News Collection: On This Day in WC News

2026.025 (January 25, 2026)

Snow Day!

Much of the United States is facing a major snow storm today so we thought we'd recognize that by unboxing a Kilrathi cold weather survival kit! As seen in The Price of Victory, this package stored aboard your average Dralthi medium fighter contains survival equipment necessary for navigating an icy moon... First up, these Kilrathi hooded jackets don't just look smart, they're essential for staying warm in a hostile environment. One size apparently fits all!

2025.025 (January 25, 2025)

GOG's Lunar New Year Sale Marks WC Series Down 59%

It's almost new year - Lunar new year that is - so GOG is celebrating with a big new round of discounts on Wing Commander games! Each package is 59% off or $2.45 per package. Finish out your digital collection some time in the next ten days!

2024.025 (January 25, 2024)

GOG Discounts Wing Commander Series by 71%

GOG is kicking off a belated new year's sale to help you start 2024 with a complete set of digital Wing Commander games! The entire series is on sale, but the exact discount varies. Most titles are 75% off ($1.49), but Armada, Prophecy and Privateer 2 are 65% ($2.

2023.025 (January 25, 2023)

Privateer 2 Wingman Bio Purpoisefully Changed at the Last Minute

On the left we have a pre-release Privateer 2 screenshot published in the December 1996 issue of PC Review, seemingly from a review build. On the right, the same wingman listing for Delphinius from the finished game. What does this tell us? Someone very, very late in the process decided to remove a SPACE FIGHTER PILOT PORPOISE from the game's lore.

2022.025 (January 25, 2022)

Speed Runners Continue to Refine Wing Commander Playthroughs

What the Fox Project has posted a pretty impressive speed run of Wing Commander 1. The game features an extensively branching mission structure, so players can experience vastly different games on multiple playthroughs. As we've previously noted, there's some strategy involved here. One short path through the game is to eject through the Enyo, Gateway, Chengdu and Port Hedland systems, then win in Hubble's Star (or Port Hedland) and Rostov, then eject again through Venice and still rout the Kats from the Vega Sector.

2021.025 (January 25, 2021)

Animated Kilrathi Fleet Arrives

The Confederation Fleet has been well outfitted in DefianceIndustries' animated WC universe, and now the Kilrathi have arrived in force too. You can find an impressive force of Kilrathi capships depicted here, including the all new Ralari model. They're escorted by numerous wings of Dralthi and Grikath to round out the ensemble. It's not a fleet you want to mess around with!

2020.025 (January 25, 2020)

Transmit New Poll Votes Here

We've got a new poll up today that asks about your favorite communications options to send while in flight. There's a few tried and true ones that have been around since WC1, and some of the later games introduce a couple more that are less well known. The Comm VDU isn't generally considered a central element of Wing Commander, but I would argue it's a critical aspect to the immersion that we all feel in the game. So now we're giving you a chance to think about what comm selection you rely on or enjoy the most - vote below!

2019.025 (January 25, 2019)

Wing Commander Meme of the Day: Perfection

2018.025 (January 25, 2018)

One Man's Shirt Is Another's Treasure

It's not every day we see a new promotional Wing Commander shirt, but LOAF was lucky enough to run across this one recently. It's a simple black and white number, but very cool! Scored a cool addition to the Wing Commander collection this week! I found this EA promo shirt for WC3 at an Etsy vintage clothing shop.

2017.025 (January 25, 2017)

Next Generation AIs Get To Play Wing Commander

The OpenAI project has announced a virtual environment - dubbed the Universe - where it will allow artificial intelligences to train in front of a variety of virtual computing interfaces. Ultimately the goal is to enhance AI so that it can more seamlessly perform tasks in the real world, and this simulation is an interim learning step. Some of the modules are simple computing tasks, but a number of video games will also be used to provide the AIs different environments to interact with. And of course, you would want your future robotic overlords to have good taste in video games, so Wing Commander 3 will be one of the games that they learn!

2016.025 (January 25, 2016)

Universe Explored In A Flat Way

Space Game Junkie recently conducted a live stream playthrough of the Wing Commander Flat Universe fan game. We've posted lots of screenshots of both the top-down action as well as the flow sequences aboard Daedalus Station, but these images don't do the game justice. Videos like the one below are much better at showing off how cool it can be to just walk around in a familiar WC setting. Note that this walkthrough just explores the free flight mode in space.

2015.025 (January 25, 2015)

Extensive Walkthrough Chronicles Super Wing Commander

GaijinGG has sent in a nifty time capsule that will be a nostalgic stroll down memory lane for some Wingnuts and a peek into another world for others. He's scanned in his personal strategy guide for Super Wing Commander that was written way back in 1996. It's a very useful tool for anyone thinking about playing through the game, especially since an official strategy guide was never produced. Detailed mission stats can be a big help for mission planning and knowing when to conserve missiles.

2014.025 (January 25, 2014)

Suit Up!

Today's new poll asks which Wing Commander product had the best flight suits. A few games have relatively similar outfits, but there's a significant change in styles over the years. Which one did you like the most? The annual new year's poll has concluded with amazingly close results!

Last Chance to Vote for Web Site / Fan Project of the Year!

Voting will soon be wrapping up for our annual contests, so if you haven't cast your ballot yet, get those votes in! There are lots of great fan projects and sites out there, and we're happy to recognize a small sampling of them here!

2013.025 (January 25, 2013)

Book Report: The Ultima Collector's Guide

If you're into Ultima, Ultima Online or RPG's in general, the comprehensive Ultima Collector's Guide may be for you. In more than 800 pages, the author details hundreds of releases, maps, books, packages and various collectibles. Wing Commander veteran Warren Spector says "[it] is nothing short of amazing. If you're an Ultima fan or video game historian, stop reading now and just buy this.

2012.025 (January 25, 2012)

LOAF on Sol: Exodus

"Welcome to Sol Sector, Lieutenant!?" - Lieutenant Chris McCubbin, TCS Concordia Sol: Exodus, the new space sim from Seamless Entertainment, will be available starting today on Steam for just $9.99. I was very kindly allowed to take a look at the finished product over the weekend and would like to share my thoughts with the Wing Commander community.

2011.025 (January 25, 2011)

Shotglass' Lego Bar Just the Beginning

Mr. Lee's combined two of his biggest hobbies into one beautiful art form. He's recreated the Tiger's Claw bar with Lego bricks. It's really detailed and well done.

2010.025 (January 25, 2010)

Standoff's Ending Easter Egg Exposed

It took just a few busy days of detective work for Wingnuts to solve the Standoff Easter Egg Challenge posed by Quarto last week. Plywood Fiend was the first to capture the screenshot below, and Blaster and Ilanin translated the Kilrathi text based on some key clues. The hidden message screen was found (spoiler) "on the flight deck, just after the final mission when all are gathered around your sabre. The Easter egg can be found by clicking one of the nearby barrels.

Prelude to Darkness Keeps Fans in the Loop

In between major chapter releases in the Frontier - Prelude to Darkness series, lew82 creates several other updates on an almost weekly basis. In between the ship of the week (USS Hornblower!) and character of the week (Arnold Wexler!), there's a roundup of progress on the actual movie.

2009.025 (January 25, 2009)

Confed Ships Invade Empire At War

The new Wing Commander Invasion mod now has all its Confed capital ships. The final design to round out the fleet was the Bengal Strike Carrier based off Howard's super render. Major Payne has also added the Plunkett and Vesuvius as well as the 'Hero' Midway complete with Nephilim plasma weapon. While the Plunkett is heavily armed, it won't have fighter capabilities, but the Vesuvius is likely to have a full compliment of 400 fighters.

Puffer Invades Secret Ops

Here's another unique shot from the Wing Commander Collateral Damage mod. Since the game is designed as a bridge between Secret Ops and Arena, JasonRocZ has begun a Nephilim Puffer model. It's likely to be revised shortly, but here's the first cut.

2008.025 (January 25, 2008)

Arena Tournament Approaches

Don't forget to stop by and join in Saturday's Wing Commander Arena tournament. To participate, visit the #Wingnut chat room just prior to 3:00 pm Eastern time (12:00 pm noon Pacific and 8:00 pm GMT). We'll be organizing rounds and giving specific instructions at that time. If you're a little late, don't hesitate to drop in and see where we're at.

Point of Origin: Vol. IV, No. 58

This is a short one - the August 12, 1994 issue of The Point of Origin doesn't have much about Wing Commander... but it's chock full of company culture! Coming up with all of those funny sports team names sounds like a full time job in itself... A very special thanks to Joe Garrity of the Origin Museum for making this resource available and to Electronic Arts for sending them to him in the first place!

2007.025 (January 25, 2007)

TacOps Rules Revised

Ironduke has updated the manual to his Wing Commander board game with feedback that playtesters have provided over the last week. Some weapon and speed adjustments have been made, and the document's font has been adjusted so that it is more legible. The individual ship stat cards (pictured below) are no longer in the rule book and will be made available separately with other counters and markers later. You can download the TacOps manual update here and discuss the game at Crius.

New Year, New EA Replay Reviews

Reviews for EA Replay continue to surface two months after its release. The Gamers' Temple take on the game knocks off points because Wing Commander on the PSP was ported from the SNES version, but they make some odd comments about how the game worked on the Super Nintendo. As we've noted before, the PSP has similar controls, so adapting the well-established SNES interface makes sense. Wing Commander is one of three games (along with Mutant League Football and Syndicate) that at least get specific critiques however.

2006.025 (January 25, 2006)

Apricot And Plum On The Pioneer Menu

Another new cockpit design is in the works for WC Pioneer. Howard Day has released several variants of the Phalanx design. It's loosely based on the concept art posted last week. The colors are still up in the air, so check out the Phalanx WIP thread to talk about which you'd like better.

Who Would You Be?

Our new poll asks what sort of role you'd choose if you appeared in the Wing Commander universe. The pilot option might seem to be an easy choice, but exciting things happened to many different types of Wing Commander people. Marines and Bartenders are currently in a fight for second place. Our traditional New Years Poll stuck around longer than usual, which always skews the numbers towards the less enthusiastic options.

2005.025 (January 25, 2005)

For His #1-2500 Fans

People seemed fairly interested in the autographed Tom Wilson picture we gave away at last year's Birthday Party, so here's the source image. This one has the basic Origin-inscribed autograph. A higher res one is available here. It might be suitable for printing.

Electronic Arts Announced 3rd Quarter Results

Although the final fiscal year tally is three months away, today's quarterly results are big because of the holiday season. For the quarter that ended December 31, EA's net revenue came in at US $1.4 billion, actually a 3% decline on last year. They had a dozen titles sell over a million copies during the quarter, bringing the number of platinum sellers in the year to 27.

2004.025 (January 25, 2004)

Retro Interview: William R. Forstchen

We've been digging through our vaults, and have tracked down a collection of material from the CIC's ancestor, WCHS. First to be added back into our archives is an interview with Wing Commander author William Forstchen, which we performed way back in 1997. Mr. Forstchen talks about how the novel series came to be, dealing with continuity with video games, the then-upcoming Action Stations and False Colors and touches on several projects that never came to be.

Mars or Bust

Scientists at NASA JPL are now one step closer to locating the ancient Steltek base hidden somewhere on Mars. MER-B "Opportunity" landed succesfully at Meridiani Planum early this morning - and is already sending back some pretty neat pictures. Just think - in 669 years, Maniac will be living there.

2002.025 (January 25, 2002)

Mint In Box

Premiere computer gaming commentator Arcadian Del Sol has written an article on Electronic Arts' decision to stop using game boxes. He brings up an issue that has long troubled all mankind: how the heck do you properly display those round Wing Commander III: Premiere Edition tins?

Holding the Line: Chapter 119

Chapter 119 of Holding the Line is here! The exciting Aces Club PBM continues!. Here's Raptor with the intro... Hey all, Raptor here.

2001.025 (January 25, 2001)

New Mark Dacascos Movie Hits Wednesday

Seems as though some people really like to follow famous WC actors about. Viper let us know that Mark Dacascos, who played Catscratch in WC4, will be starring in "Le Pacte des Loups" (aka Brotherhood of the Wolf) which should open as a very popular movie in France next Wednesday. Dacascos has actually been relatively busy since his role in Wing Commander 4.

When Did You Find Us?

I like the poll we have up for the next cycle. This week we're asking when your first visit to the CIC was (or one of our precursor sites). I think it'll be pretty interesting to see how people spread out. Eight options is about the practical limit, so we're asking that you just round to the nearest major event.

Various Important Reminders

What is it? Cold and flu season? Mid-terms or finals? I'm a little bit disappointed in some of our post-operations here this last week or two.

2000.025 (January 25, 2000)

Potential Release Date Under Scrutiny

In the midst of squashing old Privateer 3 rumors, this one's potentially interesting. Kyee over at the Chat Zone noticed that Gaming Haven appears to have recently put up a release date for "Privateer 3." Admittedly, there are a million bogus Privateer 3 related things floating around, but this one suggests a January 2001 date. That'd be rather late for the long-defunct P3 game.

German Wing Commander 3 Works Through Kilrathi Saga

This isn't so much news as a bit of trivia. Last week we reported on a way to make Secret Ops run with german subtitles and speech. Sturm noticed that if you install the English version of Kilrathi Saga WC3, but use the German discs, the full German game will play with full German speech, subtitles, etc. I'm not exactly sure why you wouldn't just install the German version of WC3, but hey..

Don't Forget This One's For Print

KnightWolf noticed that the CGW Top 40 Poll is still up. We reported about this one quite a while ago, but if you missed that, be sure to vote here. Prophecy Gold is among the many choices. If anyone has any info on the issue of Computer Gaming World that features the results, be sure to let us know.

H.O.C. Tables Controversial 'Air Rationing' Plans

A report by Velham Jedley. The Hephaestan Oxygen Company, a semi-autonomous body charged with maintaining Hephaestus' shakey oxygen supply, has revealed plans to implant all residents with 'aerometers', which register the amount of oxygen consumed by an individual, who would then be charged accordingly. Visitors to the planet would be obliged to pay a 'consumption charge'. Pressure groups were up in arms at the news yesterday, but H.