News Collection: On This Day in WC News

2025.355 (December 21, 2025)

In Memory Yet PlayStation'd

Here's a fascinating preservation project: MemCards.art aims to archive all of the tiny game-specific icons that would be saved on original PlayStation memory cards. Every original PlayStation game had a 16x16 pixel icon to represent what game a particular save came from… and of course that included Wing Commander III and Wing Commander IV on the platform. And their icons were animated!

2024.356 (December 21, 2024)

Flight Deck Lighting Gets a Stylish Upgrade

Mac recently got a new Blender tool that adds some gritty lighting effects. It adds a real moody stream of light coming down from the overhead hangars fixtures depicted here. And you get to enjoy it with the Ferret, Rapier and Sabre! I recently bought an addon called Glared from the Blender Market.

2023.355 (December 21, 2023)

EA Discounts WC Games to 99 Cents

Most of the Wing Commander games may be excluded from the holiday sale at GOG this year, but Electronic Arts didn't forget about them! The five WC games sold directly from EA.com (formerly the Origin Store) have been marked down as a part of the Player Favorites Sale. Each game is only $0.

2022.355 (December 21, 2022)

German WC Review Vids Go In Depth

Today we’ve got a set of video reviews by the Best Computergames channel. They’re going through and cataloging the top titles of the early ‘90s with extensive overviews of each game. As they’ve gotten more experience, the clips have gotten more elaborate. Privateer clocks in at 8 minutes, WC3 at 22 and WC4 is nearly a half hour long.

2021.355 (December 21, 2021)

WC3 Video Review Dates Back to Early 1995

Swizzley has posted a vintage video review for Wing Commander 3. This might not sound like a big deal, but in February 1995 this would have been on the bleeding edge of multimedia technology. A full ten years before YouTube first came online, something like this was a very rare treat. Video downloads were painful on dialup, so these were distributed on disc with Interactive Entertainment Magazine.

2020.356 (December 21, 2020)

New Techniques Significantly Boost Quality of Oldest FMV Footage

There's a new revision to the tools that ODVS uses to create his magic video enhancements (the Artemis AI), so Owen ran the games through their paces to see the results. Prophecy isn't quite conducive to the upgrade, but WC4 might look a bit better. On the other hand, the potential improvement to WC3 is stunning. This new iteration of the Topaz Video Enhancer seems to be particularly good at improving the looks of the blockier low res footage, so don't miss that clip below.

2019.355 (December 21, 2019)

Visual Guide Addendum: Pin-Ups

Last week, we released a visual guide to propaganda posters in the Wing Commander movie which included a great deal of information. But readers were quick to point out one thing it did not include: the various pin-ups that also decorate the pilot's mess' walls. For this addendum, we've identified as many as possible and have also provided some history behind why they were included in the first place! There are two shirtless men to the left and a woman in a swimsuit with boxing gloves to the right as Blair and Maniac first enter the mess.

2018.355 (December 21, 2018)

Homeworld Mod is on Another Planet

The Homeworld Remastered Mod continues to make great strides as we approach the end of the year. The latest enhancement is a big boost to the space backgrounds. L.I.

2017.355 (December 21, 2017)

Clash Of The Medium Fighters

Last time we got characters, and this time it's ships. At first glance, you might think it's another Dralthi and Hornet, but it's actually a Dralthi and Scimitar! Another snazzy take on two classics.

2016.356 (December 21, 2016)

Happy Winter Solstice!

It's the shortest day of the year, so that means it's time for our shortest update of the year! "What? That's not a thing!" you say?

2015.355 (December 21, 2015)

Magazine Highlights Mark Hamill's WC Deal

Between The Force Awakens, Squadron 42 and all of his voice acting endeavors, Mark Hamill's probably pretty well off these days, but did the original Star Wars make him rich? That's the question posed by the November 2001 issue of Empire magazine. His answer is that Star Wars paid well, but that he really struck gold with Wing Commander! The full article is actually a great read today, since it asks Mr.

2014.355 (December 21, 2014)

Last Chance for Amiga Music Album

In 2011, Maz Sound released Immortal 4, a two disc album with Amiga videogame music. The album has a runtime of 158 minutes and contains 35 familiar videogame tunes, all of them beautifully remastered. The final track is a recording of a Wing Commander song, performed live by none other than Team FAT. Maz Sound has announced that they are shutting down their shop on December 28, so this is your last chance to pick up a copy.

2013.355 (December 21, 2013)

Lord Vader Texts Admiral Tolywn

Wulf tipped us off about a series of new Sprint commercials featuring none other than James Earl Jones and Malcolm McDowell. These two sci-fi greats have been paired together to honor the important things people do with their cell phones. There's oven a dozen you can find on the Sprint YouTube channel. We've posted two here, plus a neat behind-the-scenes look on the bottom.

2012.356 (December 21, 2012)

Chris Roberts Talks Wing Commander

PCGamesN has conducted a new interview with Wing Commander creator Chris Roberts. It's a fairly extensive Q&A session that continues to discuss Mr. Roberts' thoughts on crowdfunding and his new game. Chris has been making the making the media rounds fairly regularly since announcing Star Citizen, and there have been quite a few similar interviews out there, but this one highlights his current thoughts in regards to the Wing Commander series.

2011.355 (December 21, 2011)

New WC Mush Open for Adventure

There's an early Christmas present for fans of text-based RPGs: the new Wing Commander New Horizon MUSH is now open! The project has unveiled a slick website with background information, in-universe headline news and more. Instructions on how to quickly connect and play are available here. Special community events will be held over the next week to help welcome new players.

For Conspicuous Gallantry And Intrepidity..

On 21 December 1861, the Congress of the United States authorized the Medal of Honor, sometimes referred to as the Congressional Medal of Honor, for United States Navy enlisted personnel. The Medal of Honor for other services would be created by President Lincoln in July 1862. Between December 1861 and March 1915 459 enlisted naval personnel received the Medal of Honor. Legislation in 1915 made officers of all services eligible for the award.

2010.355 (December 21, 2010)

Wilson Always Happy to See a Wingnut

Klavs recently got the opportunity to see one of Tom Wilson's stand up comedy routine. His fantastic review is right in line with most reports about Mr. Wilson's live performances, and he even got the Maniac to autograph his new DVD! The 2011 tour schedule has not been posted yet, but Tom makes appearances in different cities around the US about once a month.

2009.355 (December 21, 2009)

Steer Clear of Scylla

Major Payne is working on building a detailed Movie-based Snakier model that may be used in WC Invasion. The structure so far took about 20 hours of modeling, and it looks like a great start. With various images from the net and those provided by AD, I've tried my best to come up with a reasonable 3d model for my mod. I did go way over budget on the poly count with this and it's quite innaccurate, but I figured I may as well post and get some feedback of some kind.

Three Dimensions are Better

Hot on the heels of Part 6, lew82 is busily plugging away on Part 7 of Frontier - Prelude to Darkness. He's released a cool comparison that shows how far he's come since last year. The shots below picture the same scene in his early 2D style compared with the 3D rendering techniques he's using today. What an improvement!

2008.356 (December 21, 2008)

Vote Here!

The year is quickly coming to an end, so it's once again time to vote for our annual Web Site and Fan Project of the Year awards. We're constantly impressed by the number of fans who keep investing their time in exciting community projects, and so we love this opportunity to recognize some of them. There isn't enough space to recap every single undertaking from the last twelve months, but the items below are a great start. Reading this reminder about all the recent activity should make you proud to be a Wingnut.

You Haven't Seen Delgo

Hey, what's Freddie Prinze Jr. doing these days? He's (voice-)starring in the new movie Delgo along with Malcolm McDowell and Jennifer Love Hewitt. Unfortunately, Delgo opened last weekend as the worst wide-release premiere ever with barely half a million dollars total on over two thousand screens.

2007.355 (December 21, 2007)

EA Announces Tiberium

Electronic Arts has announced a new game in the Command & Conquer franchise - a first person spinoff called Tiberium. This new tactical shooter is set a decade after the events of Command & Conquer 3. Alien artifacts left behind in the last game lead to an invasion that the player must help repel now. In addition to action elements, the game will involve coordination between infantry teams, high tech vehicles and aerial/orbital elements.

The Art of Wing Commander Arena - Part Forty-Three

This is the third of three 'environment' concepts which seem to draw on the background imagery of the classic games. This one offers a massive star which arcs deadly fire onto the map. This is part of a series of beautiful Wing Commander Arena concept images graciously provided by Gaia Industries. You can find the original article here.

2006.355 (December 21, 2006)

Holding The Line Chapter 213

With only a month between this and the previous chapter, it seems like the Holding The Line story is now getting back on track. As always, Raptor has the details about this latest chapter: Hey all, Raptor here. HTL continues with Part 5 of the "Welcome To Hell" series, written by James Andrew "JAG" Greenhow. This series has traditionally followed the Confed reserve forces as they prepared to back up the main fleet.

Jumpgate Upgrade Coming Soon

The long running massively multiplayer space sim Jumpgate turned five years old this fall, and it's about to get a major upgrade to celebrate. The game's original publisher ran out of money a few years back, but the developers stuck it out, streamlined their operations and manage to successfully operate the game to this day. SirSkippy noticed a blurb at Kotaku about the MMO's upcoming overhaul. Few details are forthcoming on the specific improvements to expect, but improved graphics and new options seem to be a given.

2005.355 (December 21, 2005)

Scout's Honor

Howard Day has finished work on the Tarsus-class Merchant Scout cockpit for the Wing Commander: Pioneer project... and it looks spectacular with all its VDUs activated! He has also designed an all new cockpit for the Hunchback, one of the new designs created specifically for the project (far right). Also available are newly rendered Quicktime VR movies of the two cockpits.

Just the Specs, Ma'am

Ever wonder what kind of missiles Governor Menesch arms his Centurion with? What kind of guns the Kilrathi upgraded their fighters with in 2670? Well, now you can find out - I've extracted all of the in-game ship specifications from Privateer and Righteous Fire. They're now available in stately CIC Article format with a few attractive illustrations.

2004.356 (December 21, 2004)

Battle of the Dark Screenshots

The Standoff team has shown off a screenshot from their intro that highlights a darkness graphical effect. In the blackness of space, only the hangar lights are visible. It's a cool effect when used appropriately. Not to be outdone, the Saga team has released a screenshot that's entirely black!

Busy Times For Chris Roberts

It seems that demand for Chris Roberts' talents have rocketed. While Chris was producer for just The Punisher this year, he has been named as producer or co-producer for seven movies due for release in 2005, and even one due in 2006. His IMDB record lists the upcoming movies as The Jacket, Edison, Ask the Dust, Lord of War, Lucky Number Slevin, The Big White, The Bird, and Grounded. Strangely, mention of another one of Chris Roberts' projects American Knight has disappeared, but if that is still going ahead, that will be his ninth project in progress.

2003.355 (December 21, 2003)

Nominate Prophecy at IGN

A lot of gaming sites are doing their year-end reviews now. Some are carrying out different awards and will ask for reader submissions next month, but IGN has gone ahead and put theirs up already. Since it was IGN that first revealed Prophecy Advance to the world through a Technological Excellence Award, it would be somewhat fitting if the game won something here. They are taking nominations in several categories.

KIS Karga's Fusion Engines Brought Online

Today in the year 2670 a team from the FRLS Independence restarted the fusion engines aboard the abandoned KIS Karga. Dubbed Project Goliath, the operation to restore this abandoned Kilrathi Bhantkara Class Carrier took a positive turn this weekend. The Karga is operational; emergency power, lights, some instruments and partial artificial gravity are online. The Karga's fusion engines are brought online.

2002.355 (December 21, 2002)

Ooingu Komandaa

If you've ever wondered how to write "open fire" in Japanese, today's special movie is just for you. We have a nice DVD rip of the Japanese trailer for the Wing Commander movie. It differs from the US trailer in a number of ways, including different music and Japanese subtitles. They also corrected the date to 2654.

Holding The Line Chapter 148

Raptor has sent us the latest Holding The Line chapter, but has left me wondering what he means by "silly season." I can only imagine he is referring to Christmas, which for him happens in the middle of Summer. Now *that's* silly! Hey all, Raptor here.

WCPolaroids: Casey (23/24)

I really want to know why the expression on Casey's face is this weird..

2000.356 (December 21, 2000)

A Means to an Edit

Thomas Bruckner's Wing Commander Homepage has been updated with a list of multiplayer game types Origin had planned to include with Prophecy -- interesting stuff. There's also a screenshot of a new mission compiler which you can gain access to by subscribing to a mailing list.

Dance, Dance, Dance!

While trawling the depths of NBCi, Kn'thrak came across this "Borg Rock Music Video" -- which, for some reason, features music from Secret Ops. That's weird, wild stuff.

1998.355 (December 21, 1998)

In the Works?

Fredm posted the following translation of the Gamestar article/blurb on Privateer 3. I've gotten several similar notes in the mail, so I'm guessing it's real... I'm excited. The next game in the Privateer series will be a online multiplayer game.

KillerBees Poll

The Killer Bee's are holding a Privateer 3 poll, to see what the general populace wants in the next Privateer game. You can go vote here.