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Here's a fun one for a lazy Sunday: AD has discovered a set of Privateer 2: The Darkening screenshots on a Czech cover CD. These images were originally published with the December 1996 issue of Score magazine (#36). As you can see, they are from one of Origin's press kits and represent a pre-release version of the game. Some of these have been seen before but several have never been archived! Some of these images are also the ones used on the back of the box. You can find an image of the entire cover disc here.

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Excalibur was a very interesting movie; much closer to Dune (1984) than how I had pictured it going in! Now this week we've got a very silly one: FOX's 2003 masterpiece/contractually obligated American Idol winner vehicle From Justin to Kelly. And how did we come to this choice? It's my week as the birthday boy, that's how! Read on to learn more about why we're exploring a movie that really no one ever needed to see. You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

A few nights back, we were talking about how movie club isn't likely to ever feature any movies from after 1999. Since the rules require that a movie or creative must have inspired (or been referenced) in a Wing Commander project, the vast majority of movies will always date from before the 1999 Wing Commander movie. Unless, I theorized, we could find anything connected to the 2007 Xbox Live Arcade game Wing Commander Arena. I was

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

After having spent a month in the Trojan Belt and Arcadian Stream, the Distant Worlds Expedition has again entered regions with higher stellar density.
The flotilla is now bound for Waypoint 13 in its epic jaunt. Expedition Command confirmed their scientific projects around stellar density and properties surveys were still ongoing.
"Ever since we left Rainbow's End, we have conducted dozens of sector sweeps," DSS Operations Executive Hermine Delarue confirmed. "The data models we could prepare at Rainbow's End with so many Commanders' exploration data really paid off and now facilitate many of our daily scans."
Delarue confirmed the expedition flag carrier, Odysseus, will install a special commemorative beacon in the waypoint system which, on scanning it, will register any Commander's callsign and store it in a data vault for later laurels.
Chief Astronomer Lynda Amanda ter Holt also confirmed

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It's time for a new poll, and today we're asking about the special Kilrathi fighters of Wing Commander 3. Wing Commander 2 expanded on the light/medium/heavy fighter concept with the introduction of Confederation bombers, but WC3 dramatically increased the scope and scale of the Kilrathi fighter fleet. In addition to the return of the Strakha stealth fighter and Bloodfang superheavy, the Paktahn bomber is added to compete with the Confed Longbow. There are also three unique specialty designs: the ominous Sorthak "fighter killer," the K'ha'haf asteroid camouflage design and a nifty atmospheric craft, the Ekapshi. We don't see a lot of these ships, but their existence goes a long way to fill out the world and drive home the point that we're just seeing a glimpse of vast complex universe. Which one of WC3's speciality fighters was your favorite?

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The old poll was there to gauge people's take on 2026.

Quote from Freelancer News-Bot

A development update for Freelancer Zero Hour showing off what we've done in April, with a very quick overview of the upcoming ship abilities system.

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Here's a round-a-bout story: we recently noticed that social media content movie site SlashFilm had posted an listicle called "Alternate Sci-Fi Villain Designs That Would've Blown Everyone Away" that included a segment about Chris Roberts' original plans for the Kilrathi in the Wing Commander movie:

Few remember 1996's "Wing Commander," a movie that bombed so badly it killed the gaming franchise that birthed it and dashed the nascent directorial career of its creator, Chris Roberts (who would later find success as a movie producer). The film suffered from questionable casting and a predictable plot, but one thing on which nearly everyone could agree is that the design of the film's villains, the Kilrathi, sucks asteroids.

In the games, the Kilrathi are giant catlike creatures, as furry as Chewbacca. In the film, they're mostly hairless and resemble trolls more than felines. Even the animatronic Kilrathi