Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Here's a fun discovery: a game preservation group has posted a prototype copy of Wing Commander Prophecy on the Internet Archive! It includes all three discs complete with high resolution scans. They have a great writeup of what's included in the readme with details which you can find below. Since this looks to be a review copy sent out only a week before the game was finished it's likely not too different from the final release. But when it comes to studying this kind of history... every bit helps! (Please laugh.) We've mirrored a copy here.

=========================== Wing Commander: Prophecy ===========================
-------------------------- (1997-12-02 PC prototype) ---------------------------

Dumped By: Cut Into Fourteen Pieces

Released By: CVLT OF OSIRIS

CVLT OF OSIRIS presents a prototype of Wing Commander: Prophecy for the PC

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Eddie Rickenharp is mini-mono artist who has attained megastar status and is best known for repopularizing his genre of music. In 2669, Rickenharp agreed to perform for Confederation forces on Bistango X in a spectacular concert amidst the planet's ancient art treasures. The Kilrathi launched a surprise assault on the planet during the concert which killed thousands and left the artwork in ruins. Rickenharp was badly wounded in the attack and left in critical condition.

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Last time we looked at tHE lOVE aNIMALS, a band introduced in Wing Commander III that doing a TCSO-style performance for the troops. But Wing Commander III actually introduces a second artist with the same setup: "megastar" Eddie Rickenharp. He also has a fictional-but-familiar-seeming genre, "mini mono" and you get the sense that he's some kind of Steven Tyler-style aging superstar in 2669. Rickenharp appears in two of the TCN

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Brewer Corporation has labelled the withdrawal of its Trailblazer megaship fleet as a 'vote of confidence' in the self-sustainability of thousands of new colonies.
The Trailblazer vessels were originally deployed to provide logistical support and essential resources to independent colonisation initiatives at the edge of inhabited space and are now being refit for deployment for other purposes.
"The success of the Trailblazer fleet will leave its mark in the history books of human colonisation," Mark Rennik, Chief Operating Officer for Brewer Corporation commented.
"And now, once the crews have taken a well-deserved rest and the internals are refit, they will continue to serve the Brewer Corporation in other duties."
To reinforce the message, Rennik also announced the availability of the newly commissioned Dodec starports for colonisation efforts, which can be built at any available Tier 3 port

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

This is the kind of surprise we like: gr1mre4per is back with a brand new version of Prophecy Unlimited, the first release since 2019! The past five or six years did kind of run together! Prophecy Unlimited and its assosciated OpenGL patch form the framework for a lot of the modern enhancements to Wing Commander Prophecy... so it's great to see development continue! You can download a copy of Prophecy Unlimited version 6.1 here. The patch notes follow:

### WCPUNL Beta 6.1
Support for both CD and GoG installations using the prophecy.exe supplied in this package. A CD check is done, if no CD is found a local file check is performed. If no local files found, Change CD screen will appear.

### WCPUNL Beta 6.0
Fixed memory leak in the new Movie Player Turret barrel fire respects wcpunl.ini setting again File loading priority changed so directory has priority over tree file (no need to patch data.tre anymore)

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

It's time for another Saturday Wing Commander cartoon marathon… with real cartoons, this time! These marathons, currently scheduled monthly, celebrate Wing Commander-related media that doesn't quite fit with the Friday night movie club. This Saturday, November 15, we'll be bringing you another themed morning of '90s media and great Wing Commander conversation. This time we'll be taking a look at the management of the real life Cold War… and then the start of a pretty compelling sci fi version!

Pandora's Box, Episode 2: To the Brink of Eternity (1992): Pandora's Box is a 1992 BBC series by documentarian Adam Curtis which looked at various sociopolitical issues facing the world at the time (most of which are still relevant today). The second episode, To the Brink of Eternity, looks at how the United States has managed nuclear security through the Cold War. It's a fascinating show but we're watching

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Last week we kicked off the second year of the Wing Commander movie club with an all time classic movie, Casablanca. And this week we've got another one that's a little closer to home: Robert Zemeckis' Contact (1997). It's a stunning adaptation of Carl Sagan's novel about a present-day first contact with an extraterrestrial intelligence. You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

Contact came after almost all of the main line Wing Commander games, so you know this is most likely to relate to the 1999 movie. Indeed, this is another case where Chris Roberts borrowed some of Alan Silvestri for the temp track to the Wing Commander movie. Specifically, a track called Small Moves was used over Maniac and Rosie's postcoital moment.

Of course, Wing Commander has a couple of disastrous first contact stories that we'll take a look at, too… stay tuned for the after action report next week!

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