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One of my favorite things to collect information from is early articles about Privateer 2... specifically, ones from the summer 1995 press junket which showed the game as just 'The Darkening'. We didn't know to preserve these articles when they first ran and looking back at them for the first time often reveals new tidbits of information or behind the screens photos from the outlets' set visits. You can find a big collection of other The Darkening previews here. The first of the new finds is EA's Dark Forces from the September 1995 issue of UK-based Computer and Video Games (no. 166) magazine:

EA'S DARK FORCES

Origin's interactive movie game The Darkening starts to take shape at Pinewood studios.

The next interactive movie to come from the EA and Origin stable is currently being filmed at Pinewood studios. It's called The Darkening and has a working budget of approximately £5 million and stars the

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

Security forces and independent combat pilots successfully protected rescue efforts after the recent attacks in Lhou Mans.
An alleged coalition of pirate ships hit starports across the system, triggering the evacuation of civilians to safer locations.
Defence forces managed to defeat and drive out the remaining criminals leaving many to wonder what to expect next from Lady Zi. However, analysts are now confident that all signs are pointing towards larger and bolder coordinated criminal activities than have previously been experienced in the past.
"The leading theory is that this was a 'test run' of sorts, probing system and port defences in this area of space," Mira Bukowski wrote for Vox Galactica. "What the next phase of this plan could entail is a source of concern for local authorities."
Meanwhile, a Zorgon Peterson spokesperson remarked that the new Lynx Highliner performed better than

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

MAPS! Is there a more thrilling concept in the universe than fantasy maps? There is not, which is why our ongoing atlas of the Tri-System has produced never before seen complete maps of the seven planets that receive PAD transit maps in the game (Karatikus doesn't have anywhere to visit). During normal play, the 'special' locations connected to the plot and unique missions don't appear… so there was a little work involved in getting the complete versions!

And did you know that each of these transit systems uses a different kind of vehicle (with a respective 3D cutscene for each)? Here's the cheat sheet:

Anhur = bus
Bex = blimp
Crius = train
Hades = elevator
Hephaestus = subway
Hermes = yellow taxi
Janus IV = town car

While plotting these out we made an interesting little discovery (beyond that nothing is very close to anything else in the Tri-System): an unused thumbnail representing a location on

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Here's one for the archive: an article from the November 1994 issue of British magazine PC Games (#4) which features an article about Mark Hamill. The focus is on his career as a "vactor", a term for virtual actor which luckily did not catch on in any way, shape or form. His upcoming appearances in Gabriel Knight and Wing Commander III are discussed with some interesting details. The most exciting part, however, is this otherwise uncirculated photo of Mark, Chris Roberts and the Emperor's skin:

MARK HAMILL MY LIFE AS A VACTOR

AFTER BATTLING THE EMPIRE IN STARA WARS, MARK HAMILL RETURNS TO DEEP SPACE IN ORIGIN'S WING COMMNDER III. EVANS WENT TO MEET HIM AND GOT HIM TO SIGN HIS STAR WARS VIDEOS.

The last time I saw Mark Hamill, he was younger, slimmer and running around on television waving a green, fluorescent stick. The film, of course, was Star Wars, and Hamill was playing Luke Skywalker, a

Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

StarLancer! You know it, you love it… but no one else does. And one of the reasons for that is because of just how awful Microsoft's advertising campaign for the game was. I became interested in cataloging it because of the tagline, "From Erin and Chris Roberts, creators of the Wing Commander and Privater series"... and when I saw the "minimalist" UK versions of the ads I was horrified.

They continued this same theme for a bunch of related nonsense:

The United States version was much better, with a pair of cool propaganda-style images that sold the game with a sort of World War II vibe. They share the same tagline connecting the game back to Wing Commander and Privateer:

The Dreamcast port had some nice spaceships and the tagline was a bit more subdued. It simply mentions in the copy that StarLancer is "from the award winning designers of Wing Commander."

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Quote from Wing Commander News-Bot

Can you believe summer is here? And it isn't really summer without a deep dive into some very esoteric references in 1994's Wing Commander Armada! Before there was a Wing Commander Universe map, Armada had 11 pre-set maps of human and Kilrathi space for its campaign mode… plus a number of other star systems that it uses to randomly generate Armada sectors. Are they canon? Yes, stop asking. We've poured through these star systems and picked out several that reference a whole lineup of TV shows from the 70s, 80s and 90s… and then we've used that to create today's marathon! And if Armada systems are your thing we've put together a spreadsheet of all 704 star systems if you'd like to learn more!

The Mary Tyler Moore Show (s6e07): This month's pre-show is a famous episode of The Mary Tyler Moore reference that Warren Spector quoted back in 1991 in Wing Commander I & II: The Ultimate Strategy Guide's making