Mankind’s epic struggle against the Kilrathi draws to a close in Wing Commander III with the Terran Confederation turning to desperate measures to survive. Wing Commander III combined high graphics resolution with the RealSpace engine, producing a massive leap in graphics over its predecessor, Wing Commander II, and introduced full motion video (FMV) featuring a cast of high-calibre actors including Malcolm McDowell, Tom Wilson, John Rhys-Davies, and Mark Hamill as Colonel Christopher Blair.
Extensive background information for Wing Commander III is available at the CIC.
Once upon a time, the Wing Commander III Victory Streak manual was available from Wing Commander in Russia – current availability is not known. However, the CIC has provided the Warbirds blueprints in black-and-white and colour, which outlines several Confederation and Kilrathi fighters encountered in the game, as well as the Kilrathi Saga manual, which includes background information from Wing Commander I, II and III.
When stuck on a mission, try the CIC’s very thorough game guide.
An early version of the Wing Commander III movie script is available from the CIC. Wedge009’s interpretation of the dialogue is also available for easy reference.
MIDIs from Wing Commander III are available from the CIC. Alternatively, they can be extracted from GAMEFLOW.TRE using Mario “HCl” Brito’s TRE Manager. The MIDIs are within 00000032.IFF and can be extracted using Ripper 5. They are in HMI/HMP format, but can be played easily using the MIDI plug-in packaged with Winamp.
Music MP3s are also available from the CIC. Several of the music pieces were recorded by Mad Hatter and encoded to variable bit rate (VBR) MP3s, as originally requested by Wedge009. In addition, tracks 1 to 4 of the Origin Audio CD (from the CIC’s music albums section) include very high quality recordings of the orchestral music from key sections of the Wing Commander III movies.
Some of the more significant inflight plot-related speech are available here as MP3s. At the low bit-rate used, some distortion is evident in the audio output, however, the files contain speech only and such noise should be acceptable. If not, the comms can be extracted from the CDxMISS.TRE files on each CD using TRE Manager, and opening the files as RAW sound data (mono, 8 bit, ~11 kHz).
| Title | Size | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Admiral Tolwyn | 36 KiB | Admiral Tolwyn commends Colonel Blair for his efforts in protecting the Behemoth. |
| Thrakhath 1 | 68 KiB | Prince Thrakhath taunts Maverick and reveals Angel’s fate… |
| Thrakhath 2 | 107 KiB | Prince Thrakhath challenges Maverick to a duel while Rollins urges him to return. |
| Loki 3 Debriefing | 47 KiB | Lieutenant Rollins offers his sympathies to Maverick as the TCS Victory retreats. |
| Lord Ralgha nar Hhallas | 67 KiB | Ralgha nar Hhallas wishes Maverick well during their final meeting in Alcor. |
| Kilrah 2 Briefing | 47 KiB | General Taggart leaves some instructions for Maverick. |
| Kilrah 3 Briefing | 44 KiB | General Taggart’s final words for Maverick before the last attempt to defeat the Kilrathi. |
| Thrakhath 3 | 162 KiB | Prince Thrakhath’s last challenge for the Heart of the Tiger. |
When Wing Commander III was released, CD-ROM drives capable of using 74-minute CDs were still relatively new in the home PC. Fearing that they would alienate a large portion of an already small market if they had used the larger capacity discs, Origin published WC III for the PC on four 64-minute CDs, and a number of FMV sequences were cut from the game as a result. Most of them were trivial, however, arguably one of the most important scenes, “Hobbes’ Explanation” was also cut. Various versions of these ‘missing’ FMVs can be found at the CIC, as well as various behind-the-scenes clips and even a full-length fan movie.
Users of Mario “HCl” Brito’s Wing Commander Movie Player may find the TRE Index compiled by Wedge009 to be of some use in sorting movies. Alternatively, another movie guide is available at the CIC.
