We're going to kick things off with a bang thanks to Fek'Leyr Targ! "For the CIC's 20th birthday, I felt that a simple 'happy birthday' was not enough for an occasion of this magnitude. So I decided to take the opportunity to improve my animation skills by creating this small gift for all of you to enjoy as a mean to show my appreciation for this awesome community as well as saying 'happy birthday' and 'thank you'."
Meshes, Textures and Sound Effects: Origin Systems (Privateer 3D Archive)
Music: Nenad Vugrinec
Production and voice: Fek'Leyr Targ
Music_Guru has packaged up a treat to share with fans today. He's built a collection of the music made for the Sega CD edition of Wing Commander 1. This version is known for having full speech, but it also has unique audio tracks for the rest of the game as well. While different than the originals, they do a great job of carrying on the the Wing Commander atmosphere. Definitely check them out! Grab the MP3 pack (53 meg zip) for easy listening or the VGM files (1.5 meg zip) for a more authentic feel. Music_Guru recommends VGMPlay, but there are winamp plugins and other resources out there as well. For a quick sample, watch the YouTube link below, but then go back to add the mp3s to your collection!
Hello Wing Commander CIC and congratulations on the 20th anniversary!
I have put together a release of VGM and MP3 music from the Sega CD version of Wing Commander. The music in this version is much different than the tracks used for the PC version and other ports. The music was composed and arranged by Noriyuki Iwadare along with Isao Mizoguchi, Ken-ichi Ookuma, and Masaki Tanimoto from music production company Two-Five.
Gens/GS r7+ was used to capture the VGM music as it is able capture RF5C164 data unlike other Genesis emulators. In order to capture the VGM files without sound effects, a disk image was created from an original copy of the game and hex-edited in order to force certain tracks to play. The tracks contained in this release should be all the non-CD music tracks from the game, including a couple unused tracks. In order to play the VGM files, a list of VGM players is available here.
The track names are based off the names used in other versions of Wing Commander. One notable feature is that each mission type (Patrol, Escort, Strike, and Defend) has its own combat music. Even though the music has been completely redone, it still feels true to the Wing Commander musical themes.
This is my gift to the Wing Commander community that continues to thrive today. Thanks for all the years of hard work and dedication!
-Music_guru
The master of the VHS strikes back! Jim Leonard has restored a copy of the Wing Commander III ESRB submission tape to give us some of the clearest Wing Commander III footage ever preserved. Mr. Leonard has previously restored the Wing Commander III 'Behind the Screens' documentary from a copy of the commercially released VHS. This time around, Joe Garrity of the Origin Museum was kind enough to provide him with an original copy of the ESRB submission tape that Origin produced for Wing Commander III.
The ESRB tape includes roughly one hour of Wing Commander III's FMV footage which was cut together so that the game could be content rated. The footage covers most of the game but does not include every branching path or optional decision. The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) is a voluntary video game content rating organization widely recognized by consumers in the United States. The ESRB was created in 1994 and launched its ratings system just two months before Wing Commander III was released for MS-DOS. The initial release of the game was not rated; the first port to carry an ESRB rating was the 3DO release which was published some seven months later (in June 1995) followed three months later by the Macintosh port.
You can download the full video here. (2.3 gb)
The CIC Forums have also recently crossed another threshold. We're happy to report that fans have just hit 400,000 posts! Fun fact: our original message board was actually one of the few victims of the Y2K bug, and we started over with new software in January 2000. This has been carried forward through a few different iterations to today. (From WWWBoard to Ultimate BulletinBoard to vBulletin to Xenforo) It's a reasonable number when spread across 18.5 years, but it's still hard to fathom that you all have posted so many times!
With twenty years on the books, that's a lot of people coming and going over a huge span of time. It's always interesting to get a little perspective on when everyone showed up - and encouraging that there's fresh faces continuously arriving! Vote below to tell us when you got here!
The old poll asked about fans' guilty pleasures. It included several pastimes that were satisfying but ranged from goofing off (Blasting Asteroids) to human rights violations (Pilgrim Stars' Force Powers). Tractoring in Ejected Pilots won out - it's possible some people considered this to be wingman pickup in WC2, but the nefarious version included picking up wayward humans in Gemini. And then selling them into slavery at the commodity store! After that, intentionally losing missions to play through the losing path was popular, as was buzzing the flight deck. Sadly, not one person voted for Prophecy Multiplayer, which does not happen very often (that comment stands for both a choice getting zero votes and people playing multiplayer in Prophecy Advance). Hooking up with friends on the Gameboy required an unwieldy web of cables to execute, but it sure is a blast!
It's a CIC party, so there's cake! This one has special 20th birthday flavored frosting!
Two cakes for two decades!! Music_Guru made this gorgeous cake as well. AND IT HAS A DRALTHI ON IT!
Will wonders never cease?!
And that's what we have for today! Thanks again to all of the people who contributed to making our 20th Birthday a success, and thanks to all of you who have stuck with us for all these years.
Several people have helped source quite a bit of news this year, which helps a lot. Pix & Christian Klein/Pixel Engineer have found tons of great archeological content. Unnamed Character's has done great work on modding WC1 and Stinger with Kilrathi Saga. Music_Guru, Adm_Maverick & Fek'LeyrTarg have both contributed quite a variety of different subjects. L.I.F., DefianceIndustries & the Maslas Brothers all have large scale projects that have been pretty exciting. And both George Oldziey & Raph Koster showed that Origin vets haven't forgotten their role in everything. And there's a whole lot of people working in the background here and there to keep things going, including but not limited to, the rest of the CIC Staff.
There's plenty more Wing Commander news in the pipeline, so we'll be back at it again soon with the latest!
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