The Command & Conquer game series has been around for nearly 15 years--arguably longer if you care to trace the game's roots back to the very beginnings. The series has come to be associated with both modern strategy games and the classic real-time strategy games of yesteryear, which saw their first days with games like Herzog Zwei for the Sega Genesis and Dune II for home computers. And Dune II, a game based partially on David Lynch's motion-picture interpretation of the classic Frank Herbert novel, begat Command & Conquer. This started a chain of events that led to modern real-time strategy as we know it, including building bases, harvesting resources, climbing the tech tree, and commissioning armies. And from there, we've seen more than 10 years of Command & Conquer and all that we've come to associate with the series. Tanks, harvesting Tiberium resource crystals, fast-paced online multiplayer, commando units, top-level superweapons, tanks, electro-squids, tanks, actor/director Joe Kucan as series villain Kane, parachuting Soviet attack bears, tanks, robo-dolphins, former pro wrestling champion Ric Flair, former Dr. Frank-N-Furter Tim Curry, and perhaps most importantly of all: tanks. And now that nearly 15 years have elapsed since the first Command & Conquer game, what better time to recap the history of this long-lived series? Let's take a look. Part one of our feature will cover the series up to 2001, while part two will cover more-recent entries in the series.
Command & Conquer (PC | PS | SAT | N64)
- Developer:
- Westwood Studios
- Publisher:
- Virgin Interactive
- Release Date:
- Aug 31, 1995
The original Command & Conquer from 1995 started off the series and its trademark "Tiberium" storyline. It was set on a near-future Earth torn apart by war between the Global Defense Initiative--an organized military faction known for its sturdy tanks--and the Brotherhood of Nod, a formerly secret society that tends to use hit-and-run tactics and stealth rather than full-scale assaults. Command & Conquer set the stage for the series--the war between the two factions, the energy-rich Tiberium crystals that were harvested as resources, the asymmetry between the two factions and their armies, the enthusiastically acted live-action cutscenes, the engineer units that could take over enemy buildings, and arguably the first "hero unit" to appear in real-time strategy games. The wisecracking commando was both a powerful antipersonnel sniper and a demolitions expert who could blow up enemy structures with C4 charges. Command & Conquer would later be expanded twice with two different follow-up products: the Command & Conquer: The Covert Operations expansion pack of 1996 (which added 15 much-harder playable missions) and the unusual single-character, multiplayer spin-off, Command & Conquer: Sole Survivor. The original game also later made appearances on the Sony PlayStation, the Sega Saturn, and the Nintendo 64.
Command & Conquer: Red Alert (PC | PS)
- Developer:
- Westwood Studios
- Publisher:
- Westwood Studios
- Release Date:
- Oct 31, 1996
While the relatively straightlaced Command & Conquer was a war story, 1996's Red Alert went off to explore speculative "What if?" fiction by proposing a war-torn future Earth where a time-traveling Albert Einstein attempts to rewrite history by removing Hitler from the picture, only to instead end up replacing the Nazi regime with an all-powerful Soviet Union. The conflict, then, was between the Soviet forces and the Allied forces and evolved Command & Conquer's gameplay with new units, such as Soviet submarines and attack dogs--the latter being the first animal units to appear in a Command & Conquer game, a precedent that many Red Alert fans will appreciate. Red Alert was also the first game to feature the female Allied commando Tanya, who became a recurring character in the Red Alert universe and was typically played by a young actress wearing a halter top, in this case, actress Lynne Litteer. Red Alert also had two expansion packs, Command & Conquer Red Alert: Counterstrike (which added new maps, including a secret mission that pitted your soldiers against gigantic ants) and Command & Conquer Red Alert: The Aftermath (which added new units like the chrono tank and the Tesla tank), both released in 1997. The two expansions were also compiled into the PlayStation game Command & Conquer Red Alert: Retaliation. The original Red Alert also made an appearance on the Sony PlayStation.
Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun (PC)
- Developer:
- Westwood Studios
- Publisher:
- Westwood Studios
- Release Date:
- Aug 24, 1999
1999's Tiberian Sun was a sequel to the original Command & Conquer and picked up with a new conflict between the GDI and Nod some 30 years after the original game's war. It also placed Hollywood actors in the commander's seat--the GDI commander (your character) was played by The Terminator supporting cast member Michael Biehn (who reported to a general played by none other than James Earl Jones, better known as the voice of Darth Vader from the Star Wars motion pictures), while the Nod commander was played by actor Frank Zagarino. Though Tiberian Sun offered visual improvements in the form of a new isometric perspective and raised terrain, the game was delayed and features were cut prior to its release, leaving a game that was very similar to the original, but with unfortunate performance issues. Tiberian Sun went on to receive an expansion pack in 2000's Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun Firestorm, which added a new, heavily story-driven single-player campaign for both the GDI and Nod.
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 (PC)
- Developer:
- Westwood Studios
- Publisher:
- EA Games
- Release Date:
- Oct 21, 2000
By the end of 1999, Electronic Arts had acquired Westwood Studios, the original developer of the C&C series, and was credited as the publisher for subsequent Command & Conquer games, such as 2000's Red Alert 2. The sequel to Red Alert picks up after the defeat of the Soviet Union, as rebuilding efforts in the Eastern Bloc are revealed to actually be the plans for an invasion of America by a revitalized Soviet army. The single-player campaigns for each side offered distinctly different experiences, and each faction offered different gameplay (the Allies were a slower, stronger faction, while the Soviets were quicker but not as well-suited for longer sieges). However, Red Alert 2 is perhaps more memorable because it was the point where the Red Alert series went from the philosophical exploration of alternate history to full-on wacky, featuring such controllable units as telepathic giant squids and sonar-attacking dolphins, as well as over-the-top cutscene performances from actors such as the "new" Tanya, Sliders star Kari Wuhrer, and character actor Udo Kier as the psychic Yuri. Red Alert 2 received an expansion with 2001's Command & Conquer Red Alert 2: Yuri's Revenge, in which Yuri returned to conquer the world by way of psychic domination, forcing the Allies and the Soviets to work together to combat this new threat.
Stay tuned for day two of our retrospective, when we cover C&C's progression into 3D graphics and…first-person shooters?
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