News Collection: On This Day in WC News

2018.197 (July 16, 2018)

French Promotional Booklet Beautifully Highlights Wing Commander

Mail call! Here’s a wonderful press booklet from the Wing Commander movie’s French distributor, United International Pictures. 32 pages and about the size of Claw Marks!

2017.197 (July 16, 2017)

Lost Tank Found

What secret lurk in the heart of Wing Commander III's TRE files? Well, this Kilrathi missile tank, for one! The general design of this tank should be familiar to WC veterans… but you haven't seen it with a missile turret before! That's because while it's stored in the game files it is never used in a mission.

2016.198 (July 16, 2016)

Less Than One Month To Party Time!

We're now just four weeks away from the CIC's 18th Birthday Party! Time really flies. The actual date is August 10, but we've selected Saturday, August 13 to celebrate so that more fans can participate. Everything gets going at 7:00 pm EDT (4:00 pm PDT and 11:00 pm GMT) in #Wingnut on irc.

2015.197 (July 16, 2015)

Strategy Mod Demonstrates Cruiser Engagement

Arraen has posted the second preview video for his Wing Commander strategy mod, Starship Tactics. It features the Tallahassee cruiser dominating a battlespace dotted with Kilrathi transports and corvettes. The Dorkirs don't stand a chance! Fighters are often the star of the show in Wing Commander games, so it's nice to see the capships take center stage once in a while.

2014.197 (July 16, 2014)

Phoenix Crew Disembarks For New Experiences

Silent Hunter asked us to remind everyone that the crew of his ship, the TCS Phoenix, is currently enjoying shore leave on pleasure planet Jolson. If that sounds like a place you'd like to be, join the Wing Commander From the Ashes RPG to start in. They are a forum based RPG that role plays its adventures here. They spent much of last year battling pirates in Pentonville, so the leisure time is much deserved!

2013.197 (July 16, 2013)

Wing Commander Blu-Ray Prices Inch Lower

We're now just three weeks away from the scheduled launch of Wing Commander on Blu-ray, and competition continues to push down prices. The stalwart Amazon has held steady at $12.99 so far, and they're still probably your best bet to get the disc on release day. Walmart, Barnes & Noble and Deep Discount have also posted lower prices at $12.

2012.198 (July 16, 2012)

Wing Commander Armada - Something Of A Halfway House

Another trip down memory lane as today we look at a review of Wing Commander Armada from the November 1994 PC Review. Armada reviews all tended to have a similar trend of mentioning TIE Fighter and what could be if only TIE Fighter had Armada's graphics. In his review, Paul Glancey, says that such an event would "have needed to invent new superlatives to do it justice, and if Wing Commander 3 can manage this level of detail in SVGA resolution, there'll be jaws on the floor throughout the kingdom." Overall, Glancey isn't too thrilled with Armada's gameplay.

2011.197 (July 16, 2011)

Watch the Prologue Played

FekLeyrTarg has been busy lately. In addition to his various artistic projects, he's playing through the WC Saga Prologue demo, which was released in 2006. If you've been thinking about trying it, but want to see more of the action first, FekLeyr is posting walkthroughs of each mission at the CIC Forums. The first two are available here and here.

Patch Tweaking Leads to New KS Solution

Mash's latest Kilrathi Saga patch was recently reworked to play nicely with the DirectDraw Hack graphical upgrade, but if you happen to still have issues, Mincemeat has developed an alternative workaround to get things running smoothly. The instructions require a little bit of hex editing knowledge. Hit the CIC Forums if you have any questions.Armed with nothing but a hex-editor, I've managed to get the Kilrathi Saga WC3 working with Mash's patch and ddhack...

2010.197 (July 16, 2010)

A Series of Unfortunate Events

GameSpite has posted an article on "the end of space combat simulators." It's a good topic to talk about, and it frequently comes up in conversation. A lot has to do with the changing tastes of the gaming market, the role of peripheral input attachments, rising game development costs and more. There are also many specific factors that influenced each particular series and company.

2009.197 (July 16, 2009)

Kilrathi Concept Sketch Found

Here's a look at one of the Kilrathi concept sketches from the Wing Commander movie. This one was drawn by Bill Zahn. The final product looks pretty close. Mr.

Sixth Time's A Charm...

After five scrubbed launch attempts, Endeavour successfully lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center. Here are some spectacular pictures of the stormy conditions that preceded Wednesday's launch and some great shots of the actual takeoff. Soon the shuttle will make the 29th NASA rendezvous with the International Space Station and complete the Kibo science laboratory. STS-127 is scheduled to last 16 days.

2008.198 (July 16, 2008)

Get In The Mush Pit

Forums member goat wants to recruit players for a new Wing Commander MUSH (a text-based role playing game):What is a MUSH: I believe the letters stand for Multi User Shared Hallucination. What that means? Heck if I know. Basically, it's a (in my opinion) better/cooler version of mIRC.

Making the Game - Part 72

The second part of the Wing Commander Prophecy designer's bible is the gameflow section. This lays out all of the 'static' screens in the game - ie, the interactive menus where you pick which character to talk to or which door to go through. One interesting thing is the reference to the Wing Commander Universe map, at one point considered for inclusion in the game itself. Bible 02 - Gameflow Download (3.

2007.197 (July 16, 2007)

Enjoy Interactive Movies

AD has come across an article at GamesRadar titled "Tracking the Sordid History of Interactive Movies". By 'interactive movie', they mean 'film shoot' - forgetting that the former label was originally created to refer to games like Wing Commander II and System Shock. Oddly, Wing Commander (the series that popularized both items) is touched only only briefly:With or without controversy, interactive movies were doomed from the outset, and big-budget titles like Wing Commander III stuttered under the weight of their own ambition. Robert Paulsen explains: “It wasn’t so much that the genre failed, but that technology failed the genre.

Enjoy Intractive Movies

Here's one for England: the Wing Commander movie will air in HD this Friday (July 20th) on SkyMovies HD1. It will be shown twice, at 12:00 and 18:05 local time. Their page for the film is here. They've come to an odd - and unique - conclusion about Wing Commander:As science-fiction goes, Wing Commander is decidedly un-cool, yet ironically, probably the most realistic depiction of future space travel...

2006.197 (July 16, 2006)

New Flight Commander Now Available

eddieb has released version 1.4 of the Flight Commander engine. It's designed to look and feel like Wing Commander while being easy to modify. Aspiring modders will find Flight Commander easier to work with than the Vision engine from Prophecy and Secret Ops.

G4's PC Acting Awards Captured

BrynS has managed to capture the the PC Acting Awards clip featured on G4's X-Play last month. Wing Commander 3 is featured along with several other classic titles to feature live-actor FMV. The whole feature is pretty corny, but if you had problems with the flash player before, now you can try an Xvid encoded version now here (34 megs).The Best Reuse of a Prop Award goes to...

2005.197 (July 16, 2005)

Wing Commander Movie On Sci-Fi Tomorrow Night

The Wing Commander Movie will be brightening up another summer night tomorrow on the Sci-Fi Channel. It will air at midnight Eastern/Pacific and 11:00 pm Central time in the US. If our handy Wing Commander almanac is any indication, the next showing should be in later September. If you miss tomorrow night's show and can't wait that long, you have a chance of winning a copy of the movie on DVD at our Birthday Party next month.

Progressive Darkness Chapter Two Ready Soon

lazarusryu should be posting the second chapter to Progressive Darkness as early as tonight. Readers of the Wing Commander Fan Fiction Forum have been helping to shape the story since the prologue was released last month. AD has produced a full adaptation of the beginnings of this story, and we're about to see what comes next. You can find more on this and other short Wing Commander adventures here.

2004.198 (July 16, 2004)

Wing Commander Movie on Sci-Fi Saturday

The Wing Commander movie will be showing on the Sci-Fi Channel in the US again this Saturday. It will go on the air at 12:30 pm Eastern/Pacific. That's shortly after noon for those confused by the am/pm. Wing Commander - This tightly directed military adventure about elite fighter pilots (and one cranky civilian scout) in a 27th-century war for interstellar domination stars Freddie Prinze Jr.

Derek Smart Wants Freespace 3

We talked briefly last month about Interplay shutting down after a very long and famous run in the video game industry. They've managed to hold off imminent doom by selling the Fallout rights to Bethesda and other things. They have the Freespace rights burning a hole in their pocket, but who would buy such a thing? Not Volition, but rather..

2003.197 (July 16, 2003)

Wing Commander The Reckoning Looking For Beta Testers

Bob is looking for beta testers for the Reckoning Freelancer mod. If you've got the game and have been dying to immerse yourself in a Freelancer style WC universe, this is your chance. I'll let him take it from here.Since the core game mechanics of the mod are mostly down pat (although there still are a few ships models that need to be added), I'm going to conduct an open beta - which basically means if you want to try the mod, email me and I'll email you - with the URL!

Another Day, Another New GBA Color in Japan

Nintendo is running yet another new GBA SP promotion in Japan. Yesterday the original Nintendo Famicon turned 20 years old, and to celebrate, a Famicon style GBA SP is being made. It won't be available for purchase, since Nintendo is running a promotion during the summer. People who buy the requisite products will be eligible to win one of only one thousand of these units that will be manufactured.

#Wingnut Gets Its First Spam Robot

At 1:11 AM Pacific this morning #Wingnut got its very first spam bot. Apparently hobastankop had pictures of his girlfriend to show everyone. You know you've hit the big time when you've come this far. As we do our best to make sure Mr.

2001.197 (July 16, 2001)

Trivia 38 Week

If this weeks trivia were a page in the Privateer manual, it'd describe the purpose and use of Ship Dealers.Welcome to Game Three, Week Thirty-Eight Trivia. We play each week. Every Monday two main questions and one bonus question are posted to alt.

Interview Fever

The WCDC has posted an interviews with TigerShark and WildCat... heads of the Vega Strike and Wing Commander Invasion teams (respectively).

From: Unable to ID: Signal Encypted

I am from a certain underworld organisation, which I'm sure you need no introduction to. One of our ships was destroyed, and we require someone to go and pick up 2 packages which were jettisoned from it seconds before it exploded. There's no need to know the contents, and you will be rewarded well for your discretion. Watch out for others who may want to get their hands on the package.

1999.197 (July 16, 1999)

Shirt Information

Jibbo (whose e-mail address was wrong in my last update, my apologies) reports that there are currently 6 XL and 1 XXL shirts available... the cost is $20 US for orders in North America, $25 US internationally.

Conspiracy Theory

Intwydamalu noticed that, for reasons unknown, MSN's Gaming Zone's directory has a large link to Origin at the top of it. Perhaps a sign of things to come?