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Kagemusha is a beautiful film! It's the sort of movie you don't actively seek out but are glad to have added to your canon after you've seen it. It's long and covers history that you likely aren't intimately familiar with… but it's so lush and beautifully put together that each new shot is worth pouring over. The Wing Commander movie club says check it out!

One thing's for sure: we learned what a "kagemusha" is! The term literally translates to 'shadow warrior' and here it is someone who is hired to impersonate a military commander (the lead character, in this film). It seems appropriate for End Run's Kagimasha, which ultimately dies taking a hit for the Tarawa and the marines.

This all prompts us to wonder: what IS a corvette, anyway? A corvette is the smallest type of warship in the traditional naval order of battle. They typically serve as pickets, patrol ships and fast attacking missile boats.

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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 Dark Crystal (1982) 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!

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

The exploration initiative supporting the new Rainbow's End deep-space port has concluded, with commanders delivering a substantial volume of exploration data to the facility.
Organisers confirmed that the target for stellar survey submissions was exceeded well ahead of expectations, allowing scientific teams to begin large-scale modelling of galactic regions around the starport's home system of Roefoo ZE-H d10-0.
Deep Space Surveys Operations Executive Hermine Delarue released a statement following the conclusion of the initiative:
"The response from the exploration community has been exceptional. Databanks at Rainbow's End are now filled with quality survey data gathered from some of the most remote areas of the galaxy. Our modelling teams can begin analysing the information to produce new stellar maps of this region. We will issue further mission priorities to our explorers via our internal

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Wing Commander Prophecy GBA is an incredible technical achievement and an extremely fun game in its own right… but there's not a lot of information out there about the ins and outs of the port itself compared to its larger PC ancestor. The team at Raylight did an incredible job turning three CDs of full motion video and elaborate game mechanics into a Game Boy game… and now we're going to start cataloging it! Mission layouts, mechanics, cutscenes and everything else in the game are significantly different and we will aim to provide a complete guide.

Content Changes

Wing Commander Prophecy GBA replaces dozens of cutscenes with 'talking head' style conversations. It does retain three cutscenes that it animates in engine: the introduction, the losing endgame where the Nephilim overrun the Midway and then the winning endgame. Mission layouts are largely reworked to match the gameplay of the port and many

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Ever wanted to have your very own copy of Blair's MiniDisc from the Wing Commander movie? Then we've got great news: one of our favorite Discord regulars, Juniper, has discovered the specific make and model of MiniDisc used to create the prop! It's a Maxell MD-74RM... and they're still readily available for only a couple dollars today!

Here are some reference shots of the prop in the film.

You see the sides and the reverse only very briefly.

The prop was created using a stock the MD-74RM and then adding stickers with additional Wing Commander graphics. The center graphic is adapted from the 'movie logo'. It's difficult to read in the film but the text on the red portion reads CONFED MARINES MMDCLIV. Here's the source graphic if you'd like to make your own:

The other sticker uses the same sort of military 'code' that appears on a lot of Wing Commander movie props including the dogtags and Maniac's orders

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The original Wing Commander famously starts with an animated orchestra which starts playing as the camera pans up to show a giant planet. If you aren't familiar with other Origin games of the era you may not know that that isn't specific to Wing Commander; in fact, it's intended to be the vanity card for the Origin FX graphics system. Origin FX is the engine behind Wing Commander I's "talking heads" and it was used in a number of projects from 1990 to 1995.

A total of five releases use the planet intro: the Wing Commander I demo, Wing Commander, Ultima: The Savage Empire, the Wing Commander II demo, Ultima: Martian Dreams and Wing Commander II! There are four versions in total. The Wing Commander I demo has the planet slightly off center, MArtian Dreams replaces it with Mars and Wing Commander II trades things out for a new starfield.

Do we know what planet it's supposed to be? It isn't labeled in Wing