News Collection: On This Day in WC News

2025.030 (January 30, 2025)

M-Space WC RPG Adds Hornet Light Fighter & Preliminary Character

We reported last year that Narrarrol was building out a Wing Commander RPG in the M-Space ruleset. He had a Salthi ready to go at the time, and now its opposing Hornet is ready. He's published a whole article at his blog about the creation process. It's in Spanish, but you can easily translate the process into your language of choice.

2024.030 (January 30, 2024)

WC3 PSX's Cheeky Credits

Some silly developer jokes slipped into the Wing Commander III PSX credits!

2023.030 (January 30, 2023)

Listen to Two Different Grayson Burrows Voiceovers

LOAF and the team are busy working on Privateer-themed projects over on the CIC Discord server, and that inspired me to share a quick comparison that some players might have overlooked. Everyone loves the Privateer intro. It's memorable, action-packed and showcases the cutting edge of 1993 multimedia prowess. "Who are you that flies so good!?

2022.030 (January 30, 2022)

Fixin’ for a New Poll

Today we've got a new poll about your favorite mechanics in the Wing Commander series. There's a number of really good options, so we expect it to be quite competitive! There's just one Kilrathi choice, but we actually have several droid-based selections. Our annual new year's poll was also interesting this time around.

2021.030 (January 30, 2021)

Mix and Match Your Sci-fi Elements

Here's a slightly odd one. Some might ask, "Why?" AD ran across this and answered, "Why not?" Barnaby Jones has 'reimagined' the intro to Star Trek Discovery with two key changes: it's in black and white and is now set to the Wing Commander Overture.

2020.030 (January 30, 2020)

All Wings Considered - Episode 36 - LIVE!

We are BACK! The latest episode of ALL WINGS CONSIDERED is live now! All Wings Considered is the CIC's first ever streaming variety show which features news, conversation and gameplay relating to our favorite series. This week's Nav Points include: Wing Commander III - Loki System A Closer Look at the Behemoth Space Patches!

2019.030 (January 30, 2019)

All About Origin's CD-ROM Editions

Shout out to Origin’s 1993 “CD-ROM Edition” graphic. That’s how you know it’s a CD-ROM Edition! They went with a much more subtle version from 94 to 95. Wings of Glory is so handsome!

2018.030 (January 30, 2018)

Space Game Junkie Takes On Privateer

The super cool blog/community hub Space Game Junkie covers all things space sims, but has not actually livestreamed a Wing Commander game before. Admin Brian Rubin set out to fix this oversight by making Privateer his game of week, and he's been exploring the Gemini Sector just about every day since. In each of his nightly 40-minute episodes, you can follow along as his upgrades his ship, takes down pirates, joins the Mercenaries Guild and ventures beyond the Troy System. All in all, it's proving to be a challenging experience!

2017.030 (January 30, 2017)

Sharing Standoff's Sim Soundtrack

Wing Commander Standoff is a masterpiece fan creation that closely follows the events of Wing Commander Fleet Action that led up to the Battle of Earth. It's the recipient of six Fan Project of the Year awards and is renowned for its captivating cutscenes, extensive voiceovers, branching gameplay and exciting action. One thing that hasn't gotten a ton of attention is its music, and its little-known simulator tracks are even more obscure. 2fb recently found some of the work he did on these and has posted them alongside the slick title theme by Michael Mahadeen.

2016.030 (January 30, 2016)

Medium Size Capships Get Visual Upgrades & New Orders

Back on the Homeworld front, L.I.F. has taken to texturing capships to continue the graphical overhaul of his mod.

2015.030 (January 30, 2015)

CGM Looks At Celebrities In Games

CGMagazine's Kate Richards recently posted a piece about celebrity actors in videogames. From Norris to Spacey: Celebs in Video Games touches on voice acting, the full motion video craze of the 1990s, and finally the shift to motion captured animation. Check it out here. Many 90s games also used full motion video as a way to create realistic theatrical cut scenes.

2014.030 (January 30, 2014)

Hellcat Model Ready to be Revved Up

Whiplash has updated his wooden Hellcat model with some very detailed engine thrusters. The individual nozzle sections were made by hand and painted with a reflective silver material that catches light well. With such delicate crafting involved, the smaller mini thrusters have yet to be added, but we're anxious to see what he comes up with. The final image hows off a Star Citizen render that Whiplash used for some high resolution inspiration.

2013.030 (January 30, 2013)

Noble Fleet Colors Highlighted in Enigma

Deathsnake has released a new batch of wallpaper-quality images that show off some hot Confed hardware in the Enigma 2666 engine. The textures have all been tweaked to reaffirm the classic WC2 feel. First up is the glorious Concordia, and we also get to see it flanked by a Gilgamesh and Clydesdale. A carrier (dreadnought) would be lost without her fighters though, so there's also a varied mix of strike craft to fill the flight deck.

2012.030 (January 30, 2012)

Catching Up With Saga - GamePlay Complete!

WC Saga hit an important milestone recently - it went gameplay complete, meaning that it's completely playable - but not yet perfected. The team is going back now to revamp their Prologue demo and continue bug hunting. Here's some new screenshots and their announcement: We have reached an important milestone that has been a very long time in the making. All 50 of the missions in the main campaign are now finalized; The Darkest Dawn is now complete!

2011.030 (January 30, 2011)

Lego Crew Heads to the Hangar

Mr. Lee has more awesome Lego art to show off. The first image is an example of the comic adventure that Marcus plans to make. That's clever use of a Lego prop there.

Select a Setting for the Next Wing Commander

The new poll asks what timeframe you would like for the next Wing Commander game. There's quite a range to choose from! Options begin with the early war events prior to Wing Commander 1 and end with the Kindred turmoil in Privateer 2. A big swath of time has been carved aside for the Nephilim War after Secret Ops, and Arena kicks off the largely unknown events of the 28th Century.

2010.030 (January 30, 2010)

Download Recap

Despite chewing through well over a terabyte of traffic so far, we have a lot of upload allowance to spare for the month of January. We have plenty of entertaining files that you may have missed in the past. We recommend a download manager to help the large files along. Below are just a few of our favorites.

2009.030 (January 30, 2009)

Name That Fighter

JasonRocZ is letting you pick a name for the Border Worlds medium fighter design that will feature in Wing Commander Collateral Damage. Will it be the Viper, Cobra, Butterfly, Trident or Stinger? Polling stations are open until February 3rd. More pictures and detailed stats can be found in this month's news archive.

Outlander Reaches Wider Audience

The American release of Chris Roberts' Outlander has expanded to more theaters. Additional screeens in Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, New York, North Carolina, Illinois, Ohio, Texas, Michigan, Florida, Nevada, Maryland and California have been added. Find the complete list of locations here. There will also be a special screening in Seattle on February 17 followed by a live interview with the film's directory.

2008.030 (January 30, 2008)

Congratulations Arena Tournament Winners

Last Saturday's Arena Tournament was a blast! The Wing Commander community has some great players. A few photographs and score totals are below. Dundradal won a one-year XBox Live subscription for taking first place.

The Art of Wing Commander Arena - Part Sixty-Two

This shows early work on the '3D' aspect of the 3D avatars - in this case, a Kilrathi warrior. You actually saw him earlier in the rough 'lounge' artwork! 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.

2007.030 (January 30, 2007)

Any Network Executives In The House?

AD noticed that 20th Century Fox maintains a neat website about the Wing Commander Movie in its online catalog for television distribution rights. It's accessible by searching for Wing Commander at FoxNow here. The resulting page includes synopsis information, updated cast biographies and miscellaneous credits for the film. HBO and CineMax purchased the movie for numerous standard and high definition television broadcasts all throughout last year, but Fox is looking for a new distributor in 2007.

Get Wing Commmander Cheap

FoxStore's $7.98 is a good deal, but akula65 reminded us that Amazon.com is currently having a $4.97 sale.

2006.030 (January 30, 2006)

Wing Commander FL Integrates Two More Ships

More shots from the Freelancer WC conversion pack have been released. These show off the new Panther and Dragon models that will be implemented in Warzog's next release. It'll probably be a couple weeks before people will be able to try these for themselves, but these are neat looking shots that we wanted to share right away. The color balance is particularly awesome.

Secret Kilrathi Build Plans Leaked

Staruss made a neat little item for Wing Commander fans with spare Lego parts around. He has created instructions for Wingnuts to make their own Mini Dralthis in just six steps. There's only about fifteen pieces required, and soon you'll be ready to field your own Kilrathi raiding party.

2005.030 (January 30, 2005)

Rank and File

When the original Wing Commander was released in 1990, it featured an easy to understand system of Space Forces ranks based on those used by the United States Air Force. When the series made the jump to full motion video, the rank insignia's changed to a series of geometric shapes -- and while the amazing Victory Streak manual gave a comprehensive inter-service rank chart, it did not provide an explanation of what the new symbols meant. With that in mind, the CIC is proud to present an all new article collecting all available information on military ranks in the Wing Commander continuity! We've collected information and graphics relating to ranks from every branch of the service in both the 'talking head' and 'FMV' games...

Space Sim First Look: Star Rush

The Russian game publisher 1c is working with a developer named Crioland to produce Star Rush. The game has the unique distinction of being set in a galaxy with parallels to the 19th Century American gold rush. Cyberion reports that it's based upon the Tomorrow - War novel trilogy, which is supposed to be a very good thing. There will be a primary story with some free form play, and combat takes place both in space and during atmospheric scenes.

2004.030 (January 30, 2004)

Several New Ultima X Updates Surface

The official Ultima X website has updated with a variety of new information. There's a new video, screenshots, bestiary entry and more. They also have an interesting survey. UXO seems to be shaping up as a fairly interesting combat and character based massively multiplayer game.

Battle Stations Team Still Upbeat

Although it's been a little quiet for a couple weeks, the team from WC Battle Stations is still working hard on their project. Recent efforts have gone towards end level bosses and some basic story elements. They've also added a staff member. I will like to announce that Alex "Rylex" Grober will be helping us with the creation of the Video Scenes for WCB.

2003.030 (January 30, 2003)

EA's At It Again!

Gaming-Age, GameSpot and other sites are reporting EA's record QUARTERLY income of $1.23 billion, a 48% increase from this time last year. It's also that fateful time of year again. Each spring as the EA fiscal year comes to a close and EA realizes its massive profits, it's time for them to figure out where they can consolidate.

Wing Commander Also Showing in Argentina

Ghost reports that the Wing Commander movie is also showing in Argentina this evening. It will show on FOX at 10:00 pm. The presentation will also feature subtitles instead of previous Spanish dubbing. Apparently, "FOX ROXORS.

Holding The Line Turns Four

Wing Commander Aces story arc Holding the Line coordinated by ex-agwc poster Raptor turned four years old this week. They've kept it going strong for a long time now and continue to turn out exciting chapters in their PBM campaign. HTL now represents more than half of the WC Aces Club's eight year history. You can read up on this story here.

2002.030 (January 30, 2002)

More Books!

Heart of the Tiger was kind enough to send in pictures of TWO more German WC guides! Ahh, there are so many! Seen below are guides for Wing Commander 1/2 and Wing Commander 3! If anyone has any more information (publisher, author, availability, ISBN#, etc) on any German Wing Commander guides, please contact me immediately, so we can build a complete WC bibliography.

Summer of Freelancer

GameStop is now reporting that Freelancer is due on June 1st -- not January 30th as previously claimed. Good news for people expecting the best game possible from many of the people who brought us Wing Commander... and lets face it, we're used to waiting. For up to the minute Freelancer news and information, be sure to check Lancers Reactor.

2001.030 (January 30, 2001)

Cliff Yablonski Hates Us

It's long been known that Something Awful's Cliff Yablonksi Hates You, but did you know that he also hates me, LOAF and Wing Commander author Chris McCubbin as well? You can find more on this shocking revelation here.

The Man, The Mystery

To further our happy theme today, we're going to remind everyone that they can get plenty of happy music from the CIC's resident master composer, ace-1. Familiar classics like "Darfswartz Bobo and the Magic Panda" and "AimlessAlgernon'sJourneyThroughTimidity" or new hits such as "Tuna Fish" or "LOAF's Anthem" are available to download for free in mp3 format. "Nonexistent Album No.4" and "Voxel Dargon" are also available to purchase for the low price of $6.

1999.030 (January 30, 1999)

Today, Junior!

If on Monday, February 1st I start acting less mature for my age (if that's possible) there's a very good reason: the Wing Commander Movie Junior Adaptation has shipped from Barnes & Noble, and will be here on Monday. No handbook yet, but it's close enough to feel it...

Whetting The Appetite

I just got back from a showing of She's All That starring both Freddie Prinze Jr. and Matthew Lillard (Blair and Maniac in the WC movie coming soon). Some people might be turned off because She's All That appears to be aimed at teenage girls, but it really is a pretty decent, above average, movie. Watching it just reaffirmed my belief that Prinze and Lillard will be great in the WC movie.

The Book Saga Continues

Barnes & Noble now lists the Confederation Handbook and the Junior Movie Adaptation as being In Stock. I haven't received a ship notice yet, and I'm not sure whether or not they send things out on Saturdays, but I'll let you know when I do. Looks like the books themselves will be in our hands on either Monday or Tuesday. I, and according to the polls most of you, can't wait for that handbook...

Buy This Book

Well, UPS was kind enough to deliver my copy of the Wing Commander Movie adaptation yesterday afternoon... and what can I say? It was the one of the best WC books ever, quite possibly the best.The Good: The dedication in the book is "for the fans", and no statement could be closer to the truth - Peter Telep has done his research.