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With a grand 'happy birthday Comchia!' we enjoyed a screening of George Lucas' American Graffiti last week and the response was... that it's a pretty good and surprisingly forgotten movie. It's very interesting seeing how THX 1138 and American Graffiti lead to Star Wars in wildly different (and often unexpected) ways. And it was very interesting seeing what helped form the core of what our parents think of nostalgia, even if it's a little bit alien for us. And I'm very eager to see how this one comares with the similarly themed but radically different The Deer Hunter, which is coming up someday in this series.

As we said in the introduction, we added this movie to the canon because George Lucas was one of several directors who had a star system named after them on the Wing Commander Universe map. A region of the map centered in the Enigma Sector has about two dozen systems named after science fiction

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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 Flash Gordon (1980) 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!

And don't forget our ninth Wing Commander Cartoon party is early tomorrow!

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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

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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

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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