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The Wing Commander IV demo was released online on October 19, 1995, a full four months before the game finally shipped! As a result there's some interesting things in the demo that are a little different from the final game... so we thought we'd take a look. We'll start with the controversy. The... stupidest controversy in history. When the demo was first released, a 43-megabyte download was an impossible thing for most dialup users. I remember having my dad bring several dozen blank disks (that I hastily formatted from AOL offers and unwanted shareware games) to work to download it overnight and PKZIP span back to me. And most people weren't that lucky! So Origin game up with the smart solution of offering a version that was just the mission without the trailer... just 13 megs! That was still a huge download in 1995, but it wasn't IMPOSSIBLE. One impact of this was that when the game started it

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Well, howdy partners and welcome to my rodeo! I love searching the Internet Archive for classic articles mentioning Wing Commander almost as much as people love uploading classic articles mentioning Wing Commander. Sometimes I strike gold and discover something worth a whole CIC update... and someday a huge backlog of things that I thought "hey, that's kind of interesting" gathers. Today, we'll clear that backlog! But it will be back... while you sleep, it'll be waiting.

We'll start off with two sismple articles from 2007 covering the announcement of Wing Commander Arena. This basically just shows how small the rollout was at the time; the days of massive press junkets were over! This is the April 2007 issue of NAG and the May issue of MANiAC.

The October 1993 issue of Game Players magazine has a pretty stunning layout for a Secret Missions SNES preview article! Don't stare directly at it.

Here's a PC

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The Wing Commander movie club has made the trip from Providence to Aspen with Dumb and Dumber… and we were kind of surprised by how gentle the movie comes off today. I had never seen it and assumed from the pedigree that it would be an outrageous, cutting edge sort of a comedy… but if anything it actually drags quite a bit when viewed today. One thing we've learned watching these movies is that comedies are often more ephemeral than you would assume!

And here's our easy Wing Commander connection! Cam Neely played Sea Bass, a trucker who Harry runs afoul of at a diner. One of Sea Bass' friends, played by Sean Gildea, encourages him to "kick his ass, Sea Bass!". And that quote made it all the way to the Tri-System! (Wingman quotes in Privateer 2 are, oddly, not things your wingman can actually say.)

Could this be the Mother Creature? No, it's the Big Blue Bug, an enormous termite mascot for a pest control

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This is a reminder that we have another fun #Wingnut movie night planned on Discord this evening! The ongoing theme will be movies that are referenced by Wing Commander in some way. Tonight's film is The Lord of the Rings (1978) and you can find details on why we're watching it in the announcement post here. The movie will start at 7 PM PST/10 PM EST but feel free to drop by and hang any time!

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GOG hasn't been having the best time of late, with a seemingly self-inflicted PR mess<?A> culminating in their need to issue a formal apology for seeming to promote Nazi imagery. But then again, who among us? That is all, hopefully, in the rear view mirror now and it's time for yet another sale. The Summer Sale, to be specific! This time around, the Wing Commander games are all 34% off... with the exception of Privateer 2, which is 50% off. The rest of Origin's output seems to be 50%, too. Why this disparity? Who knows. But if you need digital versions of Wing Commander games, these are the best available. Here's the ol' grid:

Ultima Games:

Other Origin Games:

Free Games:

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Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Frontline Solutions has announced the successful supply of critical components needed for the completion of its initial fleet of Runner vessels.
The new craft is capable of rapidly transporting and deploying mercenary strike teams and their ships to operational locations and engage in hostile situations as they arise.
A Frontline Solutions senior technical designer overseeing the production checks stated:
"We are extremely grateful for the support from independent pilots in supplying us with the necessary components to finalise production."
"With the initial Runner fleet now leaving our shipyard for duty trials we're confident that we will meet the demand and be ready to rapidly deploy combat and rescue squads wherever they're needed."
Frontline Solutions are set to make a formal announcement regarding the availability of its expanded service soon.