News Collection: On This Day in WC News

2021.125 (May 5, 2021)

Yes, Astoundment is Apparently a Real Word

The new blog/movie website Shirts of Astoundment has posted a new article titled 4 Things About The Wing Commander Movie That Are Actually Cool. I'm much more of a CinemaWins than a CinemaSins kind of guy, so this is right up my alley (also the Wing Commander part). The internet already has ten thousand think pieces rehashing the film's flaws, and it takes some courage to flip the script and focus on the positive aspects of something. Their analysis focuses on the music, international cast and CGI as high points, which are aspects we've been trying to emphasize for years.

2020.126 (May 5, 2020)

Farmer Blair Shares Digital Space with the Silencer

Here's a nifty demo disc from LOAF's vast collection. It's similar to the Origin CD Shortplays sampler that includes Wing Commander 4 and Crusader: No Remorse plus Cybermage and BioForge. The latter two are missing here, but Wing Commander takes up an even bigger proportion of the disc art. The Wing Commander 4 demo was absolutely enormous for the time, so miscellaneous preview discs like this were one of the main vectors for people to try it out.

2019.125 (May 5, 2019)

Model Upgrade Pack Previews New Panther

Here's a first look at one of the new fighters being prepped for the next update to the Prophecy & Secret Ops Model Upgrade Pack. The Panther will be a welcome addition since it appears so often in the game - especially Secret Ops. New images below show off DefianceIndustries' original render, some peeks at the ship viewer and finally some in-game views. A shot of the original is also includes so you can see just how advanced the update is!

2018.125 (May 5, 2018)

A Little Lego Quickie

Scimitars may not be known for going fast, but blink and you might miss this one. Hit the gear in the lower right and you can slow the clip down in slow motion. At 0.25 speed you can admire the design a little more.

Wing Commander Meme of the Day: The Rock Driving

2017.125 (May 5, 2017)

But Wait, There's More Ribbons!

Yesterday's great Claw Marks coloring project reminded us that the Wing Commander I ribbons have actually been colorized twice before: in Japanese manuals for console ports of the game! First, the Super Famicom (Super Nintendo) version offers a pretty but ultimately bizarre colorized chart in which none of the ribbons even match the designs in the game. Later, the Mega CD (Sega CD) version included a proper chart that identifies the medals correctly!

2016.126 (May 5, 2016)

WCSO Upgrade Adds Illuminated Features

DefianceIndustries has made another cool tweak to the Secret Ops Model Upgrade Project. Kevin Caccamo's Wing Blender application was able to help effectively add glowing elements to the updated ships. The main engines and their associated intakes now light up, as do the green guns on the Nephilim ships. This makes each fighter look better - even when they're not in the dark!

2015.125 (May 5, 2015)

WC Generals Beta Kicks Off

The formerly hex-based strategy game WC Generals has released its first playable test. Interested commanders can sign up at wcgenerals.net and help square off in grid combat. The existing squadron of testers has been pretty actively running the fan game through its paces lately, and that's produced some good actionable intel for Ron B to follow up on.

2014.125 (May 5, 2014)

Czech These Awesome WC Novels Out!

Here's an especially cool set of Wing Commander collectibles: the Czech WC novel translations! The Wing Commander games were huge hits in English and German speaking regions, so versions for those areas were no surprise, but the Czech copies have always been a little more unusual (up there with the Spanish translation of the WC Movie Novelization). The six 'Forstchen books' were all converted with the last being False Colors in 2005, six years after its original publication. Clockwise from the top left, pictured here are End Run, Heart of the Tiger, False Colors, The Price of Freedom, Action Stations and Fleet Action.

2013.125 (May 5, 2013)

Fan Favorite Ferret Flies into Fleet Supply

Klavs has released his latest model, and this one's a beauty! The P-64 Ferret is now available at Terran Fleet Supply as a 3D print. Owing to its small size and Klavs' innovative modeling techniques, it's also the cheapest design at under $15. You can see it rotate in 3D or pick one up for your desk here.

Facebook Page Turns Three

The CIC's Facebook Page hit its third anniversary this past week. It's been a big year for Wing Commander news, and the membership at the page has more than doubled in the last twelve months! The look has also changed considerably. Check us out today compared with 2010 below.

2012.126 (May 5, 2012)

Still Worthy of an Honorable Mention

There aren't as many gaming sites name dropping Wing Commander as there were a decade ago, but they still pop up all over if you look. Here's a couple from just this week: HotHardware ran a feature on gaming clichés. The story decries the linear nature of modern games that screech to a halt if any losing conditions are met. Wing Commander's branching mission trees and losing paths are held up as a high example of how games should be made.

Warren Spector Revisits Origin Memories

Yet another Wing Commander mention this week came from an interview with Warren Spector. Metro.co.uk caught up with the famous developer to discuss Epic Mickey 2.

2011.125 (May 5, 2011)

Internet Shipyards Churning Out Warships

Astro Commander has run across a couple more virtual storefronts that have mocked up Wing Commander miniature designs for 3D printing. In addition to his Dream Foundry and Studio Bergstrom, there is also Skyguy Stardock and JP's Designs. Quite a few different ships are available for just a few dollars, but note that painting is up to the buyer. Each resin model is roughly an inch or two long and suitable for tabletop gaming.

New UO Merchandise For Sale

The Bioware Store is now selling merchandise from Bioware Mythic (formerly Mythic Entertainment, formerly EA Mythic, caretaker of Origin properties), and that mean's there's a cool new Ultima Online shirt to buy! Check it out here for $20. It features the main UO logo in weathered gray on black.

2010.125 (May 5, 2010)

Video Series Reviews Ascii Sector Features

There's more updates and improvements to Privateer Ascii Sector. Versions 0.6.4.

New Pricing Model Announced for Upcoming EA MMO

Electronic Arts has been experimenting with a variety of different business models for a handful of their latest products. From its budget priced downloadable games like Battlefield 1943 or WC Arena to possible super sized pay-to-play demos, the company has shown its willingness to take a few risks and try new things with its pricing. The trend isn't all new either: entirely free Lord of Ultima takes a cue from Wing Commander Secret Ops. Future games will also likely be supported by micro transactions, selling small incremental pieces of the game on top of or instead of a regular up-front payment.

2009.125 (May 5, 2009)

No Joystick Required

For the many new visitors to the site this year, Queeg's movie projects are a must-have. They run for a combined five hours and weigh in at nearly three gigabytes. Grab the XviD codec or VLC player if you can't view the files. We recommend a download manager like Free Download Manager to help these large files along.

Making the Game: Pilot Bios

These pilot bios, with details on all the cinematic and redshirt wingmen, are clearly the basis for a chunk of the Wing Commander Prophecy official guide -- but the changes are very interesting. If anything, I would say these are better: they generally lack that surreal quality that the versions included in the guide seem to have. One must also wonder what the other wars Maniac is credited with being involved in were...These updates are thanks to John "Captain Johnny" Guentzel, who provided several CD image archives of material used by the Wing Commander Prophecy development team!

2008.126 (May 5, 2008)

Built Vak-Tough

JasonRocZ has released yet another new Kilrathi ship for his Collateral Damage Secret Ops mod project. This is the famed Vaktoth heavy fighter, which made a pain of itself throughout Wing Commander III (and an object of slight pity in Wing Commander Prophecy.) These are all amazingly well done and they arrive faster than light... but I'm looking forward to seeing elements of this project beyond just the ships.

Countdown to K'tithrak

Wingnuts are playing through the whole series again and posting their battle accounts to the Forums. The community replay of Wing Commander 2 is now entering its fifth week. This week covers Enigma missions 1-3. Lorien recalls Tesla:Two weeks later, the Concordia jumps into the Tesla system.

2007.125 (May 5, 2007)

Colors Flying High Again

DMJC has dredged up Wildcat's old WC Logo Pack that was lost when the old WC Invasion site went offline. All five original 1024x1024 PSD files are available in this zip (1.9 MB). Each is a characteristic design from Wing Commander 4, and two different Border Worlds variants are included.

Wing Commander Composer Receives Award

Joe spotted that Gamespot has video coverage of this year's GDC Developers Choice Awards online. As previously announced, veteran WC composter George "The Fat Man" Sanger was awarded the "Community Contribution Award". At the event he walked on stage to collect his award accompanied by the Wing Commander theme music. You can watch the full awards video by going here and choosing either Watch or Download to the right of the first paragraph.

2006.125 (May 5, 2006)

Holding The Line Chapter 209 Released

Unfortunately real life has been getting in the way lately for PBM Coordinator Raptor, but now things are back on track. Here's a new chapter of Holding the Line to prove it. The action is picking up, and major events are taking place that will ultimately shape the story's conclusion. Raptor has more details:Hey all, Raptor hereHTL continues with the second chapter of Battlegroup Auriga's epic battle against the Kraken.

Electronic Arts Announces Fiscal Year Results

Electronic Arts has announced its final financial results for the year that ended on March 31, 2006. Annual revenue declined slightly to $2.95 billion from $3.12 billion in the 2005 fiscal year.

2005.125 (May 5, 2005)

Proving Grounds Joystick and IPX Patches Released

HCl has perfected his joystick patch for Armada and Proving Grounds and doesn't expect any further breakthroughs right away, so here is his combined patch. It should allow you to properly calibrate joysticks in both Armada and Proving Grounds and let you connect over IPX mode for Proving Grounds battles. Note that this patch is specifically for the floppy disk version of Armada, though some people have been able to use the disk and CD versions interchangeably. A proper CD release should be available shortly.

Privateer RPG Conducted Via LiveJournal

Earlier this year we started to list a variety of fan role playing games that were active in the community. We've got a couple more to point out before we do a detailed roundup. Bob recently came across the Gemini Starfarers' Group which conducts its story driven campaigns over LiveJournal. The blog catalogs the adventures of a few adventurous merchants and privateers in the Gemini Sector.

2004.126 (May 5, 2004)

Wing Commander Case Mod In Progress

Castle02 over at Crius.net is currently working on a computer case mod dedicated to Origin. Here's the first photo of it.This is the start of a brand new server case I bought for modding.

Standoff Mod Needs More Voice Actors

The Wing Commander Standoff team is looking for people to fill in some extra voice roles for their upcoming Secret Ops mod. Here's Tempest with the announcement.Hey everybody. Commencing ad campaign!

2003.125 (May 5, 2003)

MyJEMM for Armada

Ross Ridge has updated his incredible MyJEMM program to include preliminary support for Armada and Strike Commander. Now you can run them on your Win9x machine without having to use emulators! Unfortunately there aren't many details at this point so we don't know whether this works with both floppy and CD versions or more importantly if the multiplayer stuff works. If someone manages to get Armada going over the internet with MyJEMM and an IPX emulator, let us know!

Lord British Interviewed

The Gamespy interview mentions his reasons for leaving Origin/Electronic Arts and some of the things that happened afterwards.The very next day, April 2nd, EA decided to adopt another substantial shift in their online games strategy, and basically shut down all other online games in Origin besides Ultima Online. They also decided to move out of Austin a great deal of support services such as marketing, quality assurance, and customer support.

WCPolaroid: Spyder (3/4)

Avert your eyes Major Bowen! It's the CAG!

2001.125 (May 5, 2001)

SWC Ship of the Day: Lumbari

Thanks to the addition of GIANT MISSILES, we can now rest easy knowing that SWC gives us more Lumbari support.

0.0.4th Time's a Charm

HellcatV has released another update to Vega Strike... you can pick it up here (1.8 megs). And here's the skinny on just what's in the new release...

Let Me Show You How We Release DVDs in Germany...

TAFKAW reports that the street date for the Wing Commander Movie DVD (Region 2) and VHS release in Germany has been officially set -- later this month, on May 17th. There's something to look forward to...

Brazil Rocks!

There are a lot of Wing Commander fans in Brazil -- but they don't usually get their own news. Today is different, though, as Delance reports that Telecine, a Brazilian Cable TV station, will be showing the Wing Commander Movie four times this month! You can read about it here. Showtimes as follows...

Hidden Movies

Thomas Schmidt reports that the recently cancelled Wing Commander: Final Conflict 3D movie may not be so recently cancelled afterall -- he says that the web site has relocated here and that you can find a previously un-seen Final Conflict movie segment here. Very interesting...

2000.126 (May 5, 2000)

The First Part of a Homeworld Mod

Voidsurfer has written in to inform us that the first ship, a Dralthi IV which replaces the Interceptor in Homeworld, has been converted and is ready for download. The download and usage instructions can be found on the mod's webpage.

Unknown Enemy Revival?

Pedro has written a post over at the CIC's Chat Zone with an update on UE's status:Another group WAS going to take over (don't know what happened there) anyway rather than let what we have go to waste I'm asking for help with a new, less ambitious plot.We have a bengal class capship, a new bridge, splash, access to kilrathi comms, ships etc. What I need is someone to write a Secret Ops add-on using these things which should be of no more than around 8 missions, so really just a mini game. Additional details on request.

The Zak is back!

Impressionable groupie Andrew Bramley-Hill writes. It was the best of days and the worst of days on Crius yesterday, host to the All-System Dribbling Competition. Zak Skintight, legendary frontman of Rock superbeings The Buttock Men, regained the Spittle Crown after a three year absense due to touring and unconsciousness. Unfortunately, so many competitors entered that a huge 'pool of drool' has resulted, emitting a noisome stench.