1, Academy TV and the movie. Not happy with the result so far, he's started over from scratch. This first screenshot shows the armor plating along the outside runway.

2005.263 (September 20, 2005)

Transports Ready For WC Tactics

A new set of ships screenshots has been released for the WC Tactics mod. The game now has transports in the form of Draymen and Diligents. Chevieblazer's Drayman was inspired by Howard Day's high quality model.You can find more information on similar projects in our Fan Project & Editing forums.

Lord of War Numbers Are In

New movie Lord of War has just survived it's first weekend in the US, and it seems that it hasn't done too badly at all. The movie is just one of eight this year to list Chris Roberts as a producer. It managed to take $9,390,144 over the course of the weekend earning the movie the number 3 spot in this week's top ten. Reviews have been mixed with 56% giving the movie a good review.

2004.264 (September 20, 2004)

Thomas Perl Fixes Up Privateer 2

Just over a year ago, Thomas Perl released the first edition of his patch to run the DOS version of Privateer 2 inside Windows. It had problems - but they're now fixed! Version Thomas has released version 2.0 of the patch which fixes such problems as joysticks not calibrating.

Ships of the Animated Series: Scimitar

Our next series of Wing Commander Academy Ships of the Day will focus on those which originally appeared in the original 1990 Wing Commander.The CF-105 Scimitar-class Medium Fighter is the only ship to appear in all thirteen episodes of Academy. The armament of the Scimitar on Academy is remarkably similar to that which appears in the original game: five missiles (two above the cockpit and three in hardpoints below the fuselage) and two forward lasers. There is one odd addition - Academy's Scimitars have a light caliber laser turret in their nose, which appears only in "On Both Your Houses.

2003.263 (September 20, 2003)

Homeworld 2's Kinda Neat

After playing Homeworld 2 a bunch, I realized how badly I'd actually like to play an updated Wing Commander mod. The gameplay is spread pretty well between small fighters are larger capships, and with the production element of it all, it's almost like a real time 3D Armada game. We've also had some more questions about the original Homeworld Wing Commander mod. Support for it dropped off about two years ago, but a page that still exists with information for it can be found here.

Freelancer Reckoning WC Mod On Hold

Bob announced at Crius today that the Reckoning Freelancer WC mod is on indefinite hold for now.Well, for one thing, I completed everything I set out to do, with some notable exceptions. Almost all the ships I wanted converted have, along with weapons, and I'm satisified with their stats. I think the progression is fluid enough, as well.

2002.263 (September 20, 2002)

MovieFone Love for WC

In its promotion for Ecks vs Sever, MovieFone asks "Which came first, the movie or the game?" After Tomb Raider, Resident Evil and others, Wing Commander is the final question.The fact that Freddie Prinze Jr. stars in this movie should've clued you in.

In Other News

Speaking of Prinze, if you didn't catch it in the magazines, Freddie Prinze Jr. and his fiance Sarah Michelle Gellar of "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" were married a few weeks ago. They recently starred together in "Scooby Doo" and met on the set of "I Know What You Did Last Summer." There's a joke about Matthew Lillard in there somewhere.

Wing Commander on German Television Tonight

As Stardust made us aware last week and CFKoch reminded us today, don't forget to catch Wing Commander on the "Pro 7" network at 8:15 pm tonight. It appears to be the first television showing in Germany.

1999.263 (September 20, 1999)

New WC Genre: Fan Crafts

Ryan Lagasse, a student at the Art Institute of Seattle, created a Wing Commander coaster as a school project. Below are the instructions to make one yourself and the accompanying artwork.Well I don't know what file format you guys like to take but I put it in jpg. Both sides are included in the one image.

New Zealand Movie Review

Weng Foo "Penguin" Ong from Auckland sent in a summary of the movie experience from a New Zealand perspective.I saw it the first opportunity I got and can't say I was disappointed. I was particularly impressed with the special effects sequences, which were easily on par with Star Wars. I liked the acting since Blair and Maniac had a bit more depth then they usually seemed to have.

1998.263 (September 20, 1998)

Just The Facts

Have you been wondering about the exact stats of the new Dust Cannon? How about the Excalibur? Needed to know exactly how many Red Manta were attacking the Transport? Your wait is over.

Secret Opsticle

He who brought life to the universe (Captain Johnny) sent me over a scan of an article on Secret Ops from an Austin newspaper. Check it out here. Below is Origin's Secret Ops team...

Mind More Missions?

Wing Commander fanatic Dude sent me a series of missions for Wing Commander Prophecy he's created! In a moment of uniqueness, he's also made briefings! Get the missions here and the shockwave briefing here.

LAME

A shocked Death sent me a copy of PC Gamer's new "Top 50 Games of All Time" list... anyone care to guess where Wing Commander was? Amazingly enough, it'll take over 50 guesses, since not even one WC made the list. Admittably not everyone in the universe shares the same passion for Wing Commander as some of us do, but to say that it's not one of the top 50 games ever?