News Collection: On This Day in WC News

2018.084 (March 25, 2018)

George Oldziey Releases Promo Reel

Origin composer George Oldziey has put together a new professional musician's reel. If you just followed his Wing Commander work, you might be surprised how many projects he's been behind from Kill Bill to Sin City to Spongebob Squarepants. He's also spliced together this nifty video that shows off various samples of his work in action. It's pretty neat to pick out his signature style through bits and pieces of other work.

2017.084 (March 25, 2017)

Privateer 2 Script Available!

Looks like we aren't ready to leave the Tri-System just yet. Today we are proud to present something we've been trying to track down for twenty years: the shooting script to Privateer 2: The Darkening! This should be a great resource for anyone frustrated by the game's lack of subtitles... or anyone interested in learning more about how the game was made.

2016.085 (March 25, 2016)

Wing Commander Likely To Depart UK Netflix Soon

NewOnNetflix UK is reporting that the Wing Commander Movie will leave the service on March 31. The UK was one of the first areas to get the film on Netflix in April 2014, and two-year licensing contracts appear to be common. It may also give fans in other regions a timeframe to plan on. Many other European countries were able to watch Wing Commander starting in February 2015, and it was added in Canada and the US in June and August 2016 respectively.

2015.084 (March 25, 2015)

SM1.5 Campaign Ported to PC with New Modding Techniques

Fans have long been intrigued by the differences posed by Super Wing Commander. Ostensibly a remake of the original Wing Commander with newer graphics, the games' smattering of familiar fighters has much confusing crossover with ship models used in very different roles throughout Privateer and Armada. And while WC1 and The Secret Missions were pretty faithfully recreated in the new engine, SM2 was replaced by a brand new intermediate campaign where the Tiger's Claw seeks out and destroys the shipyards that spawned the Sivar Dreadnought. This special expansion, dubbed "Secret Missions 1.

2014.084 (March 25, 2014)

Clive Owen Recollects Privateer 2

Clive Owen recently conducted a Reddit AMA, and a couple of people asked about his Wing Commander experience. Clive's gone on to have quite a career over the past two decades, so it's nice that he hasn't forgotten his roots! You can read up on what else he had to say here. Thanks to CataclysmX for spotting this one.

2013.084 (March 25, 2013)

Claw Marks Comrades Conjured in Color

-danr- was inspired by the stellar full-color Super Famicon Claw Marks, and he used this energy to paint the black & white headshots featured in the PC version's manual. The result is an artsy take that really jazzes up the simpler pictures. We'd love to see more of the booklet colorized!For those who don't own or can't wait to download the color Claw Marks, here's the original Japanese art.

2012.085 (March 25, 2012)

New Poll Examines Extremely Versatile Warship

The new CIC poll asks what everyone's favorite Confed cruiser class ship is. While most of the action that we see in Wing Commander is carrier-based, cruisers vastly outnumber their larger fighter-carrying cousins and can hold their own in capship battles as well. Many cruisers carry their own fighter compliment, and they are often built to fill specialized needs of the fleet. We can predict which few might take an early lead: Waterloos and Tallahassees were prominent escorts throughout the series, and the Hades and Plunkett both awed players in Secret Ops.

2011.084 (March 25, 2011)

Take a Break at Shotglass' Bar

We've very happy to share www.shotglass.de with everyone. It's a hip new Wing Commander hub put together by Evan, one of the original WingCenter founders.

2010.084 (March 25, 2010)

Prelude Part 9 Kicked Off

lew82 has quickly bounced back from the release of Frontier - Prelude to Darkness part 8 and is hard at work on chapter 9. Numerous ships and characters have been profiled at Ardament, and dialogue recording is under way. The tentative release is planned for later next month, which gives viewers plenty of time to catch up on previous episodes.Part 9 will show the regrouping of Devers‘ unit from their crash landing and it will show just exactly what the U.

NinjaLA's Got Game

Prolific Wingnut artist NinjaLA has released his second game for the XBox 360. World War Toon is available now in the XBox Live Marketplace for 240 Microsoft points, or about $3. Ninja did the artwork, and his partner Brian S. was responsible for the coding and construction of the game.

2009.084 (March 25, 2009)

Classic Dralthi Draws Blood

NNM has gone back to his classic Dralthi model and given it a new paint scheme. The Kilrathi durasteel has been accented with assertive new clan markings and red symbols. Its laser system is also once again on display. You can't see them in the thumbnails, but there is also a nice space background behind the ships to round out the scene.

Making the Game: Mission F4

F4 is the attack on the Dula VII starbase which ultimately rescues Blair. Two things worthy of note from this document. One is from the additional comments section. A designed noted "This mission will have a timer, which will be a good opportunity for sweaty palms and children telling each other how long it took them to destroy x number of fighters.

2008.085 (March 25, 2008)

Don't Let's Art

Just over nine years ago, we reported that the April, 1999 issue of 3D Design magazine featured an article about the Wing Commander movie... and now we have a scanned copy! Better late than never? The article is actually a treasure trove of detailed information on how the movie's many CGI sequences were created -- much of which is at a technical level that goes over my head.

Enter To Win Das Erwachen Contest

Deacan's Das Erwachen giveaway contest is still under way. Participation so far has been low, so your chances at winning a free signed copy of Book 2 Stille is high. All you have to do is write a short article describing your experiences flying (or visiting) a Privateer 2 ship (or location) for Deacan's P2 info database project. Entries can be posted directly to Crius.

2007.084 (March 25, 2007)

Paper Fleet Broadens

Péricles has completed another fantastic paper model. The A-17 Broadsword bomber is now ready to build. Two versions have been released, so fans can choose from either WC2 or Privateer style paint schemes. A special blank template is also available, so talented texture artists can take a shot at creating their own colorations.

WC4 DVD Tool Has Merit

Gulikoza has found a neat tool to help people play the DVD version of Wing Commander 4 on modern systems. His basic Dxmci patch is critical to getting the game running without the hardware decoder board it originally shipped with, but users of some programs like PowerDVD occasionally run into conflicts. The merit patch allows players to prioritize filters and play without uninstalling other software. You can learn all about getting WC4 DVD to work at Gulikoza's website.

2006.084 (March 25, 2006)

Big New Game Manuals Update Adds Console Docs

The Game Manuals section has been updated with a variety of documentation for the console versions of Wing Commander III & IV. The new PDFs include compact versions of the WC3 Warbirds poster and WC3 3DO reference card. We've also added standard instruction booklets for WC3 PSX, WC3 3DO and WC4 PSX. The Wing Commander IV pack includes both the Battle Book and harder to find New Officer's Handbook.

Big New Clive Owen Film Hits Theaters

Privateer 2 fans have another chance this weekend to catch their favorite actor in another high profile role. Clive Owen stars alongside Denzel Washington and Jodie Foster in Inside Man, a dramatic thriller about a bank heist that turns out to be much more elaborate than it seems. The reviews so far are excellent and this film should be another career boosting job for Ser Arris.Producer Grazer summarizes, "Inside Man is a thinking man's heist film, a twisty, turny thriller.

2005.084 (March 25, 2005)

Jump Points And FTL Travel Explained

A lot of people have recently had questions about how jump points work. In the Wing Commander universe, the galactic network of jump lines connect systems with eachother. It gets a lot more complicated than that. Mini jumps, double jumps, long jumps and more create a complex dynamic.

New Poll Up Today

Our most recent poll was affected a bit by a few thousand visiting PC enthusiasts via Slashdot, but it looks like XBox Live was the winner here. Although there is a small fee associated with the service cost, the easy interoperability between games and universal headset support seems popular. I was not surprised to see the Handhelds category come in last, although I think this that would be a very fun category as well. With the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP now sporting WiFi multiplayer and enhanced graphics/features, that's a field ripe with potential.

2004.085 (March 25, 2004)

Crossbow Cockpit Appears in Standoff

The Standoff team has released another pair of shots that show the Crossbow bomber in action. It is also the first time the environment in the Warsaw System has been shown off. The beautiful Hakaga that was leaked as a wallpaper a few weeks ago also makes a surprise appearance.The mod looks better with each batch of shots!

New DOSBox Version Helps Play Old WC Games

King Graham over at Crius has tested the new version 0.61 DOSBox application for running old DOS games in Windows and other operating systems. Apparently there are some good bug fixes that help out a lot. The tech support fans at Crius have all sorts of tips to get everything from WC1 to Armada running on some level.

2002.084 (March 25, 2002)

A Casino Where I'm Winning?

Wing Commander is in a poll... and it's not a "worst video game movie" poll! SlashDot is running a "coolest video game ever" poll... and Wing Commander is an option!

2001.084 (March 25, 2001)

Trivia Reminder

Please remember to have your Week 21 trivia answers in to Chris Reid by midnight tonight. Week 22 questions will be posted Monday morning.

WCA Mirror - Epsiode 6

You can now download Episode 6 of Wing Commander Academy, titled "Chain of Command", here. Thanks, Tye!

2000.085 (March 25, 2000)

Most Expensive Wing Commander Auction to Date Ends

We've been watching this one closely for a while. Last week the red outfit that Freddie Prinze wore in the Wing Commander Movie went up at eBay. The opening bid was $499 (another record) and it competitively rose to the final price, $559, a couple days ago. We feared it may have gone to a rich pop culture collector, but yesterday we received some more news on the subject.

A Concise Starlancer Preview

Gaming Age has packed together a few bits of information on the upcoming Starlancer. There's both Wing Commander and Privateer references throughout. One thing of note is that this article refers to a late Summer release for the game. You can find the preview here.

Pirates Create Food Shortage on Hermes

Tony Knox reports. Continued pirate activity around the planet of Hermes has meant that very few food-carrying transports have made it to the planet unscathed; most merchants have either avoided the area, turned back after encountering hostiles or been destroyed. The situation is not yet critical, but food prices are slowly rising as supplies dwindle.

1999.084 (March 25, 1999)

Armada Battle Challenge

alt.games.wing-commander poster Jon Hoffman has been persistently trying to find people to fight in Armada on the Newsgroup for several months. Hopefully he'll have more success here.