Command & Conquer: Red Alert

aka: C&C 2, C&C:RA, C&C:RA1, Command & Conquer: Alarmstufe Rot, Command & Conquer: Alerte Rouge, Command & Conquer: Teil 2 - Alarmstufe Rot
Moby ID: 485
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Description official descriptions

What if Hitler never existed? Einstein pondered the question and created a time-machine to eliminate Hitler as a young man, thus preventing World War II as history remembers it. However, Einstein stopped one evil only to create another - because Stalin's Soviet Union is now poised to conquer Europe... and Allies must stop them!

Command & Conquer: Red Alert can be considered a prequel to Command & Conquer. Like its predecessor, it is a real-time strategy with an isometric semi-top-down perspective using 2D sprite graphics engine. The player takes control of either the Allies or the Soviets, as he battles for destiny of the planet. Gameplay features are similar to those of the previous game, including building a base with some defenses, massing units, harvesting resources, etc. The game has a variety of environments in its missions, adding some indoor missions that use only infantry units.

Spellings

  • 커맨드 앤 컨커: 적색경보 - Korean spelling

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Credits (DOS version)

93 People (90 developers, 3 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 88% (based on 44 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.9 out of 5 (based on 258 ratings with 16 reviews)

does the idea of conquering europe without moving muscle appeal to anyone because it does to me!

The Good
i liked this game for many reasons,a good storyline,great graphics but the idea of building your own army is iresistible.there is not many games as enjoyable as this.best of all,when you declare war on your one of your friends and hook up tv's and playstations,is as much fun to me as covering yourself with glue and peeling it off when it dries.(to me thats brilliant,ha ha)

The Bad
the one thing that bugs me is the game tends to slow down after a certain amount of time which is annoying if your trying to commit genocide!

The Bottom Line
if you think your a worthy opponent to bush or saddam hussein here's your chance to prove your metal! point is its an excellent game.

PlayStation · by daniel o neill (1) · 2002

The best of the franchise

The Good
Command & Conquer: Red Alert made some huge steps forward considering it only came about a year after the original Command & Conquer for DOS. The biggest thrill are now absolutely fantastic pre-rendered cutscenes that feel like watching a movie, u-boats, fighter jets, tanks, turrets, it's all there, and there's plenty of them to watch. Acting is now much more fun as there are more than just a single person looking right at you and giving you some mission briefing. It's absolutely fantastic how cheesy yet perfect the acting is, it is bad, it is funny, but the fact is it wouldn't be so great if it was any better. It is interesting to see how each of them is trying to use you to achieve their own goals, while plotting to overthrow each other (Soviet campaign movies are just plain priceless, they all kill each other in those FMVs sooner or later, until you end up with Kane, the only bad guy worth following ;)

The story is set in the past as Einstein found a way to travel through time and removed Hitler out of the way. With World War II never happening, Stalin somehow came to an idea to seize control over the globe. The game fits nicely so you can later claim that original C&C is its actual sequel. They totally ruined everything with appearance of RA2 afterwards which split the franchise into Red Alert and Command & Conquer and put a solid barrier between their timelines with very little connection whatsoever.

Missions are now stretching only across the Europe, and you are given a choice to play as Allied or Soviet commander, which will eventually lead you to rather satisfying though peculiar endings. Can't figure out why some people didn't like them, they're quite okay if I do say so myself. Again, Frank did masterful work with the music as it fitted the red storm idea up to the teeth, and is nothing short of perfection. Unlike many other games of a sort, C&C was well greeted for varying arsenal on both sides, not just giving you same unit with different looks. Red Alert makes the battle strategies even more diverse as the balance of power is more than cool. Playing as soviet commander you'll notice you absolutely have supremacy concerning tank vehicles which can crush even the top allied ones although less in numbers. On the other hand, allied tanks compensate their weakness with the speed. On the water, however, allies take all the pride as their navy is quite ferocious and their cruiser ships can devastate bases from screens afar. Opposing compensation lies with the subs, stealth and only able to destroy naval targets and shipyards. The air supremacy is on the side of Soviet forces, and now you can have airfields to host as many fighters as you can build, not just call the backup in a form of reinforcements from out of the screen.

Many new structures serve the purpose but are not always the same, although they could've made different looking factories, though. Turrets are different as allies tried to make those that can withstand soviet tanks, while soviet forces focused more on repelling light tanks and infantry crowds. And of course, there are secret technologies aiding both sides which usually become available on later levels, or right from the start if you feel like playing a skirmish or multiplayer game. Also, the biggest thrill is that Windows version has higher resolution thus showing more of the battlefield, fancy icons, and still running just swell, in other word, great.

The Bad
The whole idea of putting three difficulty levels in the game is quite ridicule if they only serve to lower your shield and firepower and increase that of the enemy. Real-time strategy is all about the strategy and the only element that should define difficulty should be computer's AI and how well is responses to your threat and tactics, cheating just isn't fun.

Sometimes computer can block itself with its own units. That is both good an bad, but it's a bug so it's bad. The good thing game-wise is that you can rest from the constant attacks, but once you determine to go un-block computer's units, you better come in huge numbers because the longer it stays blocked, the more units it will produce that will just wait in the base you'll have to conquer.

The Bottom Line
A fine RTS, no, probably the best RTS ever made, what later they ruined with Red Alert 2 is up to the association with now known EA Pacific, and bad usage of cinematics and wasted talent of some great actors included. Original Red Alert has none of that, acting is both great and fun, missions are interesting and progressive, soundtrack is catchy, and cinematics are breathtaking. In spite of being the predecessor of cheesy looking RA2, the original Red Alert still saved some sort of seriousness in its own self so it doesn't look like a parody but a well blend mixture of fun, entertainment, and presentation.

Windows · by MAT (240759) · 2012

Good but not good enough

The Good
Now, I a writing this review after not playing the game for a while, I prefer Total Annihilation, so my review may seem strange, but I remember enjoying the simplicity of the game, and the variety of missions in campaign mode, the two sides had different units unlike Total Annihilation(TA) where the units on each side were copies of each other, but thats about it....

The Bad
... I really disliked the inevitable tank rush that would finish any game especially if using the soviets, also the exhaustable resources made the game, on low ore maps with lots of players a game of who can spend their money the most effectively, which is fine, but when one runs out of ore and sees their base getting battered it is VERY annoying, yes it adds another element to the game, but I feel a bad one. The AI on the both TA and red alert are bad, but at least on TA they know when they can't win on a attack and turn around to allow reinforcements to catch up, on both games if the AI is left alone then the bases grow to ridiculous sizes and on red alert become very hard to beat without the tank rush (Yes I did try using a mixture of units, the infantry got slaughtered and the planes killed two things before getting shot down). On TA a variety of units are required to overcome the defences of a established base.

The maps that come with the game aren't the greatest either but there is a map editor.

!!!!!!YOU CAN'T SAVE SKIRMISHES EITHER>HOW ANNOYING!!!!!!

The Bottom Line
Its good fun for a while, but I found that the game would be the same each time you played the skirmishes, which couldn't be saved so the amount of wasted time was extreme, on TA you can save skirmishes and the amount of units avaliable on addons and the internet is huge, you can even make your own units and AI. I don't think that Red Alert has stood the test of time like TA has, I advise people to buy TA I prefer it to Generals in terms of gameplay and variety.

Windows · by Peter Clark (9) · 2003

[ View all 16 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Anyone know whether there was multiplayer in PSX version? And Wan Dec 14, 2016

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Command & Conquer: Red Alert appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Freeware release

To celebrate 13 years of Command & Conquer and to promote the then-upcoming release of Red Alert 3, the game was made available for free on 31 August 2008. The link is available in the related web sites section.

German version

The German version removes Hitler from the intro and replaces all the soldiers with cyborgs.

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.

Sales

In 1998, the PC version of the game won the Platinum Award from the German VUD (Verband der Unterhaltungssoftware Deutschland - Entertainment Software Association Germany) for selling more then 200,000 (but less then 500,000) units in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Awards

  • Computer Gaming World
    • May 1997 (Issue #154) – Strategy Game of the Year (Readers' Choice)
  • Electronic Gaming Monthly
    • March 1998 (Issue 104) - Strategy Game of the Year
    • March 1998 (Issue 104) - Strategy Game of the Year (Readers' Choice)
  • PC Gamer
    • April 2000 - -10 in the "All-Time Top 50 Games" poll
    • April 2005 - #17 in the "50 Best Games of All Time" list
  • Verband der Unterhaltungssoftware Deutschland
    • 1998 - Platinum Award (more details in the "Sails" section)

Information also contributed by Grant McLellan, Sciere and Xoleras

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Related Games

Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2
Released 2000 on Windows
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3
Released 2008 on Windows, Xbox 360, 2009 on Macintosh
Command & Conquer: Red Alert - Retaliation
Released 1998 on PlayStation, 2008 on PSP, PlayStation 3
Command & Conquer: Red Alert - Counterstrike
Released 1997 on DOS, Windows
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 - Commander's Challenge
Released 2009 on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, 2019 on Xbox One
Command & Conquer: Red Alert - The Aftermath
Released 1997 on DOS, Windows
Command & Conquer: Yuri's Revenge
Released 2001 on Windows

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  • MobyGames ID: 485
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by robotriot.

PSP, PlayStation 3 added by Charly2.0. PlayStation added by Kartanym.

Additional contributors: Cochonou, PCGamer77, Xantheous, Kasey Chang, Jeanne, paul cairey, Sciere, Alaka, Xoleras, Jang Eunsu, —-, Cantillon, Patrick Bregger, Plok, MrFlibble, FatherJack.

Game added November 28, 1999. Last modified March 19, 2024.