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The Wing Commander movie club's consensus was that The Lord of the Rings (1978) was a pretty interesting affair. It is by no means a perfect movie… but it is very artistic, has a super distinctive look and is an extremely good adaptation of Lord of the Rings (at least in so much as is included in what was intended to be part one of a two film series!). It's also hard not to compare it to the 2001 Peter Jackson adaptation and it seems pretty clear that it actually inspired a lot of that take.

Our biggest Wing Commander connection was Gandalf's famous sword Glamdring, aka "Foehammer" (the name of a Murphy-class destroyed in Secret Ops). Glamdring is actually shattered during the fight with the Balrog in this adaptation but it seems to return alongside Gandalf when he emerges as Gandalf the White at the end of the film.

And here's the entrance to Khazad-dûm, aka Moria!

Finally, compare the rotoscope

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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 Song of Roland (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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Last week, news circulated that Electronic Arts had filed new trademarks for the Ultima series. A YouTube channel called Inside Games reached out to Ultima creator Richard Garriott to see if he knew what was going on. He didn't, but he did mention something he's been theorizing about for quite a while!

In short, he hopes to regain certain copyrights to Ultima next year based on Section 203 of the Copyright Act. This is a provision which allows authors to regain control of their works' copyrights from publishers after 35 years in certain circumstances. This has since been widely reported as fact in the days since and while it would be pretty exciting, you should view this a little more trepidation than the mainstream media is offering.

Sadly, it's very unlikely that this plan will actually work. Electronic Arts has plenty of laywers that can easily argue that this is not the intent of the law (meant to

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The white whale! Every bit of Wing Commander II SNES that we discover is another piece of an extremely sad puzzle... but it's certainly thrilling to come across a new one! Today's example is from issue 038 of Spanish magazine Nintendo Acción where an eagle eyed reader spotted... a box for Wing Commander II SNES in one of those great 1990s 'grid of games' store ads. Check it out:

The last major Wing Commander II SNES discovery was, in fact, the box art. The painting that was comissioned for use was discovered in an auction. Interestingly, that's not what's being used here... the Spanish ad box uses the original Concordia rendering from the PC version!

Quote from Elite Dangerous Galnet News-Bot

The Kestrel has received the green light for full distribution, having previously been available via limited release only.
Shipments of Core Dynamics's latest design have begun to arrive at markets. An accompanying press stated the Kestrel has been developed as a highly capable, dedicated combat ship.
CEO Owen McKenna remarked:
"The Kestrel has quickly become the small fighter of choice for combat pilots. We're extremely proud of our engineering and design team."
The Kestrel is now available for purchase at shipyards throughout the core systems.

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We've posted the story of Privateer 2 author Diane Duane embarrassing a fool who didn't believe a woman could know (much less create!) a video game before. It's a classic! She recently posted photos of the Privateer 2 team jacket she was wearing at the time and it's pretty neat… just the sort of history we like to archive here!