News Collection: On This Day in WC News

2022.276 (October 3, 2022)

Vintage Television Show Reviews WC2

Today we've got a tiny 1992 video review from the British television show GamesMaster. Non-print reviews are quite rare from this era since we were still a couple years before magazines starting including multimedia cover discs. Wing Commander 2 is one of my favorite games, so I was anxious to see what they had to say. And boy, they did not like it!

2021.276 (October 3, 2021)

WC2 Experiment Tests 1080p Video Enhancement

This is something I definitely was not expecting. ODVS is well known for upscaling the full motion video includes in Wing Commander 3 and beyond, but this time he's taken a crack at Wing Commander 2. This is more just an experiment than anything - there are no plans for a wholesale enhancement, but it is interesting to see what his AI/neural net tools can do. The sharp pixel edge is removed and some fairly decent smoothing is applied to get the clip up to 1080p.

2020.277 (October 3, 2020)

Hamill Ended Up Doing Alright

HotT sent along an interesting video about the career prospects for Star Wars actors. It starts out with a look at how the original cast fared and then tries to extrapolate that onto some of the newer folks. Mark Hamill is up first, and they briefly talk about his time with Wing Commander. On top of his famous roles in WC3&4, he voice acted in the WC animated series and had an audio-only WC Movie cameo, which were right up his alley.

2019.276 (October 3, 2019)

All Wings Considered - Episode 27 - LIVE!

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 3 - Locanda System - 3DO Version Book Club - Heart of the Tiger Chapters 9 through 15 How much does it cost to print a manual, anyway? Demons, Banshees, Phantoms and Wraiths!

2018.276 (October 3, 2018)

Auction Alert: Billy Cain's Collection

Origin veteran Billy Cain produced both Wing Commander Prophecy and the long lost SNES port of Wing Commander II. He's been a good friend to our team and to the Wing Commander community for many years. Now he's selling some of the extremely rare Origin material he gathered while working for the company including team shirts and part of a screen used Wing Commander Prophecy costume! Team shirts are one of the rarest and most sought-after types of Origin ephemera.

2017.276 (October 3, 2017)

Back to the Shack

RadioShackCatalogs is an excellent resource for nostalgia-craving tech fans! The site offers high quality scans of 66 years worth of Radio Shack catalog. We've done the hard work for you, though, and have located the one listing for a Wing Commander game: Wing Commander III in the 1996 catalog! Chris Roberts' Strike Commander appears in the 1993 catalog, which was at the time an especially important new distribution deal for Origin.

2016.277 (October 3, 2016)

Still Haven't Heard Enough Of Khasra!

David Lanzafame got a great response to his WC2 Thrakhath/Emperor voiceover recreation, so he's gone ahead and rerecorded the entire intro. He voices a pretty compelling Blair, and his Khasra effect is an interesting choice. When they originally made Wing Commander 2, could they have possibly imagined people would be doing their own impersonations of Thrakhath's cousin more than twenty-five years later?!

2015.276 (October 3, 2015)

Red Alert 2's On The House

Electronic Arts' latest game to go on the house is Command & Conquer Red Alert 2. Titles in this program briefly become free to download and keep via EA's Origin games storefront. Wing Commander 3 and a number of other classic Origin Systems titles have been given away as a part of this program over the last couple years. The C&C series has had an interesting run with several incidental links to WC.

2014.276 (October 3, 2014)

Wing Commander Orchestration Wraps, Track List Announced

Wing Commander composer George Oldziey has published another status update regarding his crowd-funded live album project. The actual orchestration work has wrapped, and he's busy preparing the final materials for performance in Bratislava at the end of this month. This latest update also includes the track list for the 30-minute orchestra and choir session. His selection includes music from Wing 3, Wing 4 and Prophecy, all of which were scored for Origin by George.

2013.276 (October 3, 2013)

It's A Real Hot Button Issue

Jumper's custom keyboard has arrived! He decided to go with modular addon keys rather than a completely premade board due to manufacturer issues. They look good! I'd have thought the red keys would be the highlight, but the Kilrathi characters look really great in black and white too.

2012.277 (October 3, 2012)

Kilrathi Comcon Makes Sensors Cool

The latest Roberts Space Industries posting is a concept art drawing of the Kilrathi Comcon from the Wing Commander Movie. There's also some background information on what else the ship was used for in the film. The Thrak'hra class design is very eye-catching, and it's certainly one of the most imposing reconnaissance craft out there. It even seems to share quite a bit of style in common with kat ships from the games.

Seven Days Left

In other RSI news, there's a new poll that asks about Your First Chris Roberts Game. It starts with Times of Lore and Bad Blood and goes all the way to Freelancer. The winner so far is the original Wing Commander. Freelancer is in second with a surprisingly huge margin over Starlancer.

2011.276 (October 3, 2011)

Lego Minis All Lined Up

st3lt3k pointed out that we nevershowcased saf0775's full lineup of Lego minis. They're a pretty awesome assortment of classic WC fighters, and it's amazing how accurate they look with so few bricks. With Lego Digital Designer, you can view instructions on how to build them yourself! Grab them in Confed (20 k zip) or Kilrathi (16 k zip) format.

Collateral Damage Mod Wakes Up

It's been a long time since the last update on the Wing Commander Collateral Damage mod for Secret Ops, but JasonRocZ is back at work. He's posted two new screenshots of recent progress. The first is a Halsey class station as pictured in Wing Commander Arena, and the other is his light "Thresher" Nephilim craft.I'm still working on missions script.

2010.276 (October 3, 2010)

Wing Commander 2 Campaign Demo Released for Prologue

FekLeyrTarg reports that a new WC mod demo has been released for FreeSpace 2. Deathsnake is working on making a Wing Commander 2 style campaign as an addon to the WC Saga Prologue. Both English and German versions are available in 134 meg packages. There are two playable missions now, and an additional update should be released soon that includes four missions.

Think Back to the Most Expensive Year...

There's a new front page poll that asks about the biggest Wing Commander investment you've undertaken in a single year. The options are presented in US dollars, so hit the currency converter if needed. It'll be interesting to see how these results compare to the lifetime spending poll we asked in the past. Wingnuts that bought a new computer in 1994 with Wing Commander 3 as the overwhelming driver should count that.

2009.276 (October 3, 2009)

Download Day

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.

Making the Game: Web Fiction - Episode 2

Here's where things get interesting: variable fiction. Here's how these updates work: four Word documents were developed for each episode. A general, color-coded collection of all the text (here) and then linear versions for each site: default (no password), negative and positive.These updates are thanks to John "Captain Johnny" Guentzel, who provided several CD image archives of material used by the Wing Commander Prophecy development team!

2008.277 (October 3, 2008)

CD-ROMantics

Ars Technica has published a look back at Myst in the context of having created the CD-ROM gaming market. It begins by acknowledging Wing Commander:On September 24, 1993, Broderbund Software released the game Myst, and in the process, substantially contributed to kick-starting the nascent CD-ROM software industry. Myst, to be fair, was only one of several excellent games that shipped around this time and made good use of that new-fangled CD-whatsis thingy—The Seventh Guest, Wing Commander III, and Alone in the Dark were all popular titles that sold well. But Myst shattered sales records and set marks that stood until The Sims came along in 2002.

Star*Soldier Gloss: Page 52

This is the Star*Soldier gloss for the third Port Broughton page:CONCEPT: See the previous post!REFERENCES-The screenshots on this page are both from Arena itself, from the Midway map. Is it just me or does the exploding Dralthi look more like a Vaktoth in that frame?"lighting seem almost Kilrathi" - References Hobbes' preference that for a red light to emulate Kilrah, from the Wing Commander III novelization.

2007.276 (October 3, 2007)

Read Your Own Adventure

Much has been made of Deacon's 'Das Erwachen' Privateer 2 fan-novel in the last several months... and now you can read the whole thing for yourself (assuming you speak German)! Deacon is currently in the process of serializing the story at our own message boards. He's posting section after section to this thread where German readers will eventually find the entire text of the book!

Point of Origin: Vol. 1, No. 5... Again!

This is part six of our series highlighting archived copies of Point of Origin, Origin Systems' internal newsletter (more than 300 foisted monthly). Your eyes aren't deceiving you - for whatever reason there are two different Point of Origin Vol. 1, No. 5s.

2006.276 (October 3, 2006)

Gemini Gold Refines Base Graphics

It's been a little while since the last Gemini Gold update, so John Cordell sent this little reminder about the game. Although the team is still held up for engine rework, the next version of the fan project is coming along well. This is a sample of their improved refinery base graphic. A very pretty Centurion is also cruising nearby.

DarkStar Lighting Up Reviewers' Lives

DarkStar One is one of the more popular space sims released lately, and positive reviews for it are still showing up all over. Quite a few articles compare it to Wing Commander or Privateer, including the piece at Game Industry News. The author of this review specifically singles out the similarities between Darkstar and Privateer 2, which he considers one of the best games of all time. If you haven't heard a lot about this game, check out the lengthy article here.

2005.276 (October 3, 2005)

Zohrath Finishes Model Vaktoth

Little more than a week after first showing off the in-progress work on his new Vaktoth model, Zohrath has called it finished. The textures have been put in place and all is looking great. One in-progress picture below has just a few textures, and the other is the finished product. Don't forget to click the discuss link below if you wish to give feedback.

Happy Birthday Ser Arris

Privateer 2 star Clive Owen turns 41 today. It's been nine years since his last role in the Wing Commander series, and he certainly looks a little older these days. He has half a dozen projects currently in production, including Sin City 2.

Dragon*Con Gallery Part 7 Online

The last part of our gallery is online and features a sort of good vs. evil theme. Random costumed women vs Halman anyway. There was a point to it all though as we were attempting to recreate a scene from a sketch we had drawn.

2004.277 (October 3, 2004)

Ships of the Animated Series: Achilles

Achilles-class hulls appear as destroyers in "Chain of Command" and as transports in "Recreation" and "Invisible Enemy." They carry at least three dual-mount laser cannons.

Private Space Flight Scheduled Tomorrow

Meson reminded us that the second test flight of the SpaceShipOne craft is scheduled to launch Monday morning. If it's successful, it will qualify for the famous $10 million Ansari X Prize prize for commercial space ventures. The Science Channel should be covering the event live. The flight should be viewable online at www.

2003.276 (October 3, 2003)

From Lev Arris to James Bond?

Kris noticed that Murphy's Place is discussing the growing rumor that actor Clive Owen is under consideration for a future James Bond starring role. Although some places are discounting the rumor, IMDB and MSNBC have picked up on it as well. Owen played the bad ass Lev Arris in Privateer 2. Although rumors like this often tend to prove false, it'd certainly be neat if he got the role.

Prophecy Advance Hex Edit Codes Available

CodeTwink has compiled a list of known hex edits to modify Prophecy Advance. If you have a Code Breaker GBA, you can enter these to modify gameplay.Enable Code (Must Be On): 0000967A 000A 10000468 0007Infinite Health: 8201B970 032AInfinite Fuel: 3201B989 0068Infinite Decoys: 3201B996 0063No Overheat: 3201B959 00FFMax KPS: 8201B992 1387More can be found here. Our previously released Easter Eggs can be found here.

2001.276 (October 3, 2001)

Conquest : Frontier Wars Review

Crius.net's Bob McBob recently reviewed this Digital Anvil title. Here's a snippet :There are little touches that remind you this is developed by the Wing Commander folks (besides the intro title stating once for all that this is a "Roberts Brothers Production") - there's the aformentioned Pegasus NavCom cameo, and the Mantis and Celereons pull duty for the Kilrathi and Nephilim (or Zerg and Protoss - though the races aren't nearly as varied as in Starcraft). Either the folks at DA have been taking good notice of Prophecy, or bugs are just really popular baddies.

Rendered Steltek Ship

2000.277 (October 3, 2000)

Rubbing it In

Jamal Ahmad Khan noticed a reference to Privateer Online... at Digital Anvil's site, of all places. In the Loose Cannon section, under Team Bios. Apparently Allen Jackson worked on the ill-fated game...

I'm Seeing Red

Peter Telep's newest book, Red Planet, was released today! A short review will follow in a few days... expect some delay, as the next Dune book - House Harkonnen - came out today as well.

1999.276 (October 3, 1999)

Other XWA Conversions Possible

Following up a bit on our previous update, there are some early drafts of the Cerberus and Midway at Steele's website.

Fan Made Wrath of Kilrah Demo Released

David Suttle is running a website for simple neat freeware games he's creating. Rrecently listed was demo for a "Wrath of Kilrah" game he's thinking about making. If there's positive feedback he'll continue work on it. You can find DSGames here and download the demo here (1.

1998.276 (October 3, 1998)

New and Improved - Maverick Team

There's going to be some new faces in the Wing Commander team, as Next Generation reports in their new article, including information that Andy Hollis, known for work on multiple projects, will be replacing Rod Nakamoto. Thanks to Delekhan for the news.

Secret Ops Rapier?

Just when you thought that HCl has kicked enough ass to blow up the Midway, he does it again... this time releasing a Vision (WCP/SO) engine conversion of the Rapier fighter from WC1/2! Download the model here.