Command & Conquer

1001 Video Games

The game appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Controversy

The PC version of this game had an advertisement that read "Previous High Scores" and under these words were several photographs of historical and contemporary military figures with high death counts. Among those pictured were Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini, Napoleon Bonaparte, Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, Radovan Karadžić, Ratko Mladić and others. The controversy stems from the inclusion of then-president of France Jacques Chirac among them. The ad can be viewed here.

Cover screenshots

Obviously, the in-game screenshots on the back cover are faked (e.g. hovercraft landing from the side) or taken from a beta version that had different graphics than the release version (e.g. insignia on the Construction Yard's roof).

German version

Westwood voluntarily changed a few things in the German version, because they feared the game could be indexed.

• The cover: the soldier on the cover was displayed bigger, so that the weapon on the left couldn't be seen anymore
• The manual: the photos of the soldier units were censored with "Geheim" [secret], so that nobody could see that they had human faces
• The game: the soldiers were called 'androids' or 'bots', and they spilled black blood (oil) when they died
• Some videos were censored, e.g. when Seth gets a shot in the head, and a few video sequences are missing altogether.

A complete list of changes can be found on schnittberichte.com (German).

Kane

Kane is played by Joseph D. Kucan, the voice and video director for most of Westwood's games (including the Command & Conquer series).

While other roles were filled by Westwood employees (e.g. Eric Gooch who played Seth was an artist, and Kia Huntzinger who voiced the EVA unit was a receptionist) or local actors (e.g. Eric Martin who played General Sheppard), Kucan's role as Kane was the subject of frequent questions by the community. Kucan would intentionally answer with absurd fictional stories, except at Gamescom 2009, where he answered truthfully - he was told to record a test video for the VQA video format Westwood was working on, where he was to imitate a villain character. The role stuck since, and he would portray or voice the character in future titles in the series, as late as promo material for 2020's Command & Conquer: Remastered Collection.

Macintosh and Windows versions

In 1996, Westwood released the Macintosh version, which increased resolution from 320x200 to 640x400, brought a new interface with a different icon style, and Westwood Online multiplayer. These changes would be transferred to the 1997 Windows release (the Gold version).

Mega Score

It was the first game to be featured on the cover of Mega Score, the longest running Portuguese gaming magazine, on the second issue (November 1995). The honours of the first belong to the Sega Saturn.

Online servers

The game's online servers were migrated from the official Westwood Online infrastructure to the community-run XWIS (XCC WOL IRC Server), under approval and sponsorship from EA's German office on 20 October 2005. The Westwood Online domains have acted as a redirect to XWIS services since then, requiring no additional steps from the user to access the servers short of registering an account.

References

Open up the instruction manual to the page right after the table of contents, the one with the fire that has the quote from Kane. The last line says "(Global Net Interpol, file #GEN4:16)". That "#GEN4:16" actually refers to Genesis 4:16 from the Bible. That explains where they got the idea for Kane and the Brotherhood of Nod.

Sales

Westwood received an entry in the Guinness Book of Records, because they sold the game more than 10 million times worldwide.

Awards

• Computer Gaming World
  • April 1998 (Issue #165) - Introduced into the Hall of Fame
  • June 1996 (Issue #143) – Strategy Game of the Year
  • June 1996 (Issue #143) – Strategy Game of the Year (Readers' Vote)
  • November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) - #48 in the "150 Best Games of All Time" list
• Electronic Gaming Monthly
  • February 1997 (Issue 91) - Game of the Month (Saturn version)
  • March 1997 (Issue 92) - Strategy Game of the Year runner-up (multiplatform) (Readers' Choice)
• Game Informer
  • August 2001 (Issue 100) - #28 in the "Top 100 Games of All Time" poll
• GameSpot
  • 7th Best Villain in Gaming History (for Kane)
• GameSpy
  • 2001 – #31 Top Game of All Time
• GameStar (Germany)
  • Issue 12/1999 - #2 in the "100 Most Important PC Games of the Nineties" ranking
  • Issue 01/2007 - one of the "Ten Most Influential PC-Games". It is the milestone which stands for the change from turn-based to real-time strategy games.
• PC Gamer
  • April 2000 - #24 in the "Readers All-Time Top 50 Games" poll
• PC Player (Germany)
  • Issue 01/1996 - Best Game in 1995
  • Issue 01/1996 - Best Strategy Game in 1995 *Power Play
  • Issue 02/1996 – Best Multiplayer Game in 1995 *Total! (Germany)
  • Issue 01/2000 – Most Exotic N64 Genre in 1999

Information also contributed by Adam Baratz, Der.Archivar, havoc of smeg, Itay Shahar, Luis Silva, Maw and PCGamer77