All Wings Considered - Episode 34 - LIVE!

The latest episode of ALL WINGS CONSIDERED is live now! All Wings Considered is the CIC's first ever streaming variety show which features news, conversation and gameplay relating to our favorite series. This week's Nav Points include:

• Wing Commander III - Torgo on the PC
• Heart of the Tiger Book Club - Chapters 22 through 24
• Holiday Cheer!

Missed the stream? The replay will be available below once it has been processed by YouTube. You can subscribe to the AWC channel for future notifications here.

German Phone Card Highlights Prophecy Marketing Blitz

I stumbled over a weird Wing Commander Prophecy telephoncard folder in Germany

WC4 Remake Tests Higher Resolutions

Been out of action with flu, work craziness and most significantly moving, I haven't even had chance to set up the server again yet so I'm afraid I've made very little progress... but with the extra desk space I got a new monitor so I can start testing Ultra Wide resolutions and HDR.

Ginger's Prophecy Shooting Schedule & Contract Cover

Wing Commander III and Prophecy star Ginger Lynn Allen (Rachel Coriolis) runs an eBay store which regularly offers items from her storied career. While much of the memorabilia pertains to her time as an adult film superstar, she occasionally comes across a document or prop relating to her time as our favorite chief tech. We recently purchased these two documents to add to our archive and wanted to highlight them here.

The first, two blue pages, is the shooting schedule for Wing Commander Prophecy showing which days each actor is scheduled to work. This is especially interesting because it shows how quickly Wing Commander Prophecy's cutscenes were filmed: just ten days total, compared to 25 on Wing Commander III, 30 on Privateer 2, 43 on Wing Commander IV and 52 on the 1999 movie. The second is the cover sheet for her Wing Commander Prophecy contract; the 'Crocodile Productions' of the header was Electronic Arts' internal full motion video studio at the time. We've previously archived the contract itself, which you can read here.

Happy Birthday, Wing Commander III!

Origin Systems shipped the original PC version of Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger on Thursday, December 8, 1994, a whopping twenty-five years ago today. Heart of the Tiger was an immediate hit, selling hundreds of thousands of units to those lucky enough to own top of the line PCs that Christmas. The game was like nothing anyone had ever seen before, seamlessly blending advanced 3D graphical gameplay with interactive live action cutscenes starring familiar professional actors.

Wing Commander III's status as a true classic has never been in doubt, though its true impact on the history of video game development took some unexpected twists and turns. Upon release, it was felt that the game represented the next generation of entertainment media, harbinger of a new era of interactive games fused with Hollywood filmmaking. Sadly, Heart of the Tiger's blend of gaming genius and cinematic know-how proved to be a feat few could equal, ultimately condemning "interactive movies" to fad status. Nevertheless, many other aspects of the game set standards that are still recognizable in AAA game development today. These range from the large scale production processes developed to keep such a massive project on track to the revolutionary gameplay built around textured 3D objects, the decision to develop exclusively for CD-ROM media and the interactive conversations and missions that continue to inspire designers today.

For Wing Commander fans, Heart of the Tiger represents a Rubicon of sorts, the point at which the series went from being a set of extremely good games following one another to becoming a multimedia franchise. The unprecedented success of Wing Commander III was mana to the series' longtime fans, proof positive that Chris Roberts' genius could was recognizable to the world at large. Its success spawned licenses and spinoffs that would have been thought impossible a day earlier: Saturday morning cartoons, customizable card games, Privateer 2: The Darkening and ultimately a feature film. It's a game that took an already-great universe, turned it on its ear and made it something incredibly unique and special. It also brought Wing Commander to the nascent internet with fans coalescing on the Usenet around alt.games.wc3 and eventually on the World Wide Web through groups like the Wing Commander Ace's Club and Origin's Official Wing Commander Chat Zone, the forebearers of today's Discord and Facebook groups.

Over the next three years, Wing Commander III would be ported to the 3DO, Macintosh, Playstation and Windows 95 and the series would continue with massive projects like Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom and Wing Commander Prophecy. The game is still enjoyed and discussed regularly by fans around the world with modders and historians continuing to take it apart to learn ever more obscure details about the Wing Commander universe. Will it ever be forgotten by the countless fans who first leafed through their copies of Warbirds and Victory Streak on Christmas morning a quarter century ago? I mean, they're going to have to pry our dead carcasses out of the cockpit...

Follow for Fighters, Fiction & Firekka's Finest

First, for a game that’s going to celebrate its 30th anniversary next year, Wing Commander holds up surprisingly well. A lot of that can be attributed to the branching campaign structure which provides a lot more flexibility and replay value than might otherwise be in a game like this. There were a few losing path missions which I don’t know that I ever saw prior to this playthrough.

Despite the technical challenges, I feel that the game is still very much worth playing. For me, personally, I played through the original campaign numerous times growing up. That contributed to my general confidence when playing these missions. However, my brothers and I never had the Secret Missions expansions, so these missions I’ve only played through once or twice once I acquired a copy of The Kilrathi Saga to play on my own PC in the late ‘90s. From here on out, things get a lot more challenging.

Wing Commander Advent Calendar Brightens up the Season

I've taken the liberty of making an advent calendar out of your heads.

All Wings Considered - Episode 33 - LIVE!

The latest episode of ALL WINGS CONSIDERED is live now! All Wings Considered is the CIC's first ever streaming variety show which features news, conversation and gameplay relating to our favorite series. This week's Nav Points include:

• Wing Commander III - Caliban & Delius on the 3DO
• A Visit to the Head Museum
• Righteous Fire - Visiting Tayla
• 25 Years of Wing Commander on the PlayStation

Missed the stream? The replay will be available below once it has been processed by YouTube. You can subscribe to the AWC channel for future notifications here.