WC3 Poster With Eye-Popping Five Autographs LeHah is back with yet another fantastic Wing Commander collectible! Already the proud owner of such artifacts as a signed movie soundtrack and double-signed movie poster, he's set a new standard for... Wow, I Never Thought About That... Today we've got a scan helpfully uncovered by the Out of Print Archive. It's a review of the 3DO edition of Super Wing Commander from June 1994. We've seen an uptick in SWC sharing lately, which is ... Lights Out for Amiga WC in Vintage Review Coffeehound RetroSharka has a new mag scan today that highlights an interesting piece of Amiga history. Rather than just a review of Wing Commander, the magazine Amiga Power reviewed a compilation ca... Set Photos From a Different Perspective While popping in to explain what's going on with the watches in the Wing Commander Movie, Jordan Reeve also shared some fantastic photos from the film set in Luxembourg. He got a chance to visit duri... 'Shades of Magenta' Enable WC1's Dynamic Cockpits UnnamedCharacter has discovered another nifty developer trick in the code of Wing Commander. By observing what gets loaded into active memory while playing the game, he noticed how certain palette co... Wing Commander Meme of the Day: Change My Mind Seems reasonable...
... Vesuvius Gets Even Sharper Teeth The Secret Ops Model Upgrade Pack isn't just about bringing the visual assets into the 21st Century. That might be the main priority and most obvious change, but incremental improvements continue to ... WC RPG Celebrates 5th Birthday With Steady Progress It's a great week for birthdays, and in addition to our own, we'd like to wish capi's WC RPG project a wonderful fifth anniversary! He hit the milestone a couple weeks back and modestly hid the menti... Evaluation... Total Loss Klavs is well known for his Concordia models, but his latest revision was unfortunately lost in a recent crash. His only recourse was to start over. The good news is that the ship is coming back tog... Southampton Rounds Out Destroyer Display With much of the Kilrathi fleet now established, Klavs has turned his attention back to polishing several aspects of the Wing Commander universe that will eventually be needed in his Tales of the Claw... Happy 15th Birthday, CIC! Wing Commander lives! The Wing Commander fandom is as active today as it was fifteen years ago, and that's just astounding. Against all odds, companies continue to release Wing Commander products like... Cake Time! Thank you to my lovely wife for baking her first Wing Commander CIC birthday cake!
... You're Invited In just over two months, the Austin Symphony Orchestra will be performing music from Wing Commander live in concert… and you can bet the WC:CIC team will be there! The event is October 18th at 8 PM in... But Wait, There's More! We are pleased to announce that we have confirmed with Electronic Arts that they have licensed four more Wing Commander games to GOG! Academy, Armada, The Darkening and Prophecy should be available th... Wing Commander Prophecy OEM When Wing Commander Prophecy came out in 1997, it was common practice for companies to create an additional SKU that was somewhere between a downloadable demo and the full game. The specialized OEM ve... NinjaLA Introduces His Wing Commander Comic! NinjaLA has a special treat for Wingnuts this year! He's working on a new Wing Commander comic. We'll let him explain:
Introducing my Wing Commander comic series!
I know I have been promising ... Lt. Overload Teases Cuttlefish Lt. Overload has been hard at work on a Secret Ops mission pack. As a bonus for today's big day he has released a bonus teaser mission to give everyone a taste of what he has in store. I'll let him ... CIC Video Archive Modernized For the 2006 CIC Anniversary, we launched the Holovids video archive as the central repository for trailers and previews, original cinematics, behind the scenes material and deleted footage. The secti... WCPedia: All The Game Documents Are Yours!
It's been a bit of a quiet year for WCPedia, however that hasn't stopped contributors from continuing to work on aspects of the project. Wingnuts can now access each game's documentation from the ... The CIC Mail Bag Returns! After a four-year break, the CIC Mail Bag is back with questions and comments from you! Cpl_Hades and I take some time to share some of the feedback we've received and respond to the community. Chec... Comm Relay of the Future: The CIC on Social Media The CIC's Facebook page audience has grown by leaps and bounds over the past year! Right now we're just about two dozen people away from 1500 followers. Can we get there with a little 15th Birthday ... Document Archive: Wing Commander I Documents Presenting the most exciting document we've recovered: the collected documentation generated during the production of Wing Commander I in 1989-1990. You'll find snippets of source code, design notes, ... Document Archive: Early Product Flyers This collection of early product flyers should be of interest to anyone who loves Origin's promotions department. From a multi-page press pack on Wing Commander to the one-page slip on Origin FX, it's... Document Archive: Press Protection Today we have DRM... and in the day we had password protection. Instead of a special CD key, Origin had to send reviewers a 'cheat sheet' for logging in to Wing Commander I, scanned here!
Download ... Document Archive: Origin Sales Data This is one of the most fascinating documents we've released: EA's sales data for all Origin SKUs after their first year of stewardship. Some of these numbers may surprise you! Note that this is not l... Document Archive: Origin Profile This internal profile created by Origin in the mid-1990s is another great look at the company, featuring executive bios and history. The best part, however, is the page with cool Wing Commander III sh... Document Archive: PC Games Plus Article This is a short but interesting PC Games Plus preview of Wing Commander III (with the added bonus of some 1990s Ultima artwork on the cover!) Check out the logo artwork, clearly derived from Wing Comm... Document Archive: Press Review This is a collection of photocopied reviews which Origin distributed to show that Wing Commander I was a major success. In this instance, they were sent to "The Fatman," who was likely looking for pul... Document Archive: Egghead Guide to Origin In 1992, Origin Systems put together a glossy booklet to pitch upcoming products to retailers. It includes information on their inbound projects as well as executive bios and a company history. This v... Document Archive: WC1 & 2 Sound Design Docs This collection of "The Fatman" George Sanger's files from Wing Commander I and II is especially interesting. It includes notes on the music itself and the contract issues that came up after the scope... Document Archive: Slides Update Earlier this year, I visited EA Mythic's Origin archive to take a second fast pass at the Wing Commander production slides they had stored. The previous archiving effort had missed several as the slid... Document Archive: Alien Commander Pitch Notes What you see here is the wall chart from the original brainstorming session for "Alien Commander." Conceived as a spinoff of Wing Commander in which you play an alien, Alien Commander eventually becam... Document Archive: CS Policies Did you ever call Origin for help with a game? If so, you probably spoke to a member of an elite brotherhood of CS agents. It's part of game development we don't usually think about, but it's absolute... Document Archive: Minigame Concepts As Origin FX, the Ultima and Wing Commander-themed screensaver, was in development, Warren Spector collected ideas for minigames and additional modules. Some of them are even Wing Commander-themed... ... Document Archive: Warren Spector's Goodbye Warren Spector left Origin in 1995 to found Looking Glass, the company responsible for System Shock 2, Thief and other titles. This is his company-wide goodbye letter, which is a great look back at th... Document Archive: Wing Commander III Storyboards Wing Commander III, like any Hollywood production, had a massive number of storyboards created during preproduction. Thanks to David Downing, we now have photos of all of them! Download this massive f... Document Archive: Wing Commander III Production Book Every aspect of Wing Commander III's production is chronicled in this binder, from the set catering information to camera positions to the shooting schedule! If you're interested in the nuts and bolts... Document Archive: Barracks Edit Companion This binder of information is the edit companion for Wing Commander III's barracks scenes. Every scene shot on the green screen for the barracks is tracked, measured and recorded here!
Download (63... Document Archive: Mousepads In the 1990s, everyone gave away mousepads. Origin was no exception, giving away these Wing Commander IV and Prophecy mousepads at trade shows to promote the games. The "Wasp" item is especially cool,... Document Archive: Cyclone Alley Notes In 1995, Paul Steed pitched a game called Cyclone Alley to Origin. Cyclone Alley was a futuristic racing game set in space that was ultimately abandoned. At one point, Warren Spector attempted to merg... Document Archive: Privateer 2 Post Mortem The Darkening is still a sore subject in some areas today, owing largely to the conflict between EA UK and Origin in Austin over the game's release. This post-mortem document was created in 1996 by th... Document Archive: Assorted Prophecy Docs This collection of assorted Prophecy-related documents was discovered in a folder in David Downing's archive. It has some interesting notes, including the outline for a speech he gave on the game, the... Document Archive: Privateer 3 Pitch This glossy pitch for Privateer 3 was crafted in 2000 for the eyes of Electronic Arts executives. Printed in full color, this massive document was signed by the entire team. Unfortunately, it wasn't e... Document Archive: Privateer Online Vision In contrast to the Privateer 3 pitch available above, this is an internal document. Passed between the project lead and the executives at Origin, it was intended to create the broad vision for an MMO,... Document Archive: Wing Commander Movie Writers Draft Here's another entry in our collection of Wing Commander movie script drafts. This version of the second draft is Kevin Droney's personal first attempt at scripting the movie. Droney was brought in to... WC vs History: What's In A Name? Wing Commander ships borrow names from ships of all ages and nations. To celebrate the CIC’s 15th Birthday, we take a look at four Wing Commander ships and where their names come from.
HMS / TCS Ar... Trivia Redux Every year we like to give away one trivia prize to users who aren't on the live chat during the event. The first person to submit these trivia answers to news@wcnews.com will receive a digital copy o... Poll: Still With Us? As you may recall, we begin every Wing Commander year by asking how long you've been following the site. Are you a new fan, or have you been part of the community since our pre-history as the Wing Com... Last Word: Thanks I hope you have enjoyed all of the material available today. It has been a busy year for lots of reasons, but as the community continues to find time for Wing Commander regardless of the impact of rea... Happy 14th Birthday, CIC! If we'd had a kid instead of a Wing Commander community, they'd be starting high school right now. Let THAT sink in!
This was a good year to be a Wing Commander fan. Between the GOG releases of the... Happy Birthday from Chris Roberts We're honored to have a birthday message from series creator Chris Roberts for the community:
Happy fourteenth birthday WC News! I tip my hat to Ben, Chris, Barrie, Brandon, Kris, Aaron and Jason... Cake! Thanks, mom!
... Happy Birthday, Ultima Codex! And a very happy birthday to our sister community's flagship site, the Ultima Codex (formerly Ultima Aiera)! They turned eight years old yesterday... so at least they won't have to go to the same high... SWC PSA Remember, Colonel Blair Armstrong says always use protection. (This is the actual medal case in Super Wing Commander; I miss the bikini girl.)
... Poll - Still With Us? We always start the next Wing Commander year (WCY) with a poll asking how long you've been with the community... and every year we're blown away by both the number of people who have been with us sinc... Infoburst Redux Fourteen years ago, CIC founders Chris Reid and Ben Lesnick, awkward teenagers both, sat down for an interview with Evan "Hadrian" Adnams to record an 'infoburst' (the term podcast not yet existing.) ... We Have to Go Back! The CIC is going back... to Austin! Last year we celebrated the birthday from Austin, TX while visiting former Origin developers and studying material housed at the University of Texas' videogames arc... Time To Rank Up Wingnuts Last year the Chatzone was upgraded to new forum software called Xenforo. One thing that was not possible to implement with it was the old rank system. The software continued to see updates over the l... Wingleader Press Release Attached are pictures of the original Wing Commander press release... from when the game was still called Wingleader! This would have been sent to store owners who were planning on ordering new games ... Wing Commander Movie Like It's 1991 This is a special treat. In the past we've explored earlier drafts of the Wing Commander movie -- the pitch to Sony, the first, second, third and shooting scripts. We've followed the original through ... You Have New Orders In the tradition of last year's selection of Wing Commander posters, here's something you can print at home: a copy of Blair's orders prop from the Wing Commander movie! It's interesting that some (bu... Making the Games: Wing Commander 2 Story Pitch Here we have Ellen Guon and Stephen Beeman's original script/pitch for "Wing Commander II: Cloak and Dagger," written in November 1990 shortly after the release of the first game. It's Vengeance of th... Making the Games: Wing Commander 2 Character Pitch Ah, the Wing Commander 2 pilots: Iceman, Minx, Turbo, Tomcat, Cirocco, Bogey... wait, what?! This fascinating document, glimpsed in the Wing Commander I & II Ultimate Strategy Guide, introduces us to ... Making the Games: Wing Commander 2 Art Pitch Finally, we have the preliminary list of art assets needed for the initial version of Wing Commander 2. These are all the talking heads, background sets, special scenes and so on that Guon and Beeman ... Making the Games: WC2 Ship Codex At some point during the development of Wing Commander 2, someone at Origin ran a text file of all the game's ship stats through a dot matrix printer. From there they marked changes as the game was fi... Have You Ever Noticed... ... that the back of the box for Special Operations 2 has absolutely nothing to do with anything that happens in the game?
The Confederation's electronic grapevine is running amok with rumors tha... What the Hat?! The quest for Wing Commander II Super Nintendo goes on... but we have found a trace! This Wing Commander II hat was created by publisher FCI to promote the game. It was given to us by Billy Cain, who ... Memories of 1992 1992 was the first "down" year for Wing Commander. It's something of a surprise, after Wing Commander in 1990 and Wing Commander II in 1991, that there was no major game project. Privateer ("Trade Com... Selling Freedom Flight Ever wonder how Baen got the first Wing Commander novel into the stores? Probably not, but here's the answer to the question you didn't ask! It's interesting that there's really very little focus on i... Freedom Flight Preview Chapter Interested in Freedom Flight after twenty years but aren't sure you're willing to spend the $0.01 for a used copy on Amazon? We've got your hook-up: the preview chapter for the novel is now available ... Strike's Lightning Twice It's no secret that Chris Roberts' Strike Commander had something of a pained development cycle. Advertising promoting a Christmas 1991 release date (below) was so inaccurate that the final game's man... Company Politics If you'd visited Origin's headquarters in 1992 you might have found this "editorial cartoon" taped to more than one office wall. We'll leave it to you to divine the meaning.
... Art of Wing Commander Academy: Characters To help with the promotion for the Wing Commander Academy DVD set, we created incredibly high resolution scans of a number of animation cels from the series. None of them were used by anyone, and so h... Art of Wing Commander Academy: Kilrathi The third set of Wing Commander Academy cels are the series' ferocious Kilrathi. Many consider the Wing Commander Academy Kilrathi to be the 'ideal' look for the alien race... even though some of them... Art of Wing Commander Academy: Ships The second set of Wing Commander Academy artwork includes many of the game's classic fighters... and a few capital ships!
... Art of Wing Commander Academy: Warrior King Last and certainly least is animation cels featuring... the Warrior King!
... It's in the Cards The 300+ images on the Wing Commander CCG weren't all computer art. A great many of them were traditional paintings... and we've added high resolution scans of two to our collection in case you'd like... Can You Name Them All?
... Super Wing Commander Raw Images You've already seen the out-of-nowhere VDU image update above. Here's the story behind it: I was just trying to come up with something that looked cool for a birthday update and figured I'd see what i... My God, It's Full of Stars With all the interest in both medals and Super Wing Commander, I thought it might be fun to show you what a full set of 'chicken guts' looks like in that release. The game will show up to three of eac... What the Hell is That? The Wing Commander Prophecy soundtrack is strange enough: it's two tracks from the game and a dozen randomly licensed techno/industrial songs. But now look at this: the Wing Commander Prophecy OST--fr... Who DAT Tapes? We are pleased to announce that an anonymous xOrigin employee has donated 36 DAT tapes... most of which are labeled Wing Commander 3 or Wing Commander 4! We have absolutely no idea what these tapes co... Games that Weren't: Wing Commander Online Now it can be told! In early 1999, Origin laid off the Maverick team and cancelled their project, Privateer Online. In October, 1999 they hired back as much of the team as had not moved on to Star War... Games That Weren't: Cyclone Alley Paul Steed, an Origin artist who would later go on to fame working on the Quake games, once pitched Origin a science fiction game called Cyclone Alley. Paul explains:
Back in ’94, I was Project D... Games That Weren't: Alien Commander You may have heard of Alien Commander, Warren Spector's pitch which ultimately became the famous System Shock. What you don't know is how delightfully crazy it is: the game is set on the wreckage of t... Surprise Visit from Ginger Lynn This was a birthday surprise even to us: Wing Commander actress Ginger Lynn Allen was kind enough to stop by the forums and answer fan questions! Here's what we've learned so far. If you'd like to ask... Tweet Tweet Did you know the CIC has a twitter account? It's @wccic. Now LeHah has set about creating a list of Wing Commander related celebrities who use the service. Know someone who should be added to this lis... Need for Creed If you're anything like me you're constantly frustrated that the digital manual included with the CD-ROM edition of Wing Commander Academy does not include the cover art or the back page featuring the... On Manual Control A lot of Wing Commander manuals are available as digital downloads... but you wouldn't know it for looking! Kris has cut through the disorganization and gone back and gathered up all the manuals we po... Bragging About a Blaster! We've had a lot of questions about what is going on with the Wing Commander computer project. When I started building the fourth Wing Commander computer I set a seemingly impossible goal: I'd like to ... Hardware Filter For the past month or so I have been snapping Instagram photos of hardware going into the Wing Commander computer... and I thought it would be cool to see it all in one place! All of these boards, con... Passing the Baton The CIC's deep content has begun the move to the WCPedia! Kris has been hard at work converting many of our sections to the new, easy-to-update format and the results speak for themselves.
The Book... WCPedia Yearly Progress Report
Let's get it out of the way first. We failed. Not for lack of trying, we made a huge number of updates and edits with a decent number of new articles created this year. What we've been doing is goi... Kilrathi Drawing This awesome Kilrathi sketch is by John "The Gneech" Robey, who is no stranger to Wing Commander!
... Must Get Back To Work Here One of the most iconic moments in Action Stations is the final communications between TCS Yorkshire and the remains of the Confederation force. The young executive officer of the Yorkshire, already he... Bonus Art from Ninja But wait, there's more! Ninja also drew this amazing Kilrathi warrior art:
... Happy Birthday from Phoenix Roleplaying The crew of the Wing Commander: From the Ashes play-by-post roleplaying game were kind enough to send the community their birthday regards: "Phoenix Roleplaying, home of Wing Commander play-by-post ga... Welcome to the Enyo Engagement Forum member capi3101, known for his ongoing Wing Commander RPG project, is celebrating the birthday with a stand-alone role playing module based on the Enyo Engagement! Titled "Enyo," the document co... Preview: Unknown Enemy Gets High Res I bet you thought you'd heard the last of Unknown Enemy, the grandfather of all modern Wing Commander fan projects. Well, you thought wrong: the team has been hard at work at a high resolution patch w... WC vs History - Capitol Domes While the 200th anniversary for the Burning of Washington is still two years off, I figured why not get it in early. So for the CIC's 14th birthday WC vs History turns to the US Capitol Building and t... WC vs History - Lost Edition - Introduction To Carrier Raids The reason there are two WC vs History's for the birthday is rather quite simple. LOAF lost this one in his email. I sent him the history parts asking for some WC polish. So it's sat idly for months. ... Trivia Redux Like we do every year, we want to offer up some trivia and a prize to those unable to make the 'party.' The first person to correctly e-mail us the answers to these five questions will win a copy of t... Final Word: Thanks! I hope you enjoyed all of that material! The most sincere thank you to the thousands of Wing Commander fans who continue to make this site worthwhile. It sounds corny, but we wouldn't be anywhere with... Happy 13th Birthday, CIC! Welcome to the Wing Commander Combat Information Center's 13th annual birthday party! Please join the fun on IRC, where we're having Wing Commander chat, trivia and giveaways! It's the social event of... Pilgrim Truth Released Eleven years ago, HarperCollins angered Wing Commander fans everywhere by cancelling the third movie 'continuity novel', Pilgrim Truth. For more than a decade the manuscript written to bring closure t... Pilgrim Truth: Also an eBook Want to read Pilgrim Truth on the go? You're in luck! Starman has kindly set up Pilgrim Truth as an eBook! It's available in both mobi (Kindle) and epub (everything else) formats!
... Keep Austin Wing Commander!
As you have heard, ace, Chris and I are in Austin, Texas looking at the University of Texas Videogames Archive. This museum collection includes the personal papers of Origin luminaries includi... Follow that CIC! The @WCCIC started off last year as an April Fool's Joke... but now it's the real deal! Kris has integrated Twitter into our backend, which will automatically notify readers of new CIC updates--and we... CIC on the Go You asked for it: the CIC has finally entered the 21st century with the addition of a "mobile" version of the site! Now you can get your Wing Commander news and information on the go without any awkwa... Life Goes Zone You may have noticed that the Chat Zone was down earlier today. That wasn't to frustrate partygoers--it was because we've replaced the aging vBulletin board with a brand new Xenforo system! There's no... Happy Fourth Birthday WCPedia!
“In three years we’ve uploaded almost 1,100 content articles, uploaded 700 files, made 10,600 edits and had over 1.3 million views.” - August 10, 2010
What a year the last one has proven ... Miggs is Ugly Joke Goes Here WCPedia has needed a main page facelift for a long time. On its fourth birthday, what better way to start the Wing Commander year off with than a new main page? Well here it is. Wingnuts can now bette... WCPedia-Split Edition! WCPedia has undergone some major structural changes in the last year. The project was split into two main content areas recently. The Wing Commander Encyclopedia is where you’ll be able to find all ki... Film Facts Filling Out A lot of progress has been made to enter as much relevant background information on the Wing Commander feature film into the WCpedia project. While tastes and opinions vary on the film itself, every f... EPKFLV4U2C We've previously reported on a recent re-encode of the Wing Commander Movie Electronic Press Kit. That tape is available to download in it's entirety HERE. But until recently it's been one of the bi... Reading Drafts is a Breeze A big part of our WCpedia movie effort has been to include the various script drafts of the film for easy comparison. While some work is yet to be done, the labor intensive part is done and each draf... ¿Habla Usted Español? One curriosty that's been reported in the past are that the production notes for the Wing Commander film have never been discovered in English. While entering articles into the WCpedia project we no... Make Your Own Poster Have you ever wanted your own Wing Commander poster? Just take one of these super high resolution pieces of key art to a local print shop and you'll have a beautiful new decoration for your walls!
... Does it Grow the Brand? It's funny to think about a cutting edge game developer doing art and layouts by hand--but that's exactly how things worked before Origin switched to a digital process in 1994. In this set of images (... The Art of Claw Marks - Part 1: Talking Heads Also recovered from Origin's vault: print resolution versions of the art used in the magazine that started it all, Claw Marks! First up is the Tiger's Claw's intrepid crew:
... The Art of Claw Marks - Part 2: Space Fighters If you were a video gamer in 1990 and claim you weren't impressed by the line art of Wing Commander's ships then you are a liar. This was, without a doubt, the first step to hooking me on Wing Command... The Art of Claw Marks - Part 3: And The Rest And what's a birthday without dancing girls? ... and medals, missiles and ribbons.
... The Art of Claw Marks: Fearsome Foursome For the first time ever online, here are Origin's "source" files for the famous Wing Commander I Kilrathi ace artwork! Dakhath, Khajja, Baktosh... they're all here! Also, Bhurak.
... Wing Commander II Memories In honor of Wing Commander II's upcoming 20th anniversary, we've asked members of the CIC staff to post their memories of the game here. Want to share your own? Post it to the forums and we'll collect... Know Your Foe When Wing Commander II came out I was very disappointed with the ship images in the manual. Black and white shapes compared to the detailed line drawings in Claw Marks? Twenty years later, it's clear ... What's Wrong With These Pictures? Look closely at these Wing Commander I and II screenshots, scanned from Origin promotional slides. They're from pre-release versions of the game! You'll find some of the familiar changes (ie, "Lt. Sha... Lost Scenes and Mixed Blessings Here are high-resolution slide scans of two of Wing Commander's most mysterious images. The first, showing a young Blair in front of a group of photographers, appeared on the Wing Commander II box. In... Mythic Photos: Wing Commander II Genesis Sell Sheet This fall, we will be running a lengthy series of updates highlighting the various objects and layouts Chris photographed while visiting Mythic in 2008 (and we will forward Ultima-related pictures to ... Shopping at Egghead Next Time I Get the Chance Here's a blast from the past courtesy of Joe Garrity and the Origin Museum. Back in 1991, Origin decided to photograph their 'rock star' developers buying their newly released games at local stores. H... Privateer Codes - First Come, First Serve! Courtesy of our friends at GOG, we have three digital copies of Wing Commander: Privateer to give away! And we're giving them to... whoever uses them first! Grab a code here and head over to GOG to re... Privateer's First Screenshots Little bits of an earlier version of Privateer have slipped out over time--that nice 3D Gothri, the different intro cutscene and so forth. Here are all the screenshots, together for the first time and... A Tour of the Box Factory Ever wonder how a game box was made? Lets take a look at everything that went into the simple Righteous Fire box! First, we're going to find a font for the new text logo. This one looks good! Lets ske... Taste the Rainbow Nothing about Armada was quite like the rest of Wing Commander, from the speed of the gameplay to the ship specifications... and the logo, with giant green jello letters, was no exception. But how wei... Raiders of the Lost Manuals, Part 1 This is the first of two exciting 'lost pages'. Archaeologists have discovered the draft text for Armada's incredible "Voices of War" manual... with some differences! One is that the letter to M'rathk... Electronic Arts Presents... ... the least appealing advertisement ever designed. "The big fish in 3DO games"? Really? That's what you're going with? Your ad campaign is designed to associate your games with a rotting fish carcas... Drawing for 3D Check out these radical Wing Commander III and IV sketches, done by the art team to plan the ships and characters that would need to be rendered and costumed for a new kind of Wing Commander game. Som... Now You Know the Rest of the Storyboards Here are a selection of cool high-resolution storyboards and script pages from Wing Commander III. Interesting to note that the storyboards have stronger language for Blair's final optional losing-tra... WC3 Film Shoot Here is another great set of classy photography from the Wing Commander III film shoot, used in Origin's Official Guide. Colonel Blair sure looks confident for someone who can' sew his patch on correc... Everything Looks Better in Black and White These incredible renderings were created by Origin for their Official Guide to Wing Commander III. Now you can see them at the highest possible resolution--and learn every rivet on the side of your Ex... Sexy Colorful Arrow Detail Get an even closer look at every crease and line of this sexy F-27 Arrow! Doesn't that 'straight on' shot have an unusual amount of weight to it?
... WC3 Shared Images Here are high resolution images of some of Wing Commander III's most iconic scenes. These were created by Origin for use across all branded products in 1994--from card games to Zanart! Okay, just the ... Bad News, Congress! Frankly, I think I got out of DC just in time!
... Music to my Eyes This Wing Commander 'sheet music' was found on an Origin disc. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like you can use it to play the Wing Commander III soundtrack yourself. ace says: "It looks like it's just... WC3 Dev Portraits Take a moment to thank the amazing team of men and women behind Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger. Here they are, in the flesh! They are: Adam Foshko, Chris Douglas, Chris Roberts, Craig Miller, ... Raiders of the Lost Manuals, Part 2 We have discovered an additional capital ship commented out of Victory Streak. In the manual's Quark files are located the following specifications for a Confederation heavy carrier:
Heavy Carrie... Now That's An Obscure Reference! Victory Streak, the Wing Commander III manual, includes a review of Hail SHODAN, a pretend movie in the Wing Commander universe that is a reference to System Shock. The 3DO version of the manual even ... Ticket To Ride Say hi to the bartender for me!
... Clean Your Lockers Here's a craft project for you--make your own Wing Commander locker! To start you off, here are Blair's two photos of Angel from Wing Commander III... and his bikini picture from Secret Missions 2 (co... Tender KSes We have seen some interesting 'road not taken' artwork before--but these early designs for Kilrathi Saga really takes the cake! It's very interesting to see the different attempts and how they clearly... Making the KS Box Here's a swath of Kilrathi Saga box art production examples--you can follow the rough idea (which includes a Bearcat and a Vindicator!) all the way through the individual ship renders to the finished ... A New Record! I am very pleased to announce that this is the 48th CIC update of the night--which means we just shattered the previous record of 46 updates set by Privateer Day several months ago! More importantly, ... You're Going to Need It When it came time to design the Kilrathi Saga box's claw logo, Origin's artists didn't just render what they thought a Kilrath hand might look like... they dressed up in a real one to see how it would... Raiders of the Lost Manuals, Part 3 Finally, while looking at raw notes from Origin's publication department we've also found a page cut from the Kilrathi Saga manual--containing a letter from Blair's dad (you can learn more about Blai... Pretty, Sketchy This set of awesome sketches--created throughout the development of the first three Wing Commander games--originally appeared in the 1997 Kilrathi Saga calendar. Now you can see them all at their orig... Aboard the Supercarriers Here are two interesting images discovered among Origin's publications material. Both are high resolution renders not seen in the games themselves. The first seems to be a shot of the TCS Vesuvius' br... Vukar In fact, it sounded like a milk run. All they had to do was make an orbit or three around a small,
insignificant planet the Kilrathi called "Vukar Tag." It was way out in the Kilrathi boondocks. Okay... We Got It: Wing Commander III Source Code We are pleased to announce that the CIC has successfully recovered the Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger source code. Two versions of the complete source have been located and permanently archive... Improving the Making of WC3 Trixter of oldskool.org was kind enough to use his impressive video knowledge to remaster the Wing Commander III 'making of' video. He says:
I've created two versions: A 480i MPEG-2 that can be ... WC4 Sketches These Wing Commander IV sketches bridge the gap between Wing Commander III and IV--and hopefully confirm that the Intrepid was never meant to be two destroyers attached together (where did that rumor ... WC4 Set Panoramas These two great photos show the complexity of two of Wing Commander IV's most impressive sets--the courtroom from the introduction and climactic endgame, and Pliers' detailed workshop on the Intrepid.... Everything Looks Worse in Black and White These full color Wing Commander IV ships--source images created for Origin's Official Guide to Wing Commander IV--make a compelling argument! This set includes the long lost Dralthi rendering!
... Hangar: On Here's a magnificent render of the BWS Intrepid's flight deck--possibly an alternative to the 'top down' version used in the finished game.
... You Didn't Buy it for the Articles In 1995, Origin created several beautiful magazine covers to promote Wing Commander IV. Rather than simply capture screens from the game itself, these renderings were unique works of art. Now you can ... Make it POP Ever wonder how much a Colonel Blair standup costs? $42. How many promotional Wing Commander IV t-shirts were printed? 1,280! How many Micro Center stores were sent Wing Commander IV VHS tapes? Eleven... What the Hell? I don't know what this is... but it terrifies me.
... WC4 Dev Portraits Now meet the (very similar) team behind Wing Commander IV! They are: Andy Sommers, Chris Douglas, Chris Roberts, Frank Roan, Tony Morone and the QA team!
... Building the Tri-System Here we have an impressive array of The Darkening concept art, showing the design for sets, establishing shots and even ships! Interestingly, the artwork isn't 'dark' at all--it's light and painted wi... Inhabiting the Tri-System This set of photographs includes a number unpublished (and somewhat arty!) photographs taken on the set of Privateer 2: The Darkening. Included here are Erin Roberts, John Hurt as Joe Kane, Clive Owen... Privateer 2 Pre-Release: The Booth This is one of four sets of Privateer 2: The Darkening pre-release images. These come from multiple earlier builds of the game and were used for both internal testing and in some advertising. This set... Privateer 2 Pre-Release: Combat This is one of four sets of Privateer 2: The Darkening pre-release images. These come from multiple earlier builds of the game and were used for both internal testing and in some advertising. This set... Privateer 2 Pre-Release: FMV This is one of four sets of Privateer 2: The Darkening pre-release images. These come from multiple earlier builds of the game and were used for both internal testing and in some advertising. This set... Privateer 2 Pre-Release: Planets This is one of four sets of Privateer 2: The Darkening pre-release images. These come from multiple earlier builds of the game and were used for both internal testing and in some advertising. This set... Shining City in a Tri-System This magnificent 3D rendered city was created for the British version of Privateer 2--it was the front and back cover of the Crius Hospital guide! Bonus: high resolution 'splash' images used for Origi... Highres P2 Landing Videos If there's one complaint we get about our birthday updates it's that there are too many images at once. Well, count this as the time we backed down. We recently discovered 1.2 gigabytes of individuall... Tri-System Noire Like those black and white Wing Commander III renders? Then you'll love... every ship in the Tri-System!
... For Sale in the Tri-System Dinky little Straith got you down? Why not pick up an upgrade for it... in high resolution! Look at some of the amazing detail that could never have made it into a game in 1996, like the lettering on ... Submitted Without Commentary
... Cool, Dark Ships The ships used to promote Privateer 2 are a unique group--their 3D models often differ significantly from those seen in the game itself! Check out this selection of beautiful Darkening 'out of engine'... The Darkening: Goofy Slogan Goes Here Between 'Privateer 2' and 'Privateer 2: The Darkening', it was known as simply 'The Darkening'--and here's a whole swath of potential box covers developed by Origin for the game! Note the prominent "I... Darkening Dev Portraits Last--but not least!--are the official portraits for the Privateer 2: The Darkening team. They are: Adam Medhurst, Erin Roberts, Nick Goldsworthy, Paul Hughes, Tony Stockton and Brian Marshall.
... Prophecy's Foundations This collection of very early Wing Commander Prophecy sketches was the first group created for the game, including art from Syd Mead and others. Look at the turrets on that beautiful Devastator drawin... Go with the Gameflow Ever wanted to learn how to land a starfighter? This series of gameflow storyboards done for Wing Commander Prophecy should show you how it works! Note some interesting references in there--is that Sp... Confederation and Empire The classic Confederation star should be familiar to everyone... but this Kilrathi logo is a bit more unusual. As far as I can tell it has only ever appeared in Origin's Official Guide to Wing Command... Prophecy Ships - High and Low You've seen many of these before... but you've never seen them in this resolution! The most interesting, though, are the two fuzziest--which show the original design of the TCS Midway!
... An Early Facebook To prepare for Wing Commander Prophecy, designers collected examples of helmets used in previous Wing Commanders. I almost left this collection out, except for the awesome full color version of the pi... Read Ginger's Contract Ever wanted to know how much an actor might be paid to appear in a Wing Commander game? Actress Ginger Lynn Allen recently sold her Wing Commander Prophecy contract on eBay--to us! We've scanned the d... Multiplayer Menus of our Shattered Dreams More of the early planning for Wing Commander Prophecy. In these Visio sketches, a designer has plotted out how the game's multiplayer menus will work! Shame we never got anything to compare this to i... Bugs, Lance Casey, Zillions of 'Em! Wing Commander Prophecy had some truly outstanding advertisements--beautiful panoramas of detailed human and alien ships. Now you can download high resolution versions of these ads, without words or l... Charting Map History This set of images--some of which are unfortunately very blurry--looks like the effort that birthed the Wing Commander Universe map! You can see a rough map as well as notes on the systems in Prophecy... Do-It-Yourself Space Battle It looks like someone rendered out all the parts to make... and then never put them together! Can you take these images, match them together and make an awesome battle for Kilrah?
... Undercovers Here are three mockup covers considered for Wing Commander Prophecy. Dig that awesome font... but seeing the Panther permanently bend like that just kind of hurts!
... Wing Commander: Secret Ops and Standoff for OSX From Chat Zone member wcnut and the Standoff team comes this gift for Macintosh users:
Mac gamers have been able to play Windows games for a while now using Wine, an open-source Windows API emula... Updated OpenGL patch for Prophecy and Secret Ops PopsiclePete has released a new version (1.2) of the OpenGL renderer for WCP and SO. Built on the foundation created for the updated graphics seen in Standoff, the new patch sports several exciting ... You Can't Reinvent Wing Commander! It's not just pretty pictures today--we also have an absolutely insane sound file dredged from the depths of Origin history! Labeled "Maverick Mix", this four minute combination of music, sound effect... Prowler Found Origin's cancelled Prowler project was not a Wing Commander game; it was an Origin game developed for consoles by a group who would go on to do great things in the Wing Commander universe. Never the l... Happy Birthday from Movie Bits I recently purchased a pair of Wing Commander posts from Movie Bits and their man in charge, David, was kind enough to note the WCNews in my sigature. He offered send me the set of photographs he had ... Your Courage is Exemplary of the Confederation's Finest Defenders Did you know that when a game wins a magazine's "editor's choice" award that there is actually a physical award? Here's a quick look at a number of the awards won by the Wing Commander series, which a... WC vs. History: Torpedoes A Way On 2634.155, Crown Prince Gilkarg, the Barons of the eight noble clans and the heads of several claw fleets gathered to observe the first demonstration of a ship-killed torpedo. The test went flawless... Welcome Aboard! We are pleased to announce that the newest addition to the Combat Information Center team is Jason "Dundradal" McHale. Dundradal has been a member of the community since the Origin's Official Chat Zon... Happy Birthday, Ultima Aiera Amazing fact: the CIC almost shares a birthday with its Ultima community counterpart, Ultima Aiera! Aiera turned seven yesterday, August 9, and we wish it all the best. Kudos to WtF Dragon and Ultima ... Poll - Are You Still Here?! Every August we kick the Wing Commander year off with a poll asking how long you've been part of the community. Have you been hanging on since WCHS days or did you just get hooked on the digital relea... Trivia Redux As always, we want to offer some trivia and a prize to those unable to make the 'party'. The first person to correctly e-mail us the answers to these five questions will win a copy of Wing Commander I... 100th Update Spectacular It seemed like an impossible goal--not to mention one sure to break the new mobile site and RSS readers everywhere--but we have just hit 100 updates for the night! To celebrate, here's the selection o... Kilrathi Saga Manual Gets High PopsiclePete has a cool present for us--a high resolution version of the Wing Commander: The Kilrathi Saga manual rendered from Origin's original file templates! The cover is still a scan, but it will... Happy Birthday from Kevin Caccamo We have a very kind gift for Wing Commander fans everywhere, from Kevin Caccamo of the Hostile Frontier project:
For the CIC's awesome 13th birthday, I'd like to say congratulations and thank you... Presenting: THE WORLD'S LARGEST BLAIR Come one, come all, see WCNews.com's amazing WORLD'S LARGEST BLAIR! Other sites may have promised you a giant Blair before, but we aim to make liars out of them all! Step right up, my good men, becaus... Cake! Thanks, mom! This will be the first time the staff have been able to eat the birthday cake together...
... Final Word: Thanks! Whew! That was a lot of work! A very special thanks to the talented group of people who helped do the 'birthday crunch' several weeks early this time so that Chris, ace and I could head to Austin know... Happy 12th Birthday, CIC! Welcome to the Wing Commander Combat Information Center's 12th annual birthday bash! If you aren't on IRC chatting and winning trivia prizes... well, why aren't you?
This year marks the 20th annive... Arena's Early Light Ever wonder how the latest Wing Commander game got its start? Now you can see more of the earliest concept drawings... and the first screenshots of the game's original 'top down' look. Be sure and loo... A Tale of Two Stories In the past we have talked about the story mode planned for Wing Commander Arena (then "Conflict") and how there were two versions--the initial 'burning battle' pitch that was apparently written by so... Arena Extraction - 3D Models The future is here! AD has managed to extract all of Wing Commander Arena's audio and 3D model files. Time for the modders to start playing... and everyone who likes looking through folders of beautif... Arena Extraction - Audio AD has zipped all of Arena's audio files up into a single package and converted the game's music into mp3s. The music may seem odd--they were designed to loop and some have a few-second intro and then... Happy Birthday from the Standoff Team When I was originally planning today's updates I had hoped to pick out one great 'present' for each game, walking back through that series. Now that fell apart as we found more and more cool stuff tha... Sneak EPK An Electronic Press Kit (EPK) is a tape sent to television stations and other multimedia outlets put together to make producing a story on your product easier--they include stock interviews with cast ... Documents - Wing Commander the Movie We can't leave the movie out of the document updates! Check below for a scan of the 'Set Book', which will tell you all about where and when the Wing Commander film was... filmed.
Wing Commander ... Documents - Wing Commander Prophecy As always, Prophecy gets the most new documents--we have a press clipping binder (from a professional pull service-swanky!), a set book and some designer notes on weapons.
WCP Press Clippings (13... Twitter Promise: Pictures of Smudo One of our Twitter teasers promised many pictures of German rapper Smudo in a Prophecy flight suit... now, thanks to Joe Garrity and the Origin Museum, we can deliver! You can see them all here (also ... Erin Roberts Interview Please find enclosed a fantastic one-page Privateer 2-era interview with Erin Roberts conducted by "CGR". Unfortunately that's all we know about the origin--full color copies were included, unattribut... More Privateer 2 Videos! We've located 'Tape B' from Origin's Privateer 2 video archive, which adds most of the videos not already in our archive (except, somehow, the introduction). Here's the roster:
Uncle Kashumai 1 (... Documents - Cancelled Games We have updates of two familiar Privateer documents--the concepts for Privateer 3 and Privateer Online. These versions feature maps and other charts which were missing from the previously archived ver... Gallery - Mark Hamill on Tour Here is the third and arguably least interesting of the photo galleries from Origin's archives. These pictures show Mark Hamill promoting Wing Commander IV at a signing session at New York's Virgin Me... Documents - Wing Commander IV Wing Commander IV documents, too! These are only for true hardcore crazed fans--production books that show the smallest aspects of the game's shooting schedule.
WC4 Production Book (42M , PDF)
W... Wing Commander IV - Online! We've decided to burn bandwidth like it's going out of style... by posting all of the movie files from the Wing Commander IV DVD! Now you can see Wing Commander IV's film segments better than they wer... Wing Commander IV's Not Really Lost Scenes Since we posted the entire run of videos from the Wing Commander IV, we decided we also needed the scenes that for one reason or another didn't make it onto that project... so here they are, extracted... Making the Patch Another great update from Joe Garrity and the Origin Museum! How much work goes into making something almost no one will ever see? A lot! Check out these documents which cover the 'making of' the Wing... Gallery - Building the Kilrathi We have three awesome galleries of 'behind the screens' photos from Origin's archives to show you today, and this is the first: 101 photographs that show how the animatronic Kilrathi in Wing Commander... Gallery - On the Set This is my favorite update being offered today--behind the screens photos of the Wing Commander III cast and crew at work (and play) during the game's film shoot. If the candids of Jason Bernard don't... Turning Japanese Ever want to see Hobbes speak Japanese? Thanks to Joe Garrity and the Origin Museum, you can! He has provided a wonderful 9-minute Wing Commander III Playstation promo video made for the Japanese mark... Pretty Slick Advertising, Sir How do you sell a new Wing Commander game? Every which way you can! Check out these newly scanned advertisements which prove that it takes everything from awful puns to promising players a ride in a S... You Can't Say That in Games! When the ESRB rates a new game, they don't necessarily play it themselves--instead, they ask for a video sample they can just play. These days I'm sure it's all done with DVDs and e-mail--but in 1994 ... Documents - Wing Commander III That's right, new Wing Commander 'making of' documents... for all of the FMV games and beyond! Rarely represented Wing Commander III steps up with two cool scanned books: a large notebook of informati... You're Just Fonting Here is an excellent high-resolution scan of the Heart of the Tiger subtitle font. That's all I have to say about that.
... Wing Commander PSX Video Extracted! AD and HCl have coordinated to create a new tool capable of extracting the video files from the Playstation Wing Commander Games... and then they've gone one step further and extracted everything from... Wing Commander III Development Wall Ever since I saw these pictures in Origin's Official Guide to Wing Commander III, I've dreamed of being able to get up close to that wall. It looks like this is as close as we'll ever get! It's really... Twitter Promise: A Good Time Was Had By All As promised on Twitter, here are scans of the liquor receipts from Wing Commander III's (film shoot) wrap party. They're from a folder of Chris Roberts' petty cash reimbursements--part of a whole mess... Dare You Examine the Mystery Pictures? Here we have a set of random slide scans that the completist in me couldn't leave in a folder somewhere... or is there something more? Look closely at some of these images--the Super Wing Commander sh... Documents - Point of Origin There are even two more Point of Origin scans to post, thanks to the Origin Museum! We have not only a previously unposted 'Point of Origin Special Edition' featuring the results of a company-wide sur... In the Beginning... Video game anthropologists take note, this may be Wing Commander's cave drawing! Here we have the earliest known piece of Wing Commander artwork: an action mock-up used at COMDEX which would eventuall... ... There Was Wing Commander I For our final update of the night we are proud to present, in honor of its incredible 20th anniversary, the game that started it all--the original Wing Commander, available for download!
Wing Com... Happy Birthday from NinjaLA NinjaLA is back for another year of awesome Wing Commander fan art, starting with an awesome 'Fleet Action' drawing! He says:
A friend of mine gave me an amazing compliment when I showed him this... Happy Birthday from PopsiclePete All around stand-up and Standoff guy, PopsiclePete, reached far into the dark depth's of Wing Commander fandom's history to create... an e-book version of infamous parody fanfic Wing Commander 4.12310... Hitting the Books It seems impossible to me, but it's time to tell some of my own 'behind the screens' story. One of the first 'serious' Wing Commander things I ever did was advise Peter Telep and an editor for Baen ab... WCPedia Status Update We've invited Dundradal, who has taken the lead on the project, to report on the status of the WCPedia:
“Welcome to the great experiment!”
Three years ago today the CIC launched WCPedia with t... Happy Birthday from Obee Obee (of WingCenter fame) was kind enough to give us a whole pile of tokens to download his album, Anker! So quick, grab a code from the list below and enter it at this site to get the download--befor... Trivia Redux It's that time again--if you missed our party because you had somewhere else to be, we still want you to have a prize! All you have to do is be the first to answer these difficult trivia questions and... Happy Birthday from Kevin Caccamo Kevin Caccamo has birthday missions, too--for two different games! Take it away:
Happy Birthday, CIC! Here's what I've been working on for the past few days: An update/mod for Wing Commander Saga... Happy Birthday from Lt. Overload Lt. Overload has built a Wing Commander Secret Ops mission in honor of the birthday. Here's the, ah, description:
COMBAT INFORMATION SYSTEM
LOADING DATA...
TCS Reid Plunkett-Class
Logging in..... Dragon*Con 2010: We're Back! Good news, everyone! Team CIC is going back... back to Dragon*Con! This Labor Day weekend you can join Chris, LOAF, LeHah, Frosty, Death and presumably some surprise guests at the east coast's largest... Poll - Been Waiting Long? We always start the 'Wing Commander year' off with the same poll question--how long have you been visiting the CIC? Since the pre-history WCHS days or did you just start today? Let us know how long yo... Final Word: Thanks! Well folks, you've just lived through history: a new record for number of CIC updates in a single day! We've smashed through 2007's birthday, which featured 35 stories. What will we do for an encore? ... There's Still Cake! Thanks, mom!
... Joe Garrity's International House of Wonders Okay, one more! Joe Garrity of the Origin Museum comes through with a last minute set of scans... which is the record-shattering 45th update of the night! Here's high res PDFs of a September 1994 Powe... BREAKING NEWS: EA Files for New Wing Commander Trademark BluesNews is reporting that Electronic Arts has filed a new trademark registration for Wing Commander (as well as Populous, Theme Park and Road Rash). You can find the filing status/information here.
... Happy 11th Birthday, CIC! Tonight we celebrate the Wing Commander Combat Information Center's eleventh birthday, which means thanking all of you for allowing us eleven years of hosting the best community on the internet. I'm g... Birthday Greetings from Chris Roberts We are extremely honored to have the man himself, Wing Commander creator Chris Roberts, kicking off this evening's festivities. Here is a man who needs no introduction to Wing Commander fans:
Wow... Birthday Greetings from Peter Telep One of the best things to come out of the Wing Commander movie's release was author Peter Telep's magnificent novelization (and its sequel). Mr. Telep, the man behind four Wing Commander novels and ne... Wing Commander Standoff: Episode Five Released Here's the news you're all here to read: Episode Five of the Wing Commander Standoff fan mod is now available for download. I don't think I'm overstating this: Standoff is, perhaps, the single grandes... Privateer 2... in 3D! Back in 2006, Paul Hughes made our birthday party a huge success by providing a wealth of Privateer 2 material in honor of that game's 10th anniversary -- and it turns out he's still watching out for ... Ships Gets A Polish We hear you, we hear you -- you're tired of broken links in our ships section. You go to look up the Kilrathi dreadnaught and staring at Blair and Hunter instead. Well, no more! Every ship link now wo... Wing Commander Movie Cut Scene Analysis One of the most interesting stories about the Wing Commander movie is the sheer quantity of cut scenes -- a large 'traitor' subplot and a number of other things were edited out of the film very late i... Trivia Redux Missed the party but still want to win a prize? You're in luck - we have an annual latecomers trivia tradition. If you couldn't make it to #WingNut tonight, just find the answers to these five questio... Poll - Been Here Long? One of our birthday traditions is finding out exactly when you joined our ranks... because from where I'm sitting it seems like the replacement pilots are just getting younger every day. Have you been... High Resolution Art Book For years we've had requests for high resolution scans of the Wing Commander movie 'art book'. This 38-page manual was put together by Digital Anvil for the movie's licensors - HarperCollins, X-Toys, ... Past and Current Fan Projects This time of year we usually bring the Fan Projects section up to date. Here, you can find general information, screenshots and contact data on all projects, past and current. We've added new pages fo... Wing Commander Movie Ships Since we're celebrating ten years of the Wing Commander movie, it only seemed fair to integrate the movie ships into the ships section; after all, one of the community's frequently asked questions is:... Bossman Comic Relaunched NinjaLA, winner of the CIC's 2007 art contest, has finished the first four pages of his Wing Commander comic in honor of the anniversary:
Starting things off on a high note for this (the 10th ann... CIC Mail Bag Returns The Mail Bag is back this year with another issue full of mind-bending letters to the CIC staff. All of them are real! It's been four years since the last edition, and we've been itching to publish ... Cake! Thanks, mom!
... Last Words: A New Birth of Fandom I'd like to take a moment in this space to talk about our community.
Let me be perfectly honest: two weeks ago, for the first time in nineteen years of Wing Commander, I had a crisis of faith. Why ... Happy 10th Birthday, CIC! We're the old men, ace.
I think the question on all of our minds is: can it really have been ten years? It seems impossible to me that we first did this a full decade ago. Wing Commander fans have ... We've Got a Secret I'm putting you back in the cockpit, Colonel, where you will be reunited with an old friend: the thrill of battle.
Nine years and ten months ago Origin withdrew the limited-time episodic release of... Mythic Briefing Readers already know the story of how we came to be given access to Electronic Arts' archive of Wing Commander and Origin data at EA Mythic -- now we're proud to show you some of what we saw. This is ... The Ships of Privateer 3 This is the first of our 'Mythic Sample' updates - this one shows off press images of ships rendered to promote Privateer 3. The first set shows the Demon-class fighter with various engine upgrades. T... The Bases of Privateer 3 And here's where you would have kept those ships! These gameflow screens would have been where pilots upgraded their ships, traded, fought in arena battles and interacted with bartenders and fixers. I... Privateer 3 HD Here are three 'high resolution' images from Privateer 3. These promotional renderings were created for publishing in magazines or to be used in advertising material. From left to right: a Fury-class ... Privateer 3 Errata ... and here's one more piece of unused Privateer 3 artwork (for now!). It doesn't fit with the other categories, but it was too cool not to pass along - this Kilrathi skull was the logo created for t... Privateer 3 Manual Can you believe that Privateer 3 made it far enough in development to have its own manual? While this certainly wasn't the finished version, it's pretty cool -- check out the ship specifications for s... Star*Soldier Gloss: Cover ... and here's our new daily feature which will carry us through the next two months! We'll be offering commentary from the writers and designer of the Wing Commander Arena Star*Soldier manual for eac... Then What Didn't Happen? After the Maverick Team finished with Secret Ops, several projects were considered and even worked on - Strike Team, Privateer Online... Privateer Online again. Thanks to the Mythic project, we've lea... Background in Black Our minor theme today is focusing on new beginnings - focusing on what we're going to do instead of what we've done. With that in mind, Kris has updated the Secret Ops page of our Background section a... Look Behind the Screens Here are two CDs that don't come from Mythic - as a grand finale to the 'Making the Game' series, Captain Johnny has provided ISOs of his Wing Commander Prophecy and Wing Commander Secret Ops developm... Making the Game - Part 97 And here's an ending! Making the Game Part 97 features Wing Commander Prophecy's "losing" mission series. This is (for now!) the last update in the Making the Game series - we hope you've enjoyed this... Still Don't Call It That This update isn't a new feature: it's a mea culpa, and a necessary one. Last year we started the WCPedia and asked that everyone help us develop a world-class Wing Commander Encyclopedia... but then l... Projections Look Good The CIC birthday is always a good time for overhauling the Fan Projects section. Newly listed games include Ranger's Glory, Perfect Plan and the WC1 Remake (all three run on the Flight Commander engin... Standoff, Speed Up The Standoff team has a very cool birthday present for everyone -- a small mod for the game that changes the Raptor into the unreleased 'speeder' ship planned for Privateer! They say:
You can hea... Post Your Desktop Our Wallpapers section has been updated to include all the great desktop images that were featured in the news over the past year. This includes around twenty art works from talented artists in our co... Poll - Who's a Lifer? We have an annual tradition 'round these parts - polling the audience about how long they've been part of our community. Did you board the ship for Arena or have you been privateering since WCHS days?... Trivia Redux This is another annual tradition: the latecomers trivia. If you weren't able to make it to the birthday but would still like the chance to win a trivia prize then just be the first to email the answer... Welcome Aboard, Newbee! The Wing Commander Combat Information Center is proud to announce a rare occurrence -- the addition of a new staff member! Aaron "AD" Dunbar joins the team as a staff writer as of this update. He cut ... Preserving Origin's Legacy And least but not last, Joe Garrity of The Origin Museum has a video that... has to be seen to be believed. Fair warning, it's called "catsexy1.wmv". Fairer warning: the number leaves room for a seque... Last Word: Thanks! As always, we would like to thank everyone who attended or contributed to our birthday party this year. A special thanks to PopsiclePete who helped square away many of our last minute posts - Standoff... Happy 9th Birthday, CIC! I know I've said this every year for as far back as I can remember, but Wing Commander fans are the best fans in the world! In 2007, we were truly blessed - from official releases like EA Replay, Wing... Birthday Greetings from Sean Murphy! We asked Sean Murphy to say a few words about Wing Commander Prophecy in honor of its tenth anniversary. Sean was one of the game's 3D artists... he created some of the game's most familiar ships, inc... Birthday Greetings from George Oldziey! ... and George Oldziey, who composed the wonderful musical scores for Wing Commanders III, IV and Prophecy, was also kind enough to take time out of his schedule to comment on the WCP's development! H... Birthday Greetings from Electronic Arts! We're also here to celebrate Wing Commander's bright present... and the guys at Electronic Arts responsible for Wing Commander Arena were also kind enough to send along some awesome birthday greetings... A Special Present from Electronic Arts ... but wait, there's more! Producer Sean Penney, the guys at EA Arcade and the team at Gaia also have a special present for us to enjoy! One of the fan-favorite things we saw during the leadup to Are... Birthday Greetings from The Fatman! The Fatman, whose Wing One album is currently lighting up all of our Last.FM pages was also nice enough to send seasons greetings. He's also sent along information on an upcoming fundraiser for the Un... Don't Call It the WingKiPedia In general, the CIC staff are old fashioned internet gentlemen. We don't advertise or Podcast or YouTube or MySpace or anything of the sort... and, on rare occasions, we've been known to turn up our n... Star Gods, Star Ships To this day, a full decade after their arrival, the Nephilim remain largely a mystery. Their ships, however, are now a little better known... thanks to a behind-the-screens document left over from Ori... Revamped Video Section Is Totally Tubular
Last year we opened the Holovids movie archive, cataloging everything from official trailers and interviews to fan created music videos. In an effort to make these easier to watch, we've adopt... Full Full Motion Video Collection The other night an old friend called me with a normal question - was Prince Thrakhath right or left handed? Boy, I said, I don't know - right, I think, but we'd have to load up WC3 to see for sure.1 H... Holovids Up To Speed These new videos were in the news over the past couple of months. They've now been given a spot in the video archive.
Interviews with Arena producer Sean Penney.
Interview with WC3 game mechani... Tech Support Section Expands
The Birthday always gives us good motivation to refresh some of our older sections, and Tech Support, which debuted at last year's party, has been updated! The section now contains instructio... Going Back in Time! Here's a quick feature old timers may enjoy - an 'On This Day in Wing Commander News' feature! Wondering what was in the news one, two, three... or nine years ago? You can find out here. So, what happ... Behind the Screens: Prophecy GBA Script Here's an unusual sort of developer document to archive -- one we actually created! As some of you may recall, the CIC staff helped advise Raylight on their ground-up GameBoy Advance port of Wing Comm... Wing Commander Movie Storyboards In 1995 Chris Roberts and Origin Systems began pitching a Wing Commander movie to various film studios and investors. To help sell the project they created a series of lush painted storyboards to go w... Radio Free CIC Nine years ago to the day, we launched our very first InfoBurst -- an interview with CIC founders Christopher Reid and Ben Lesnick. Originally a RealAudio show, the CIC InfoBurst returns as a free int... Selling Prophecy: Press Kits 1 & 2 In 1997 magazines couldn't just log on to a press site to download screenshots and content -- the internet wasn't that complex yet. Instead, game developers put entire disks and later CDs of game info... Selling Prophecy: Promo Images You've all seen how Electronic Arts releases Wing Commander Arena screenshots in bursts. Well, life in 1997 was the same way - with Origin offering precious few Wing Commander Prophecy in special burs... Selling Prophecy: Ship Images You've all seen them before, two Prophecy images you'll never forget: a trio of Wasps arrayed over a planet and a pair of Panthers exiting a bright green jump gate. They're beautiful and part of our s... Selling Prophecy: Teaser Intro Would you enjoy... a little bit of new continuity? We've got it! What follows is part of a Prophecy 'teaser' story written by Origin for the press in 1997:
Following this revelation, Kt’Lan refus... Selling Prophecy: Rod Nakamoto Interview Rod Nakamoto, a former Sega executive, was brought in by Electronic Arts to run the Wing Commander franchise during the development of Prophecy. Worlds of Origin, the great Origin fan club, interviewe... Selling Prophecy: Broad Strokes This is a good crash course for those unfamiliar with Wing Commander Prophecy - the original press description of the game (and franchise) created by Origin's PR department to sell the game to newcome... WCHS Comes Home Sector But what were we doing when Prophecy was being released? The CIC is only nine, and Prophecy came out a decade ago! Well, for those who haven't been with us for all those years: the CIC had a predecess... Web Archive: Prophecy Official Site One of the most elaborate websites ever created (with one of the worst URLs ever registered) was Origin's wingcommanderprophecy.com. The game offered extensive details about the game, including a sect... Too Cool For MTV Wing Commander music videos... we've all seen them. From touching tributes to Blair's death to heavy metal set to giant space battles to Ashlee Simpson narrating the Wing Commander IV trailer, fans ar... Birthday Poll - How Long Have You Been Here? Annual poll time! At this time each year we ask our readers: how long have you been among our ranks? Is anyone old enough to remember WCHS? Did you come aboard for Secret Ops, Prophecy GBA, Standoff o... Prize Parade We didn't post a big picture full of birthday prizes this year, and we got a lot of questions about it! Nothing's changed though - we're still giving away tons of prizes at the party right now! And ... Got It Made By Shades Longtime WingNut Shades has an awesome present for us - a Secret Ops specific version of the ICIS Manual and a host of Wing Commander Prophecy and Secret Ops DVD covers and disc artwork! I'll let him ... Talkin' Nephilim War Blues Mark Smids has a cool Prophecy-related surprise for us - a song! He writes: "For a while now, I've been recording some of my guitar songs. One of these tracks that I wrote a while ago, is a funny song... Face Out! An anonymous WingNut has sent us a neat little birthday present - enhanced versions of several Wing Commander 1 conversations. This neat tech demo adds a fan-recorded voice track and morphs the mouths... Wing Commander 1 Remake Released! Kevin Caccamo has released a new stand-alone version of the Wing Commander 1 Remake for Flight Commander! Here's the official word and some pretty, pretty screenshots:
The Wing Commander 1 Remake... Trivia Redux We did did it before... and we'll do it again! If you missed our party because of work or other commitments, we still want you to win a prize! All you have to do is be the first to answer these very h... Contest Entries The Xbox 360 Contest went better than I could possibly have hoped - with people from all corners of the globe submitting entries of all sorts. Better yet, they're each incredibly unique - from drawin... And the Winner Is... NinjaLA
... for his Wing Commander Arena drawing. The action scene was truly spectacular, capturing the mood of the Wing Commander universe down to the tiniest detail. Check out the Kilrath... Final Word: Thanks! ... and at the end of a great night, we have some big thanks to make after a big year!
Sean Murphy and George Oldziey, for taking the time to send us their memories about Wing Commander Prophecy. W... Happy 8th Birthday, CIC!
Welcome, WingNuts to the Wing Commander Combat Information Center's 8th Anniversary Party!
This year, we're celebrating more than just our success and the amazing quality of our community: 2006 ... Preview A Special Prophecy Pack As August 10 got nearer and nearer, rumors have swirled about the status of HCl's Prophecy Multiplayer Patch. Does it really exist? Will it be released on the Birthday? Did HCl die? In fact, he di... What Shall We Watch Tonight? In what is almost an annual tradition, we have added a new CIC color! CIC Red (main site), CIC Blue (encyclopedia), CIC Teal (game guides), CIC Green (ships) and CIC Gray (document archive) are joined... Play Classic Wing Commander Games With Ease
One of the important things we do here at the CIC is help fellow fans gets their older Wing Commander games up and running. It was hard enough back in the early 1990s, but a whole new generat... Privateer 2 Cinematics Now Online The Origin Museum has kindly sent us a copy of a DVD containing many of the cinematics from Privateer 2 : The Darkening, and we are happy to be able to make them available to you! The original source ... A Flag Full Of Starships It's time to face the music: our old Privateer 2 Ships Database was kind of plain. It was missing a vast array of ships, it lacked many screenshots and the specifications themselves had more holes in ... What Are You Standoffing Around For? And, of course, the crown prince of Wing Commander fan projects, Standoff, has something for us! Check out this amazing wallpaper:
But wait, there's more! Their news site has been updated w... Now You Know The Rest of the Storyboard Joe Garrity, of the Origin Museum, has provided more than just those amazing videos: he was also kind enough to provide our archive with scans of Privateer 2 storyboards -- roughly fifty pages of them... Attached: A Real Press Kitten ... and Joe wasn't done yet. Last, but not least is a Privateer 2 press kit! This is the document which introduced audiences at the 1996 Electronic Entertainment Expo to Privateer 2: The Darkening... ... You're My Wingman, Bruiser McDoozer Erin Roberts was also nice enough to put us into contact with veteran Privateer 2 programmer Paul Hughes (in fact, they're working together at the newly formed Embryonic Studios alongside another Dark... He's a Real Caricature Paul also happened to have another neat set of images handy -- full sized scans of the development team caricatures which appear at the end of the game! Hit escape after you found out Kronos' identity... The Burning Questions After all that, Paul Hughes was still kind enough to answer some of my most nagging questions. We've collected them all in an interview article. It's obscure stuff about how Privateer 2 works and who ... Retro-Active Interviews Enjoy reading current comments from Erin Roberts and Paul Hughes? Then maybe you'd like to see some from ten years ago. We've collected a pair of Privateer 2 interviews that happened way back in 1996.... Highway to the PC Zone Back in 1996, PC Zone magazine produced a special 20-page Privateer 2 preview booklet. It interviewed all aspects of the team, including programmers, the guys behind the full motion video... even the ... Manual Override Here's something a lot of people don't know: different versions of Privateer 2 featured readically different manuals! It's strange but true - the original UK release came with a "Crius Hospital Rehabi... Think Outside the Box ... and that's not the only thing that changed between the versions. The American release of Privateer 2 has radically different cover art than its European counterpart. Here's the proof -- a giant sp... Did Anyone Catch the Number of that Straith? Here's a little one -- but useful none the less. We've finally gone through and updated our Booth Transcripts with all of the ship registration data. Wondering why Galactic Freight E247_135D isn't aro... Grin and Blair It Too much Privateer 2 for you? Well, you made it this far -- here's a present courtesy of the Origin Museum! It's a six minute making of segment from Wing Commander Prophecy -- watch Commodore Blair ge... He Has a Point -- Eight of Them Keenan Weaver, aka, ZFGokuSSJ1, has some fan art for us. He says: "I thought the CIC needed a very generic Confed wallpaper... so here ya go!" Well... there we go! Goku would also like you to visit hi... Eat Particles, Seven! And in that same spirit, here's a simple birthday animation from Bob McDob!
... Trivia Redux Every year we hear from people who had to miss the party due to professional obligations but still would love to participate... well, here's your chance. If you missed the birthday, answer these five ... Wing Commander Online Popularity Bigger Than Ever On our second birthday, six years ago to the day, we posted some interesting CIC statistics. It's been a long time since our daily transfer averaged a mere 220 megabytes, so here are some more up-to-d... Freedom for Chat Zone Mutants Managed to get yourself banned from the Chat Zone in the past year? Well, don't feel bad, it happens to a lot of people... and now you're in the clear, because this message is a blanket amnesty for al... Birthday Poll - Count Your Rings We have a tradition at these events, when it comes to polls -- we'd like to know how long you've been visiting the CIC. Were you a loyal WCHS reader in the mid-90s? Were you around for our grand openi... Jacket and Jill Went Up The Hill Here's a last minute submission from the Origin Museum -- a picture of an official Privateer 2 crew jacket! Check it out:
... This Takes The... You Know ... and what party would be complete without an honest to goodness cake? Here's one kindly set up by my mom! 'W' for Wing Commander, 'P' for Privateer 2 and then 8 and 10 for the 8th and 10th annivers... Goodnight and Thank You! We sincerely hope you have all enjoyed the evening, the features, the prizes and the company. The birthday is our favorite time of year, and we're looking forward to number nine.
As always, this ev... Happy Birthday! Thanks for celebrating our seventh anniversary with us! Take a look around, talk to other fans and enjoy being a Wing Commander fan.
... Standoff Episode 2 Released! The highly anticipated Standoff Episode 2 is now available! There are two download packages available. Players who don't yet have Episode 1 can download the combined 126 meg Standoff package here. ... Announcing Wing Commander Pioneer We have an exciting brand new fan project to announce today! Wing Commander Pioneer should be making lots of headlines in the coming months, and here is the first look. It's being created by a talen... CIC Forums Now Even Bigger Waste Of Time We're making good on our promise to add a fun new feature to the Forums. The iBProArcade add-on for vBulletin Forums lets you play Flash games and transmit your score to the server. Compete against ot... Refresh Your Memories In The Background Section We have upgraded and expanded the CIC Background section with more in-depth introductions to more games and products in the Wing Commander series. This area is far from a comprehensive list of all th... Extreme Makeover For CIC Secret Ops Guide Shades2585 brings us an updated and expanded version of the CIC Secret Ops Strategy Guide. He searched high and low for every bit of news and every press release that trickled out in 1998. The result ... Fan Project Section Overhauled There's a lot of exciting Fan Project activity going on these days and our projects section was showing its age. Information on Unknown Enemy, Standoff, Flight Commander and WC Saga has been updated. ... Holding The Line Chapter 204 Never one to miss a party, Raptor has sent in his own contribution to the celebrations on behalf of the HTL team. Don't forget to read on past the chapter description for the latest news on the new HT... Meet Kevin And Jason Raptor has prepared another two entries for the Encyclopedia. Not just any two; End Run's Kevin "Lone Wolf" Tolwyn and Jason "Bear" Bondarevsky! The On This Day feature has been restored and improved.... Every Birthday Needs Cake CasperXJ has sent another delicious cake for the CIC Seventh Birthday Party! This one looks pretty good.
... The CIC Mail Bag Returns The CIC Mail Bag has added another exciting update. You can check out today's new chapter here. In this issue the CIC staff takes a look at a case of mistaken identity, fans upset with technical iss... Freeze Frame! A couple of years ago we had a regular WCPolaroid news feature. Pictures were taken during the filming of Prophecy to make sure that everything looked the same between shots. We've now put all of them... When Did You Joins Us? It's been a few years since we did a poll about when CIC visitors began frequenting the site. There were quite a few new additions to the community back then, and we continue to grow. Some of our re... Thanks For Coming! The biggest people we have to thank this year are all the Wing Commander fans who continue to join our community. 2005 is our busiest year yet, and it's amazing that everyone is so enthusiastic about... Everything Looks Better in Black and White In the grand tradition of CIC Red (front page), CIC Blue (encyclopedia), CIC Teal (game guides) and CIC Green (ships) comes the newest CIC color - CIC Gray: the Wing Commander Archive. Our goal is to ... Music to My Ears Like music? Then you may enjoy a grand total of 128 Wing Commander mp3s, many of which have never been heard before! We've got rare licensed tracks from the movie, rare Cobalt 60 promotional tracks...... Sneak Preview: Ships Section 2.0 Want an idea of what we'll be working on over the next year? Look no further - we're going to be giving the Ships Section a much needed makeover! To show you what we're going for, we've gone ahead and... Saga Preserves The Past! Tolwyn of the Wing Commander Saga mod has digitized high resolution versions of both the original Wing Commander 3 trailer and the fantastic Wing Commander 3 Making of video! I remember standing outsi... Song of the Warrior King Dedicated readers may remember several months back when I revealed the story of the Warrior King - possibly the strangest crossover in TV history (and the only one involving Wing Commander). Basically... Saga Preview Trailer The long awaited Wing Commander Saga trailer is here! The video clocks in at 2:28 and shows off some pretty darned impressive ships and their environments - fans of the Wing Commander III designs and ... McDobing for Apples The Reckoning's Bob McDob checks in with an artsy reinterpretation of the final losing scene of Wing Commander III. He'd darned well better animate Pepper crushing someone's skull for next year!
... Talkin' Bout My (High) Resolution (WC3 Video Clips) Tolwyn has been busy in his video encoding lab: he's also made available new, higher resolution versions of many of the Wing Commander III 'lost scenes'! Here's the list:
Freya Attack
Hobbes Expl... Up Like a Tinderbox Tolwyn of Wing Commander Saga has submitted a second video for your consideration - but this one doesn't involve the FreeSpace 2 conversion. Phoenix, of the cancelled Rebel Assault Project, made this ... Filler Balloon's Up Some Wallpaper #WingNut regular/talented artist (how's that for an epitaph?) Filler has made us some neat birthday wallpaper:
He also did the cool 'balloon' CIC logo you see at the top of this page! Thank... It's A Freakin' New Mail Bag! After taking a two year break to retool and refresh ourselves, the latest edition of the CIC Mail Bag has been released! You might not believe but, but each and every email is real. Visit here to se... Check Our Our Dragon*Con Fun! Sorry for the very late publication of the Dragon*Con 2003 Gallery. The problem this year was with the number of pictures we had to sort through after the convention. In 2004 we will be fixing this ... WC Saga: Fact or Fiction? Viper61 has provided another exciting taste of the Wing Commander Saga mod for FreeSpace 2, with a sample of the fiction he's writing for the game! Here's what he has has to say about about it: "This ... Special Birthday HTL Double Bill Poor Raptor wasn't able to make tonight's party, but he sent us through this little present: Holding The Line chapters 188 and 189!
Hey all, Raptor here
In honour of the CIC's birthday, we're pr... Saga Spans the System Thought you'd heard the last of the Wing Commander Saga team tonight? Not by a longshot! They've also done this fantastic movie-intro inspired wallpaper to promote the release of their game. It's avai... New Poll For New CIC Year Freelancer narrowly beat Freespace in our previous poll, each getting close to a third of the vote. If you combine the scores for Freelancer and Starlancer they win by a good margin.
This time ... Long Live the Confederation Cyberion has made everyone some neat Confederation logo wallpaper in honor of the CIC's birthday. Thanks a lot! It really makes for a nice, simple, elegant windows background... and it makes me hungry... Trivia Game 5 Ends Thanks for playing our quick summer trivia game! It went fast, but many people worked very hard to squeeze out answers each week. Coordinator TC had this to say
I would like to thank all of you... Let Them Eat Cake! ... thanks to CasperXJ, the CIC's Unofficial Baker! Here's this year's Wing Commander Combat Information Center Delicious Cake (WCCICDC):
... Birthday Screenshots: All About Reckoning Bob McDob has sent us five pretty screenshots from the Reckoning mod for Digital Anvil's Freelancer. They show off Perry, New Constantinople, Bearcats and more! Check them out:
... Birthday Screenshots: WC Saga Corvette The Wing Commander Saga mod has released these rendered screenshots of their new WC3-style corvette model - which they've named Kamrani-class in deference to the Unknown Enemy mod. That's some nice te... Everything Looks Better... in 3D! There's even more from Tolwyn of the Wing Commander Saga. He's updated Wing Commander 3D six new models. The models include two Arrow Vs (in regular and pirate varieties, an F-86 Hellcat V, a F-66 Thu... Thanks Everyone! I'd like to welcome everyone to the Wing Commander Combat Information Center's sixth birthday celebration. It's really hard for me to believe that we've been doing this for more than half a decade... ... HAPPY FIFTH BIRTHDAY! It's been a big year with lots of encouraging news. The biggest news is that our traffic is way up and Wing Commander fans around the world are more interested in our community than ever before. Wit... Sunnie Days Are Here Again! The topic doesn't make sense to most people, nor does it appeared to be spelled right, but it very much expresses our sentiments as we push this project out the door. For many years people have been ... Final Prophecy Advance Cheat If the God mode cheat for Prophecy Advance didn't help you enough, how about a cheat to unlock every mission in the game? After entering the following code, you'll be able to load any mission from the... Ghost Likes To Sing! Hot off his latest single "Where ace Will Take Me," Ghost has put together his latest masterpiece. You can download Ghost's Happy Birthday Song here.... Eder Flies A Special Edition Rapier I Eder from Wing Commander Standoff sent these awesome shots of him flying the newly modeled Rapier I. This is the latest in a long line of cool ships from all eras that he has imported into the mod. ... The Reckoning Shows Its Stuff Bob from The Reckoning, a Freelancer mod, has whipped up an in-engine shot to celebrate our Fifth Birthday. I see what appears to be a Talon skimming over a Concordia Class Supercruiser. I sure love... Unknown Enemy - Download It Again Soon Wing Commander Unknown Enemy was one of the first mods to be completed. It pioneered some of the Secret Ops engine modification and editing. They're currently offline because their mirrors have all ... That's Not All From UE Needaham from the UE team also made what can only be described as a Wing Commander themed orchestral "Happy Birthday" song. It's a short mp3 they've zipped up for us. You can download the 325k file ... Wing Commander Saga Preview Trailer Released Wing Commander Saga: Battlegroup Serpent has released a four minute trailer for their upcoming Freespace 2 mod. It's a pretty exciting look into the basics of the story with some very nice in-game sh... originalTHP Releases WC3 and WC4 Trailers Previously available in forms such as 35 mm film and obscure DOS files, originalTHP has properly updated and encoded the original Wing Commander 3 and 4 trailers for our Birthday. They're quite excit... Casper Station Releases Teaser XJ from Casper Station has put together a short teaser for Wing Commander DDX, his fan fiction novel in progress. He also baked us the cake below. You can find his 6 meg teaser here (BL.org mirror ... Summer Trivia Comes To A Close Our six-week summer Trivia game has come to a close. There were some easy weeks and some really killer weeks, and each time there were a surprising number of rabid fans that were able to pull up obsc... Wing Commander Cell Phone Rings Online Hadrian has put a number of sound files suitable for cell phone ringtones online. Not all phones will support this, but it's worth a shot to check these out if you have a fancier phone. Point your p... The Black Lance HQ Behind the Scenes While we generate news updates, create features and find new files to post here at the CIC, over the years our friends at the Black Lance HQ have been there to support our continued expansion. Today w... Thank You Everyone! This year Destination Software and Raylight Studios really helped boost the enthusiasm of our community. Many active fan sites have bolstered our ranks and many fan projects have extremely impressive... Happy Birthday Everyone! We'd like to thank you all for visiting us for three years at wcnews.com (and for several more years at our precursor Wing Commander news sites). We've reached another major milestone today. Each year... CIC Teal Open For Business There's nothing we like more than opening a new CIC color. CIC Teal brings you all of the information you could ever want for missions from all of the major WC games. Cpl Hades put an enormous amount ... Presenting: Crius.next It's our third anniversary, and it shows. We've polished up our CIC Chat Zone for this joyous occasion. The latest version of the Bulletin Board software makes reading and posting more enjoyable and c... Book of LOAF Available For Download For many thousands of years, The Book of LOAF remained in the mysterious charge of an Eagle-taunting robot. But since such things were abandoned in hopes of harmony, access to The Book was lost... unt... We're Lazy Gits Running a Fan Project? We've got just the thing for you. From now on, you can run a page dedicated to your very own project right here, at wcnews.com! That's right, posting job offers so someone else ... We Have A Winner! The results are in and it is now time to announce the winner of the longest WC character list. The winner with a grand total of 858 names is Dralthi5. Congratulations, you win a Maniac action figure s... Big Bunch of Ripe Bananas! I recently went over our referral logs, and compiled a list of the most funny, twisted, and downright sick search engine queries. The strangest thing about it is not that people look for these things,... Many Thanks To.. We couldn't have done it without the supernatural efforts of all of the people listed below... and many more!
MNelson: For continuing to support our efforts immensely by funding BlackLance.org. A... Happy Birthday CIC! Whew, we're finally there! After years of hard work (and about 36 hours of insane crunch time) we're officially two years old. You are our first guests as we enter our third year at www.wcnews.com. ... Black Lance HQ Issues Kdown asked us to let everyone know that the Black Lance HQ is down and not to do things such as mail to any of the @blacklance.org addresses. You can temporarily find the site here. Things should r... CIC Ships Database Expansion - The Weapons Guide By popular demand, and just because we can, we have completed a guide to most of the weapons from all WC games. This guide is part of the Ships Database which has changed a lot since it was first unve... Vital Information For those of you who are interested, here are some statistics about the CIC that we've collected:
The main CIC server holds over 160 megabytes of HTMLs and images with several hundred megs of other... Official Wing Commander Academy Press Kit Adds to the Universe This collection of documents was given out to people to help advertise the Wing Commander Academy TV show back in 1996. It's especially interesting because it contains a lot of background information ... Beefy T's And Spiffy Pads We've set up shop at Cafepress. You can get Wing Commander themed T-shirts, mugs and mouse pads for $12 US each. The "profits," a dollar from each purchase, go back into the site (hosting, domain name... Single Male LOAF Seeks Encyclopedia Co-Author Applicants must enjoy lengthy debates about pointless minutiae and long walks on the beach, as well as have an extensive knowledge of the vast Wing Commander Universe. Send qualifications by mail to l... THE FIRST COMPLETE FAN PROJECT! This could be the dawn of a new age for Wing Commander fans. Especially for the CIC's second anniversary, long lost Byydo has completed his Happy Secret Thingie, which he started exactly one year ago ... Fan Projects Galore, Working Hard to Keep WC Alive 2000 is the year of the fan made game. However there are many hurdles in place that can trip up those brave enough to attempt a large scale project. In order to help these people gather support for ... Tired of $40 End Runs on eBay? This is one more for the Fan Projects section. Justin Bielawa announced today that he's surreptitiously acquired a copy of the ultra rare novel End Run (I hope his librarian doesn't read the CIC), bu... Buy, Buy, Buy! For some reason, nobody is buying anything from Amazon zShops, so there's a huge surplus of Wing Commander merchandise up for grabs. A few examples: 41 WCII Deluxes, 32 Armada's, 20 movie posters and ... Dry Wit Was Never Less Funny That's right, the CIC Mail Bag has returned for its annual reincarnation. This time we've got some one genuine submission plus two e-mails that the CIC received in error. You've got to see them to b... The Finger of God The CIC has compiled many of the numerous cheats which allow you to get ahead the easy way in Wing Commander. Find out how you can cheat the Kilrathi of their victory with the press of a key. The CIC... WCESCRP Petition Letter Sent! The WCESCRP Team is proud to announce that their letter to Origin has been sent to multiple people within the company with over 500 names in support of the release of a Wing Commander engine source co... Academy TV Up For Grabs, Almost We've been without a Wing Commander Academy episode server mirror for a while, so a few newbies have come along that don't have any of the series. So for a limited time you can check out one of our o... Music Brings Back Memories What would a birthday be like without something to download? Dan "Vinman" Sumner has extracted and converted a number of mp3s from the in-flight music from Wing Commander 4. Some of the clips are ra... Fan Directory Overhauled Our handy dandy Fan Directory has been updated with numerous new profile and updates. The latest slew includes three new pictures of some of your absolutely most favorite fans. ;) The ICQ List has a... Filler Hey, we had all these updates, why not one more?... SETI@Home is Out of this World Despite little attention, our SETI@Home group has grown to more than ninety members. Combined, we've put in more than twenty-seven years worth of computer time to searching for extra terrestrial life... 160,000 Posts and Counting The alt.games.wing-commander Homepage has been a bit slow of late, and this has not been aided by some major problems at Deja. We're looking at alternatives to keep the posters list updated, and ther... Thanks! Last, but far from least, we'd like to take some time to thank a great many people who've been critical to the site over the last two years. We're short on time but long on the list of people we need... That's a Wrap! The CIC's First Birthday Party is now over, but we're not stopping there. We still have a lot of work to do reporting news, upgrading our currect sections and creating new sections as the need arises... LOAFless in Seattle By the time you read this, LOAF's on his way to Austin to attend college at the University of Texas. He should be checking into his dorm and coming back home to us in just over a week.
... Andrew Keith Memorial Tribute Almost three years ago the online Wing Commander community was stunned by the sudden death of Jason Bernard, Captain Eisen from Wing Commander 3 and 4. From that event, a number of online tribute sit... Birthday Party Logs Online Did you miss the Party? Want to see the next best thing? We now have logs of the big event available to read online. The first log starts about two hours before the opening of the new CIC sections ... Rash crash causes splash at flash bash lash-up Hack from hell Eno Barbus gives a report from the sharp end. Great reports from Rock emperor Zak Skintight's 'Piss-up in a Brewery' party at the Braufhrer ale plant on the planet of Karatikus. The res... Pretty Colors While kindly visiting our own Secret Ops Chat Board Boomer responded complaints that the Secret Ops Website's text is to difficult to read. Boomer notes that the people in charge of the site are going... Secret Ops in Print Harbinger reports that the September 1998 issue of PC Gamer has a small article about the upcoming Secret Ops. We will hopefully have a transcript very soon.... Very Creative Deathlok mentioned on IRC last night that Daylight Productions has sent the Wing Commander Prophecy DVD off to Creative Labs, presumably to be bundled with some upcoming DVD product. No word as to whe... Countdown, to Infinity People who know me know that the Encyclopedia and Timeline are my pet projects, what I've always dreamed of doing... now, dates have finally been set! Check the subsections for counters... (the timeli... Coming Soon, to a Theater Near You Dan's Wing Commander Movie Site also reports that the Movie's official trailer and some CGI images should be released within the next few weeks!... Movie Music News What's a Wing Commander news site without news taken from the incredible Dan's Wing Commander Movie Site? Not much, I'll tell you that. Apparently Dan mailed Richard Gibbs (WC Movie music man) and lea... The Morning After Wow, last night's CIC opening IRC party was, IHMO, a big success. I've never seen so many people in a WC channel before, thanks for all your support... we'll do it again real soon! For those of you wh... More Lost Scenes WildFire- sent me another pair of missing WCIII scenes just after we went live yesterday... check 'em out!Newsbrief #7 (708k)T-Bomb Run on Kilrah (1,781k)... Production Values QuickNote (tm), The Carousel Picture Company's official company web page should be up within 6 weeks. It will include the current WC Movie page we all know and love... (Thanks to the guys over at GMS!... Fiction Update And Origin said, 'Let there be light', and there was the light of the newly illuminated 'Secure Channel' button at SecretOps.com. And the light allowed access to the first fiction update, which may be... A Serious Thanks A while back at WCHS I once asked for help trying to locate a portion of Origin's old Wing Commander IV web page... Psychopath found a hard copy and typed it up for me today! Above and beyond, man......
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