Calling this done for now.
The Terran Confederation is losing the war against their long time enemies, the Kilrathi Empire. What follows becomes the tale of "The Little Escort Carrier that Could", aka The "End Run".
Last month, we reported that Supercade was planning to manage a crowd funding campaign for a vinyl release of George Oldziey's Wing Commander Orchestral Recording Project. Now, it seems like the launch is imminent as Supercade author Van Burnham has just tweeted:
Just a heads up that the preorder campaign for Supercade’s first soundtrack release is launching SOON… a deluxe vinyl edition of the Wing Commander orchestral score by composer George Oldziey. So excited to share more details!#wingcommander #videogamesoundtrack #vinylcollector pic.twitter.com/DOWHWtyuZc
— Van Burnham (@supercade71) February 1, 2023
There's no additional information yet but we'll let you know the moment it's available. If you are curious about the promotional screenshot, it's actually from a Wing Commander Academy mod developed by HCl that adds a Hellcat V to the game! Want to try it for yourself? You can download te patch here.
Then I realized: I first played the expansion when it was released on disk in early 1994, just a few months before the CD-ROM came out and that became the de facto version of Privateer. Could there have been an intentional change? I installed the floppy version from disk images and… sure enough!
WHY? It’s not an accident as the Dralthi uses fusions in both versions. I’m guessing the support folks were sick of people asking how to get the gun back and decided not to tease players. Too bad, as it was a distinct enough moment for me to remember thirty years later! Also:New livery for the Sabre! And some work on a reduxx'd Ferret!
LAZY SATURDAY SPACESHIP POST! I thought it might be fun to sort of roughly compare the Wing Commander Academy ships that originated in Wing Commander 2 with their original meshes. And you know what? It was fun! The Sartha:
The Kilrathi Jalkehi heavy fighter, which appears in a single episode! (Word of Honor) The furball Grikath bomber, a series regular: And the Kamekh corvette! The coloring is a little more like the all-tan Privateer version (which was the same mesh retextured). On the Confed side, we've got the Ferret. This appears in only one episode BUT somewhere there existed an unseen toy prototype of it, the only one made for the series. Wish I knew more! The Epee medium fighter. This one shows up a few times on the show but it always seems like it didn't get a fully fleshed out model sheet... ... which is also the case with the Sabre, which actually looks like a different design in its two appearances on the show. And of course the famed Broadsword bomber! I don't think Academy uses any of the WC2 capital ship designs. A couple of WC3 designs have 'cameos' on the show too... they got full model sheets early in the process when the series was going to be 'WC3 Babies' and it would've been a shame not to use them. The Arrow: One Hellcat V, primed, prepped, etc. And we even get an incredibly brief appearance from the Longbow! Maybe it was still called the Imperator back then... There's one WC4 cameo, too. This one was an intentional Easter egg, the Border Worlds Avenger bomber popping up as a pirate shuttle: We don't have meshes for the Wing Commander I ships, but they're fun to compare to the original concept drawings. Here are the show's hero ships, the Scimitar and Dralthi: Meanwhile, the Dorkir and Fralthi actually used the Claw Marks art as reference because the model sheets for the Kilrathi fleet weren't done: Finally, you can see the Bengal is heavily inspired by the original line drawings but with a pretty significant revision pass working it into the style of the show:
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