Ars Technica-lly Correct

Tech website Ars Tehnica has run a new profile of Wing Commander IV which offers a solid summary of the game's history and raison d'être. It's always good to see the old games and their cultural importance highlighted like this from an outlet with a wide audience! It begins:

If I had to pick a chunk of the 1990s that feels the most 90s-ish to me, it’d be the two-year stretch between 1996 and 1997. 1996 saw me graduating from high school and starting college; 1997 saw me meeting my future wife and falling in love. While I tried to figure out how to navigate the University of Houston’s still mostly pre-digital first-semester registration process (we had to sign up for classes over the phone, with touch-tone buttons, like cavemen!), the larger world kept turning in ways that felt inevitable and good and right. The Cold War was in the rearview mirror—how could we ever have been so worried about nuclear annihilation just a few years before? Russia was a friendly bear presided over by everyone’s favorite drunk uncle, and things would obviously keep getting better, right?

Equally obvious, at least according to gaming tastemakers like Ken and Roberta Williams or Chris Roberts, was the idea that computer games from here on would blend together the best of what Hollywood and Silicon Valley had to offer, and the resulting “Silliwood revolution” would blast us forever into the world of fully interactive entertainment. Movies and games would blend together, and neither would be the same ever again! No longer would people sit in theaters just watching movies—audiences would get to choose how the film ended! And on the computer side of things, gone would be the days of lame graphics and clunky hand-drawn art—games would have big-name actors, big-budget sets, and huge special effects!

Two caveats for superfans and historians. The first is it does repeat the claim that Chris Roberts wasn't interested in working on the overhaul of the game engine. It might seem like splitting hairs but the actual story is that Chris Roberts wasn't able to work on the game's engine. Electronic Arts wanted to ship Wing Commander IV by Christmas 1995 which meant that Roberts had to decide between working on the engine in Austin and directing the film shoot in Los Angeles. The reason anyone knows this story in the first place is Roberts explaining in interviews after the game was released that he regretted not being able to work on the software side for the first time on a project. This has somehow mutated into proof that he only wanted to make movies; that was not the case.

The other is that this article praises the Digital Antiquarian's Wing Commander coverage. We have well established that the Digital Antiquarian is not a reliable source of information, regardless of its pseudo-academic trappings.

Wing Commander II Learns Spanish!

Exteban has unveiled a VERY impressive project: a full Spanish dub of Wing Commander II's speech files! It covers both the original speech, the speech acessory pack and the limited speech that appears in Special Operations 1 and 2. That must've been quite a lot of work! Details and instructions:

Hello, I'm Esteban Martinez.

I've dubbed over 400 voice files from the Wing Commander 2 and Special Operations 1 & 2 Speech Pack into Spanish.

I used both professional voice actors and AI for this.

For communications, I added radio noises, and for the Kilrathi voices, I added tiger sounds in the background to make them more similar to Wing Commander 3.

This was made possible thanks to WCTools.

It's compatible with L@Zar0's text translation mod. (more information)

To install it, simply replace the files in the GAMEDAT folder.

I've also captured a short video as an example.

• Wing Commander 2 Spanish Speech Accessory Pack (.zip, 3.5 MB)

Reminder: #Wingnut Movie Night Tonight!

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 From Russia with Love (1963) 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!

After Action Report: Independence Day

The Wing Commander movie club had a great Independence Day watching Independence Day! It's one of those movies that remains just as much fun as it did when we were teenagers. It's hard to argue that it's some great piece of art or that it's especially clever… but you start watching and you're immediately having a ball.

The big connection this time around is David Arnold's Independence Day score, which was heavily used to temp track Wing Commander… presumably because Arnold was writing Wing Commander's overture! Compare the ID4 theme to the one from Wing Commander:

Chris Roberts would go on to hire ID4's alien designer, Patrick Tatopoulos, to rework the Kilrathi. The work never made it to screen but I think you can see the influence!

Maybe the most memorable 'trademark' of ID4 was the aliens' destruction of major monuments. Gamers had already blown up the White House in Command and Conquer a few months earlier… and Wing Commander III and IV used real world buildings to connect their futures with the story, too!

The alien fighters certainly bring to mind Wing Commander's Dralthi. Especially the finale where the characters fly a captured one in combat… complete with sticky notes translating the instrumentation, just like Denis Loubet's Dralthi cockpit for Secret Missions 2!

The F-18 shots are all filmed just like the Wing Commander movie, though that's nothing unusual… we saw how those techniques came into being back in the 1950s with films like The Dambusters!

The famous laptop that Jeff Goldblum's character uses to save the world is an Apple PowerNook 5300… which means that he could use it to play the Macintosh versions of Super Wing Commander or Wing Commander III… or even Wing Commander IV, which would've come out about two weeks before the events of the movie!

TRE/PAK Content Repacker Released

Great news: AllTinker says it's time to start putting stuff back in! Thanks to AllTinker's genius, we've been using Originator to take apart Wing Commander games for a while now, making endless discoveries in the process. Well, now the shoe is on the other foot because they've released TREKPAK v0.5, a new utility aimed at adding edited files back to those same games… an invaluable tool that should allow giant leaps for modders and preservation groups. We'll let AllTinker explain:

TREPAK is an extractor - and repacker - for TRE and PAK containers, along with (some of) the inner formats.

Note that this is still an early version, so expect bugs and shortcomings!

The goal was to achieve completely accurate repacking, to the point where the same data will produce (even with re-compression) a byte-for-byte identical package. Actually making this happen was far from trivial!

Demo

Here I've replaced some of the Privateer bartender dialogue speech with audio from SEGA CD Wing Commander:

Game Support

It supports to varying degrees:

• Privateer
• Strike Commander
• Wing Commander Armada
• Pacific Strike (very experimental)
• Wings of Glory (very experimental)
• Wing Commander III (missing PAKT support at the moment)
• Wing Commander IV (ditto)
• Wing Commander Prophecy (not byte-for-byte identical, but doesn't need to be)

Be aware that this tool is in its infancy; it's quite limited in what it directly supports, for instance:

• It natively supports most audio (to/from WAV) for Privateer and Strike Commander, although I've mostly just tested the former.
• In a similar manner to WCToolbox, it exports IFF files to XML for easier editing.
• I've started adding some support for IFF internals for WC3/4 for ships/weapons, but this is just a tiny initial first-pass.

I've delayed the release enough, if I finished supporting everything I'd like it to support (and tested all that as thoroughly as I'd prefer) it'd still be a year or more away. :D

If people need specific things (or have problems obviously), let me know and I'll try to prioritise things.

Instructions

You'll want to move the files you want to work with into another directory next to TREPAK.EXE.

This is a Windows command-line program - you can type cmd into the Explorer address bar to open a command line in the current directory. Typing TREPAK on the command line will show you the available options, but here's how you'll generally use it:

TREPAK -e SPEECH.PAK Speech​
​
This will extract the package. The Speech directory will now have the extracted files - in this case it should have converted all of the speech samples to WAV format.

You don't need to keep all of the files it extracts; you can just leave the files you want to modify. TREPAK requires the original package to repack it - any files missing from the directory will be taken as-is from the original package.

TREPAK -r SPEECH.PAK Speech​
This will repack the package, producing output.PAK (or output.TRE for a TRE file) - you'll want to then move/rename this back to SPEECH.PAK to replace the original in the game.

Note that TREPAK will never remove files from a package, only modify existing ones. It can add brand new files too, but be aware that in many cases this will be pointless (and potentially cause errors).

• TREPAK v0.5 (2mb, .zip)

You can find the latest version in this thread.

Pixelmusement Looks Back at WC2

Akula65 has found a new video the Wing Commander community should enjoy! It's a hardy retrospective focused on Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi from a nostalgia-tinged channel called Pixelmusement. They take a long, hard look at the game and find a lot to like... as well as some aspects that didn't quite come together. A big one of those is the game's promised adaptive difficulty which, while present, doesn't quite work the way it was intended. Still, that's just a small problem when you're talking about one of the greatest computer games ever made!

GOG Summer Sale Ends Soon

It's the last day of the GOG Summer Sale, which means it's your last chance to lock in digital copies of the entire Wing Commander series for just $3.49 per package ($2.99 for Privateer 2). If you don't own these games on GOG... well, what's wrong with you? This is absolutely your last chance until tomorrow or so when they'll have a 'space games sale' or a 'July 10 sale' or something. We'll let you know! Now show 'em the grid:

Ultima Games:

Other Origin Games:

Free Games:

Wing Commander Movie Night: From Russia with Love

Against all odds, Independence Day was still a good time! This week, we're going with another all-star blockbuster… but this one is from the swinging sixties! From Russia with Love (1963) is James Bond's second big screen adventure and one that established a lot of the lore and tropes that continue to be associated with the character to this day. You can join us this Friday via Discord to watch along.

As large as Bond's cultural footprint is, our connection is a very minor one: Privateer 2 wingman Iuste Suttilis. Not his lore and history but the very distinctive picture included with his wingman bio! As you can see below, Suttilis is making Bond's famous pose in which he holds his Walther PPK pistol (here a beam pistol) across his chest. The pose originated with From Russia with Love's promotional photos, with photographer David Hurn capturing it. Suttilis' bio does seem to be based on the gun photo but not the Bond aspect; they make him an expert marksman! The actor used for the photo was EA Manchester's IT guy, Paul.

NAME Iuste Suttilis
RATING Reputable
SHIP Kalrechi
HIRE 325
QUOTE
'See that ship? Watch this...'

BACKGROUND
Being an escort pilot is not exactly what you'd call a vocation - the danger is too considerable - unless the calling you feel is an irresistible urge to acquire large sums of cash. The sums involved mean that many people drift into the profession through their possession of relevant abilities. Suttilis is a prime example; a medallist in the Inter-System Firearms Championship (he took Gold in Beam Weapon/Pistol and Beam Weapon/Rifle), he decided to apply his phenomenal accuracy to more practical purposes. The wisdom of his decision is clear; although an undistinguished pilot, his aim and vision is so good that he has often destroyed enemy vessels before other pilots have even seen them.

Where can I find a copy of the movie for the watch party?

From Russia with Love is available for rent or purchase on all of the standard streaming services. If you would like a physical copy, it was released on UHD in the US in 2025 and remains in print around the world. It is currently streaming on MGM+ in the US. If you are not able to locate a copy please stop by the Discord and ping a CIC staff member before Friday's showing.

How do we watch the movie together?

It's pretty low tech! Simply join the Wing Commander CIC Discord on Friday and we will be chatting (in text) along with the film in the main channel. Everyone who wants to join in should bring their own copy and we will count down to play them together at 10 PM EST. Everyone is welcome and we encourage you to join in the conversation; sharing your thoughts helps make the experience better for everyone!

How can I help pick future movie club movies?

The movie club movies are voted on each week by the Wing Commander Discord. The poll is typically posted 24 hours before each week's screening and the next movie is announced at the end. The choices for the poll come from a master pool of Wing Commander-related movies. If you would like to suggest a film for inclusion in that pool you can post it to this thread.

Mac Chooses to Fly the Excalibur

It's no secret that Mac has been working with the Excalibur mesh recently... and now we know why! He has premiered a brand new episode of Mac's Lore which features an in-depth 15 minute look at the famed Excalibur heavy fighter. The Excalibur first appeared in Wing Commander III and has made several other cameos in later stories... but I'm stealing his thunder! Check it out:

Mac has also posted a great companion 'music video' to BlueSky showing off his rad scenes of Klavs' Excalibur model set to music instead of lore talk. There's something for everyone!

Excuse Me, Sir, Did You Say the Concordia?

Longtime Wing Commander fan Sylvester recently revealed a pretty neat project: he has designed a new Star Trek starship and comissioned the great Howie Day to render it! But what's the Wing Commander connection? The ship is named Concordia, after Wing Commander II's TCS Concordia (CVN-65).

Hello fellow Wingnuts! It's been a long time since I've posted but I've been lurking pretty consistently over the last few years.

In addition to being a huge Wing Commander fan I'm also a huge Star Trek fan. And one of our own community supermodelers, @Howard Day is also an excellent starship modeler.

I recently made a sketch for a science cruiser and commissioned Howie to model it for me. In honor of my favorite Wing Commander carrier, we named is the Concordia.

Wing Commander II's Concordia is one of three ships to carry the proud name; the others are the Concordia in Action Stations that fought the first battles of the war and the Concordia supercruiser in the Wing Commander movie (the battleship-like warship commanded by Admiral Tolwyn in his rush to save Earth). The ship itself was named after Concordia University in Austin, Texas (and likely the generally fun idea that a ship named for unity would be built around an enormous gun). Howie has gone on to post some additional renders and a stunning 4K video! Check 'em out: