News Collection: On This Day in WC News

2025.029 (January 29, 2025)

Cruise Over to Beach Day in Your Tarsus

rap1983 took a break from 3D printing to share the latest progress on his current Tarsus model. Although he doesn't necessarily consider it complete, I really like how it's posed with trees in the background and a service/tow truck working underneath. That's a really nice touch! My current mockup of my Tarsus.

2024.029 (January 29, 2024)

Acknowledging the Inventor of WC Radar: Denis Loubet!

And here’s a fascinating Wing Commander I behind-the-screens story I had never heard from Denis Loubet! We alluded to this in our big post about how radar works, but never reported on the original anecdote: LOAF: Is there anything more thrilling than the Wing Commander I box art? Despite the claim that “what you see is what you play” it’s not a screenshot but a digital piece carefully composed by the incomparable Denis Loubet! Loubet: I invented the radar display as a super-quick way to know which direction to turn to bring a target into view!

2023.029 (January 29, 2023)

Quick & Light Versus Tough & Powerful

We've got a couple of very nice new updates to a pair of Klavs' WC2-era models. The Sabre that he's been working on this year has gotten a revamped TCS Tarawa texture with nods to the events of End Run. There's also an all new take on the Ferret, which you can tell is the P-64D Super Ferret variant thanks to the pair of heat seeking missiles. It gets a similar new livery to the Sabre based around the In-System Security paint scheme.

2022.029 (January 29, 2022)

And the Winner Is...

Votes have been coming in all month, and there's been a clear trend in the results. As January is coming to a close, we're ready to announce the winners! This year the numbers were pretty clear cut. With that being said, every project got a good handful of votes, which shows how there's something for everyone brewing in the community.

2021.029 (January 29, 2021)

Big Mac Attack

Another genuine treasure in the mail today: that time the Kilrathi Emperor met Putt-Putt. (What a compilation!). This set includes Wing Commander 3, the WC4 Demo and Super Wing Commander all in one box!

2020.029 (January 29, 2020)

Moongate Art Nearly Finished

The main companion art piece for Through the Moongate, from Wing Commander and Ultima VII to Portalarium has its major drawing elements and is mostly colored in now. There are a lot of awesome Origin memories commemorated in one place here, and I love the Kilrathi and Dralthi bearing down on them all. Artist Manda has also added a thoughtful aside on how the lack of color potentially changes the image, which is an interesting concept. If you'd like to own a copy yourself, original project backers who supported the book have an option to add a cloth version of this painting for €30 by contacting author Andrea Contato.

2019.029 (January 29, 2019)

Wing Commander Meme of the Day: Do You Even Lift?

Ouch. Too soon?

2018.029 (January 29, 2018)

Details All Set For Wing Commander Jazz Recording

George Oldziey is moving forward at full speed towards his live recording of Wing Commander jazz music. He's written up several familiar tunes from WC3 and may even have a surprise or two in the final mix. Copies of the scores are included below to tide over anxious fans. Once this complete, it'll be a major step towards getting his second Wing Commander album released!

2017.029 (January 29, 2017)

Announcing 2016 Winners!

The new year is off and running and somehow we're nearly a month in. Fans have had several weeks to consider their ballots, and hundreds of votes have been cast for 2016 Wing Commander Fan Project and Website of the Year. Although all of the nominated fans did wonderful things over the past year, here's a few that Wingnuts have singled out for special recognition! The winner of Fan Project of the year is Wing Commander Flat Universe!

2016.029 (January 29, 2016)

The $6 Million Dollar Game Arrives on 3DO

Flashback Nation, a Twitter account dedicated to all things retro, recently put up this scanned cover page of the Winter '94 issue of 3DO Magazine UK. Wing Commander 3 is featured prominently on the cover, and the issue included a review of the "$6 Million Dollar Game." The coverdisk (which appears to be free sampler disk #1) would not have included the playable 3DO demo of Wing 3. That was included on the third interactive sampler disk, published the following year.

2015.029 (January 29, 2015)

Confed Dreadnought Reimagined as Sleek Powerhouse

Klavs is back with a big new addition to the Terran arsenal. His fresh take on the Confederation class dreadnought smooths over some of the hard hull edge lines and fills in sections that were originally more tapered on his first Concordia render. The somewhat unnecessary full-length topside runways have been shortened to be more proportionate to the hangar deck, but key features like the forward radar tower and keel-forming phase transit cannon are just as prominent as ever. Hopefully there's some sharp green highlights coming in its near future!

2014.029 (January 29, 2014)

Let's Play Prophecy!

Whistler has come across another Wing Commander entry at the lparchive.org website. The Let's Play Archive is a place where gamers can document their play-through experience with screenshots, video and (often humorous) commentary. From June through September of 2007, Proteus4994 played through Wing Commander: Prophecy, logging almost 50 reports consisting of mission recaps, screenshots, gameplay recordings, cutcenes and page extracts from the official strategy guide.

2013.029 (January 29, 2013)

Round Two Casting Begins for A Defiant Few

Despite some trouble filling the lead female character, Plywood Fiend reports that episode 1 of his new audio adventure has been cast. Scripts have now been distributed and the first chapter of "A Defiant Few" is now being recorded. Simultaneously, auditions now begins for the second episode of the story. There are Kilrathi, Firekkan and humans to read for!

2012.029 (January 29, 2012)

This Clawk Marks is Super

One of the most fantastic websites on the entire Internet, Pix's Origin Adventures, has posted a nice high res scan of the game manual for the Super Famicom version of Wing Commander 1. This edition is more than simply Claw Marks translated into Japanese however, and the booklet gets tons of bonus art alongside reformatted text. Some drawings are brand new, and others are colorizations of art used in the English documentation. We've seen the front and back covers recently, but check out the whole thing here (27 meg PDF).

2011.029 (January 29, 2011)

Missions are the Mission at Hand

January has been a tremendous month for the WCPedia! There are now more than 1,600 articles, some 150 penned in just the last couple weeks. Game missions have been a big push as they lay the foundation for future expansion. A skeleton index for all games' missions has been created to map out the work ahead.

2010.029 (January 29, 2010)

Gamerlimit Reunites With an Old Friend

Although a few weeks late for the game's 15th birthday, GamerLimit has honored a special title in its 'retro reunion' feature. Wing Commander 3 gets the nod for its incredibly immersive and as-advertised interactive movie claims. The branching plot, top notch graphics and all-star cast are cited as contributing factors as well. Like most Wing Commanders, the author notes that WC3 holds its own against modern action games and blows away the competition's interactive storytelling features.

2009.029 (January 29, 2009)

EA Replay Hits European PlayStation Network Store

Starman let us know that apparently EA Replay - a compilation of retro EA titles ported to the PSP - has been added to the European flavor of the Playstation network. The Threespeech Blog - a "semi official, an informal means of communication for PlayStation" - lists a number of new titles available for download for a small fee. Playstation Network users can download the compilation which includes both the original Wing Commander port for the SNES as well as the Secret Missions. There's currently no info on when the games will be available on the North American version of the Playstation network and the title doesn't appear on their list of available games.

Paper Commander Downloads Restored

Pericles recently had some issues with the file distribution for his amazing paper models, but the good news is that everything should now be back to normal. If you recently went to try and download one of his Paper Commander designs, head on back now and try again. The files should be properly hosted on Solsector. Don't get a paper cut!

2008.029 (January 29, 2008)

Two Hats Are Better Than One

McGruff has a neat creation to show off today. He's ordered a custom crew cap for the TCS Princeton, a Concordia class carrier featured in Wing Commander 4. It was inspired by the TCS Eisen hats the CIC made a few years back. I think they turned out great.

Point of Origin: Vol. IV, No. 60

Warning - the October 7th, 1994 issue of The Point of Origin contains a photograph of a man kissing Wing Commander Armada... so download it quick! The drought of Wing Commander references is ending -- nearly every article mentions the series in some way! A very special thanks to Joe Garrity of the Origin Museum for making this resource available and to Electronic Arts for sending them to him in the first place!

2007.029 (January 29, 2007)

Cover All Your Bases

Chris Knudsen has published more screenshots from his amazing Privateer: ASCII Sector project! He writes: "It's an agricultural base, hence the yellow fields of grain. The green dot is the player. The other dots are randomly generated characters.

Join The Action Extreme Team

Eager Wing Commander fans have already grabbed more than two terabytes of files from the CIC so far this year, but we have more bandwidth to use up before the month is out. One of the most popular downloads continues to be the Wing Commander Academy television series. Despite all the updates we've written about the series, we continue to find people who've never seen it before. Fans who are completely new to the show might want to check out this update for tips on which order to view the episodes.

2006.029 (January 29, 2006)

Take Two Promos And Play Till Morning

There have been a few questions lately about the special promotional cards for the Wing Commander Customizable Card Game. Both cards had fancier designs and were more powerful when used in the game. Many collectors have never seen them before, so we've scanned them next to their counterparts below. The "Wing Commander - Heart of the Tiger" card was used at GenCon 1995 to promote the CCG's release.

Striker Settles A Fight

Major Striker has posted his second comic based around a guy in a Wing Commander flight suit and helmet. There is also a new character who is currently unnamed, but could actually be ace. The comic deals with a proven Wingnut method to settle an argument. There you have it.

2005.029 (January 29, 2005)

Meet Tom Wilson In LA

Stephen from BttF.com sent a note to let us know that Tom Wilson will be attending a Back to the Future encore presentation in Los Angeles, where he'll also take part in a Q&A session. You don't have much time left to book your ticket though, the event takes place this Tuesday, February 1. You can read all of the details here.

Latest Austrian Comics Get Translated

Since the discovery of a further two Austrian comics last week, we've been confused about what the comics actually mean. Well, wonder no more as Starman has provided us with translations lovingly photoshopped over the original images. That's an interesting nurse they have there.

2004.029 (January 29, 2004)

New Reckoning Build Released

Tomanak noticed that the renewed effort to bring Wing Commander ships into the Freelancer engine has made a new build available. The Hellcat, Vindicator, Thunderbolt, Crossbow and half a dozen other prominent ships make an appearance in the WC Reckoning mod. You can update your Freelancer game with this mod by using the Freelancer Mod Manager. Lancers Reactor now hosts The Reckoning's download package here.

Pens, Pens, Pens

Our new shipment of pens just arrived from the Agincourt, so we're back up to a reasonable stock level. I should be able to catch up on a few old debts before too long. Thought you might want to check out the box they came in.

2003.029 (January 29, 2003)

WC Movie in Brazil

According to Forums poster and ex-agwc poster Delance, you can catch everyone's favorite movie tomorrow.. but only if you're in Brazil! Wing Commander will be on FOX this thursday 2000 hours on FOX on Brazil. Quinta feira, 20:00 horas no canal FOX.

WCPolaroids: Extras (7/16)

Only extras get paid to sit around and do absolutely nothing. Extras and EA's game approving department. Yeah.

2002.029 (January 29, 2002)

German Book Questions

For thousands of years, man has pondered one topic above all -- German Wing Commander Guides. My limited research indicates that there seem to be at least nine... but Americans know next to nothing about them. I've collecter pictures of their covers in a German guides section here -- in hopes that someone familiar with these books will contact me with details I can add.

WCSaga: Grin and Bearcat It

The Wing Commander Saga mod for Conquest: Frontier Wars site has been updated with two new screenshots -- the Black Lance transport and the F-104 Bearcat.

2001.029 (January 29, 2001)

Congratulations HTL!

The Wing Commander Aces storyline arc "Holding The Line" has reached a major milestone this week. Yesterday marked its second anniversary and the one hundredth PBM fiction chapter was released. Since 1999, over half a million words have been publised as part of the larger story. This is even more of an accomplishment considering that the once 600+ members strong club has been beset by some of the general depression that has lagged other parts of the WC community.

Trivia Week 14 Released

A few people have said the past few weeks have been harder than usual, so for Week 14 I'm giving everyone a bit of a break. You should find these a bit easier than last time.Welcome to Game Three, Week Fourteen Trivia. We play each week.

2000.029 (January 29, 2000)

More POL Rumors From Germany

ToddMarshall@gmx.de found the following in the latest issue of the German magazine GameStar: Wing Commander OnlineOriginWork started2001Internet Comeback w/o Chris Roberts but with Andy Hollis (Longbow) More proof that although unannounced, Origin is indeed working on the next Wing Commander game.

CIC Says Adieu to Chat Zones

We had to temporarily disable the Chat Zones while we transfered the board files to our new server. This process has been completed without loss of posts or user profiles. The Zones will be fully functional again when we occupy the new server in 24 to 48 hours.

The Wing Commander Source Code Release Project

Jumper is trying to convince Origin to release the Wing Commander 1 source code. He asks that you e-mail him at Jumper@wcescrp.cjb.net if you want to have your name included in a list of supporters that will eventually be sent to Origin.

Wing Commander Video Already Available in Israel

Anihu reports that he rented the Wing Commander movie from a Blockbusters earlier this week. Not your average country...

It's Caviar to the General...

What is? Why, the General's rib-stickin' taste-bud ticklin' Leviathan-sized portions of griddled Shantak Bird, that's what.Marinated in a time-honored mixture of herbes, spices and avian bodily secretions, and then cooked up by one of our highly-trained adolescent chefs, it's a meal fit for a king... or a General!

1999.029 (January 29, 1999)

CIC Worldwide

Yesterday the CIC reached a bit of a milestone. Nedstats reports that 105 different "national" internet domains have visited the site. We're reading that to mean approximately 100 countries (taking into account countries with multiple domains like .net, .