Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

You will be forgiven if you've never heard of the Keyboard And Terminal Technology (KATT) Game Master Matt. It was a very obscure mid-90s game controller keyboard. Its gimmick was that it was pre-programmed to support specific games and you could buy different layout "matts" (sic) that would customize the device to 'look' like the game you're playing. They might, for instance, show a jet cockpit or an RPG character sheet with the custom buttons labeled. The device was not a success and it's best (barely) remembered for small ads which appeared in magazines like PC Gamer which listed the different game mats available.

We've known that there were several Wing Commander mats sold but none of them had ever been seen before. Enter LiqMatrix who has been researching the Game Master and who kindly stopped by our forum to share what they've learned. They were recently lucky enough to win an auction for what

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Lexi October, billionaire investor and head of the October Consortium, has issued a statement clarifying her organisation's ownership of the HIP 87621 permit.
"The October Consortium acquired system rights through all proper and legal channels over a decade ago," October declared. "Our researchers are conducting a legitimate study of several planetary bodies. Any infringement upon these rights will be rigorously challenged through interstellar courts. Permit access is not granted lightly, nor will we tolerate attempts to undermine lawful operations."
October also questioned the intensity of media and scientific scrutiny directed at her organisation:
"Zachary Rackham's recent survey campaign enlisted thousands of independent pilots to scour the galaxy for planetary data. Yet Rackham has not shared the promised results with the scientific community – not a single piece of scan data. Why, then,

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

I thought it would be fun to take a look at Wing Commander III's magnificent Warbirds 2669 poster with some 'behind the screens' notes where they came to me. Do you have fond memories of Warbirds, or anything else fun to note with the pages? Let us known on the forums!

• Warbirds is Wing Commander III's "feelie," the traditional 'extra' included with Origin games. Wing Commander games typically had paper feelies compared to the physical runes and coins and the like included with the Ultima series.
• The foldout was included with the original PC release of Wing Commander III as well as the Macintosh and 3DO ports. It was not included with the PlayStation or the Kilrathi Saga versions.
• The full color version seen here was included with the premiere edition of Wing Commander III. Most other releases include a greyscale version (with colored highlights for each faction in purple or orange).
• The European 3DO

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Have you ever wondered why the original Wing Commander's cheat code is referred to as the "finger of death"? Sure, you use your fingers to activate it… but that's also how pretty much every cheat code that exists works. There's a little bit more to the story than you would expect: the term actually goes back to the game's original Quality Assurance team and it's based on a feature cut from the game!

Wait, what? That's right, at one point Wing Commander had a second animated hand in the cockpit. The design was that you would see your 'left' hand react to certain events in combat. If you scored a kill you would make a fist and when your wingman scored you would give them a thumbs up. Here's the original art assignment from the game's production schedule, assigning the task of digitizing the hand artwork to Daniel Bourbonnais.

What does that have to do with the cheat code? As a joke, the team replaced the

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

The Wing Commander movie club has made it through RoboCop 3 which, while not a good film by any means, ended nicely. But after two weeks of objectively lower quality films, we asked everyone to vote from a selection of six Oscar winners. And the victor was psychological horror classic Rosemary's Baby (1968), which won Best Actress in a Supporting Role. You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

Why Rosemary's Baby? We previously talked about directors honored with references in the Wing Commander universe, specifically George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Akira Kurosawa and their associated star systems. We've since picked out two more for the movie pool: Michael Cimino (the TCS Cimino appears in the Prophecy simulator) and Roman Polanski, tuckerized as the Wing Commander movie's "Bishop" Polanski. As with the others, we've selected an additional classic to represent each. We'll be back in

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Several years ago, I purchased an unusual Wing Commander shirt from a 'picker' in Malaysia that I found on Instagram. Such sellers dig through unwanted clothing given to thrift stores or otherwise discarded for treasures that will appeal to collectors of vintage clothing. I've found several Wing Commander promotional shirts this way over the years… but this one was different, I'd never seen it before. It simply reads "Wing Commander" in glittery letters. Were it not for the small text mentioning "Wing Commander Productions" I would've assumed it had nothing to do with our favorite franchise.

Then last week, AD thought up the idea to search the Internet Archive for the Japanese website for the Wing Commander movie. It was set up by distributor Gaga Corporation at wc.gaga.ne.jp (now defunct) for the film's local release. It has the usual collection of cast biographies and a brief background… and this