News Collection: On This Day in WC News

2018.143 (May 23, 2018)

Hobbes Betrayal Crosses Over Language Barriers

Most people are familiar with the infamous video cuts that were made to fit all of the video on the Wing Commander 3 discs. Helpful sequences such as the TCN news bursts and Hobbes explanation were omitted due to space constraints. Fortunately, these are now available here at the CIC, but for a long time, the main way players could watch the Hobbes scene was to track down a copy of WC3 on the Playstation or 3DO. But how many people have watched this clip in German?!

Wing Commander Meme of the Day: Evil Kermit

Resist the temptation!

2017.143 (May 23, 2017)

Follow the Arrow Model

Sci-fi model kit builder Alfred Wong is making something every Wing Commander fan is going to want: a 1/48 scale Arrow model kit! Mr. Wong designs and produces his own model kits covering a variety of awesome sci-fi ships... and his decision to add Wing Commander to the mix was a great one.

2016.144 (May 23, 2016)

Sweep Around WC Capship Sim's Starships

Arraen has pulled together a neat video that shows off the remodeled fleet of his strategy game, WC Spaceship Universe. Each of his four workhorses are encircled so that fans can see them cruising through space in his Unity engine. The project has gone through a few evolutionary upgrades that have stretched out the development timeline, but the results evident now look pretty good!Hey, guys!

2015.143 (May 23, 2015)

Ultima Art Project Moves Forward, But WC Element Still Possible

If you're not a Patreon follower of Denis Loubet, you may have missed the results from the recent vote for his next Origin-themed artwork. Unfortunately, Ultima fans won with a request for a new cover of Ultima VII. This is actually a very cool subject for Origin fans though as "The Black Gate" originally had just a stark black box! Denis will be consulting with Richard Garriott about what he might have imagined a properly illustrated cover to look like, so the results will be quite interesting for all.

2014.143 (May 23, 2014)

Italian WC DVD on Amazon

Victorinox has come across a listing for the Italian DVD release of the Wing Commander movie on Amazon.com. Produced by Cecci Gori, this is most likely the same version that surfaced on the Italian streaming site Cine1.it back in 2008.

2013.143 (May 23, 2013)

Epee Bolsters Enigma Fleet

Klavs is on a WC2 modeling spree! To follow up his Rapier, Ferret, Broadsword and Sabre, the F-54 Epee has now been put together. All of his Vengeance of the Kilrathi designs are quite faithful to their Confed source material, but this one has a nice 'heft' to it that the authentic fighter may have lacked. It may be small, but it's not scrawny!

Play Ultima Forever Today

Are you a non-Canadian excited about Ultima Forever? Good news: iTunes is very forgiving about allowing foreigners to download free apps from the international versions of the iOS app store. With a little trickery you can grab Ultima Forever and run it on your current account and device!1) Click "View In iTunes" on the Ultima Forever web listing.

2012.144 (May 23, 2012)

Destroyer Destined for Guard Duty

Kevin Caccamo's Ralari has taken a huge leap since the last time we saw it. The model has been plated with nice metallic textures that don't overdo the look. Running lights, windows, powered engines and intake glow all add significantly to the presentation here too. Everything looks energized and ready to go!

2011.143 (May 23, 2011)

WC vs. History: The Ring's the Thing

Fans of the Wing Commander movie may remember that Paladin proves his loyalty to the Tiger's Claw crew early on by showing a ring given to him by Admiral Tolwyn. Captain Sansky explains that the "ring has been in Tolwyn's family for sixteen generations and any man who carries it has the admiral's full confidence!" While we only catch a glimpse of Tolwyn's ring a few times during the film, you can get a pretty good idea of what the prop used in the movie actually looks like in the next batch of screenshots from the HD version of the movie. For those keeping track you can catch a glipse of it, first, when Paladin gives it to Sansky, then when it's on Sansky's desk immediately after Manaic and Rosie's stunt on the flight deck, and then Sansky is wearing it during the Tiger Claw's jump into the Ulysses Corridor and a little later during the Claw's ambush.

2010.143 (May 23, 2010)

Buy XBox Wing Commander Arena from the Web

There's a new way to purchase Wing Commander Arena directly from your computer! Back when the game was first released, a handful of Wingnuts unable to get an XBox system still wanted to purchase the game and contribute towards its sales. This wasn't possible in 2007, but xbox.com has been upgraded with this functionality now.

New URL Pointing to Facebook Page

Thanks to all the dedicated Wingnut followers, the CIC's Facebook page gets a username and short url. The page can now be found at http://www.facebook.com/WingCommanderCIC.

2009.143 (May 23, 2009)

DOSBox Praised, New Version Forthcoming

DOSBox, the PC emulator that lets you run old DOS games on modern hardware and operating systems, has been named Source Forge project of the month. DOSBox is the most popular solution for running classic Wing Commander games on Windows. We have detailed walkthroughs available from our Tech Support section. Check the official compatibility list to see what other classic titles are supported.

For Big Downloaders

Despite chewing through well over a terabyte of traffic so far, we have a lot of upload allowance to spare for the month of May. We have plenty of entertaining files that you may have missed in the past. We recommend a download manager to help the large files along. Here are some of our favorites:WC1 Blueprints (42 MB)Music Video Roundup (300 MB)High Quality Get Away Video (124 MB)Behind The Scenes of WC4 (120 MB)Prophecy DVD enhancement pack (2.

2008.144 (May 23, 2008)

Wing Commander IV Made Hollywood History

AD's found a nifty press release that should bring back some fond memories for quite a few Wing Commander fans. The document, dated February 7, 1996, announces the imminent release of Wing Commander IV for the PC. To celebrate the game's release, a massive launch party was held at the Beverly Hills Planet Hollywood with Mark Hamill, Malcolm McDowell, John Rhys-Davies and Tom Wilson. The event marked the first time that video game equipment was donated to the chain.

Making the Game - Part 18

The June 21, 1996 Component Manager Meeting agenda starts off with an interesting list of issues that really helps get a feel for this exact point in the Maverick Team's history - what the problems where, where the future of the series was to go and so forth. One line sums it up best: "We need to show Origin/EA that we can do this without CR." Other than that: monkeys have been ruled out for the Maniac Missions story (darn!), Captain Johnny is now in England and Billy Cain is a WINNER!

2007.143 (May 23, 2007)

Logo To-Go

In a recent update we dredged up a pack of Wing Commander logos made by WildCat years ago. Well, apparently he still reads the news and has now gone through the trouble of making a new logo set! He says:I'm still an almost daily reader of the CIC so was pleased to see my old logos resurface. Unfortunately I was pretty shocked at how bad they are.

One In A Hundred (and One)

CVG is running a four part article revealing the "101 best" PC games of all time from 'Blood' to... who knows? Part 3 gives a nod to Wing Commander IV, in 29th place:YEAR 1995: Beyond the orgy of million-dollar FMVs (this time abandoning blue screen for real sets) and the dumb thrill of having Luke Skywalker play your hero, WC4 offered high-impact space battles, the likes of which are curiously uncommon in this day and age. Come back soon, Wing Commander.

2006.143 (May 23, 2006)

Bridge Commander Project Adds More WC Ships

BES has been busy since we last reported on his Wing Commander mod for Bridge Commander. He's added several exciting capital ships that are famous for their large size. If anyone has played Star Trek: Bridge Commander, it's easily moddable and has good graphics.My goal is to make you command Wing Commander capital ships instead of flying fighters(you launch the fighters from your ship) and make a whole universe with planets, systems and some sort of storyline using ALL ships from Wing Commander 3-5.

Didn't We Already Cover This?

IGN wasn't the only one to interview Origin's Bryan Walker at E3 this month. Planet Gamecube spoke with Retro Studios and Nintendo about Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. Metroid is one of the highly anticipated launch titles for the Nintendo Wii.PGC: Do you fly the ship, since there are multiple planets this time around?

2005.143 (May 23, 2005)

Print Your Own Portraits

Over the years we've noticed some people trying to make a shady profit off various Wing Commander things. People selling CDs with Wing Commander Academy episodes is always annoying. They can sell for quite a bit too. The latest attempt has been the sale of Wing Commander art prints.

CNN's In The Know

Jibbo found a pretty neat article on Origin founder Richard Garriott's exploits with NCSoft. After Richard's departure from Origin, the Garriott brothers formed Destination Games in 2001. The company was soon acquired by NCSoft which grew surprisingly fast into a major force in the mmo market. His primary game now is Tabula Rasa.

2004.144 (May 23, 2004)

HoTT Has Competition

When TC gets bored, he goes hunting for Wing Commander items and usually brings back something completely terrifying. This time is no exception. He has come across some art which challenges HoTT's position as king of strange WC crossover art. Found on this Cats Don't Dance unofficial fan site is this piece of art by Dennis Hu, which is a crossover of Cats Don't Dance and the WC movie.

Ultima 7th Anniversary Edition Coming Soon

Although many Wing Commander fans were saddened this year with the apparent closure of Origin, there have been hints that Electronic Arts is keeping the brand alive to some extent. Their historic Austin campus is still being vacated, but as we mentioned previously, some of their staff is being moved to Los Angeles. The remaining staff's belief was that some titles may yet be published with the Origin logo even. A tentative Ultima X Odyssey box art has been circulated, and it lacks the logo, but a new box has appear that includes it.

2001.143 (May 23, 2001)

SWC Character of the Day: Knight

Maverick, right? I'm Knight. Welcome to the Blue Devils. Ever flown Scimitars before?

Freelancer Mentions

GameKult has posted an interview with Erin Roberts -- who's still with Digital Anvil, and apparently working on FreeLancer. It's in French, so here's my translation... Thanks to LancersReactor!Unfortunately, we could only see the combat portion of Freelancer, perhaps because this is the domain of Erin Roberts -- whereas the adventure portion is the work of his brother Chris.

Cultural Reference

Dralthi5 noticed an interesting Wing Commander mention -- Monday's edition of Jeopardy! had a catagory called "Sch"wing"", which included the following answer: "A rank in the Royal Air Force or a space combat video game." Neat...

Happy Birthday, ATFW

Happy third birthday to A Talent for War -- the biggest, best and probably only Space Sim news site! Keep up the great work, guys...

2000.144 (May 23, 2000)

Wing Commander Interactive Starting Up

Jack Hogan has begun a "Choose Your Own Adventure" project for Wing Commander. It's a neat concept that I'm surprised hasn't been around more. Just the very beginnings of the story are set, and visitors to the site build it as they go along. It just needs a lot of content and effort put into it now, which the readers provide.

Are We In A Resurgence?

pc.ign.com's take on SL is from the point of view that we are in the middle of a resurgence in the space sim genre. Too little too late for us at the moment perhaps, but it does seem like there's been a notable space sim coming out every month or two for quite a while now.

Torrential Rain Causes Flood on Hermes

Tony Knox is on the spot. Heavy rain storms have persisted on Hermes for several weeks, resulting in large parts of the planet's surface being flooded. The excess water is slowly being purified and stored, and any trader wishing to export will find prices to be low.

1999.143 (May 23, 1999)

Priced to Rent

Bad news for those of you who have yet to make the switch to DVD -- the initial VHS release of Wing Commander on July 6th will be priced to rent -- which means that you can't have it unless you're willing to spend $103.99. Amazon will lower that price to $88.39, but they still advise you wait the several months it'll take it to be a normal price.

It Will Only Get Harder

Scrapper sent me a copy of his Prophecy Plus program, which automatically modifies WCP to make it more interesting. Grab it here, and check the readme for information as to exactly what it does. I tried it out last night, and it's pretty cool. It will not work with Secret Ops, however.

Bad Luck, Canucks

Edward Pang reports that after speaking with a local knife dealer it appears that the Pilgrim Crosses may not be allowed in Canada due to laws against concealed blades.

Our Daily Bread

I finally picked up one of those ultra-cool double-bladed light sabers... now I can... I don't know what I can do now, but I'm sure I'll figure out something. Lots of work on the encyclopedia going on, I'm going to finish the damned thing yet.