Command & Conquer

aka: C&C, Command & Conquer (Special Gold Edition), Command & Conquer for Windows 95, Command & Conquer: Der Tiberiumkonflikt, Command & Conquer: Der Tiberiumkonflikt (SVGA-Version), Command & Conquer: Teil 1 - Der Tiberiumkonflikt, Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn
Moby ID: 338
DOS Specs
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Description official descriptions

Command & Conquer develops ideas from Westwood's previous game Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty, forming a real-time strategy (RTS) game. The control system involves selecting units with the mouse and then directing them, while the opponents make their moves without waiting for a "turn" to end.

The game focuses on a war between two organizations, The Brotherhood of Nod and the Global Defense Initiative, which fight not only for global supremacy, but also over the mysterious extraterrestrial resource known as Tiberium which is highly valuable yet lethal to direct human contact. The player can take control of either side for more than 15 missions. Both have different units and structures, including artillery, tanks and light infantry.

In most missions, a base needs to be built first in order to build new units and structures. Most important are the harvesters, which collect Tiberium and deliver it to a refinery, where it's converted into money, thus funding the construction of a base and an army.

The game also features FMV mission briefings and victory cutscenes.

Spellings

  • コマンド&コンカー - Japanese spelling
  • 命令与征服 - Simplified Chinese spelling
  • 終極動員令 - Traditional Chinese spelling

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Credits (DOS version)

115 People (107 developers, 8 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 85% (based on 42 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.0 out of 5 (based on 208 ratings with 12 reviews)

I HATE this game!

The Good
The videos were pretty well done, I guess, even if they were horribly cheesy. Also, the plot actually seems a lot better now than it did in 1995. Replace the fictional terrorist Kane with the all-too-real Osama bin Laden, and the whole thing starts sounding chillingly familiar.

The game doesn't format your hard drive when you install it, although it does take up valuable disk space that would be much better spent on just about anything else. C&C also makes most other games (even of the astoundingly overrated RTS genre) look good.

Finally, I suspect this game satisfies some primal urge, deep within the darkest part of our souls, to buy crap games and then lie to other people about how cool they are.



The Bad
Let me count the ways! Is there any way this game could have sold as many units as it did had it not been for the technological explosion of the mid-1990s? NO! Too many people obviously bought this as their very first computer game. Otherwise, it would not have been hailed as brilliant, nor would it have passed muster as a strategy title. This game was simply another Myst, only it somehow managed to get respect from magazine reviewers and hard-core gamers. Before you flame me, allow me to try to explain where I'm coming from here…

Sid Meier's Civilization is an example of a great strategy game. I'm not just referring to the fact that it's incredibly deep, a work of art; I'm referring to the fact that you need to put some thought into it, even at the lower difficulty levels, if you want to be a successful Civ player. Now, my very first exposure to C&C revealed why it could never, ever be in the same class as Civ. A computerless guy in my college dorm asked if he could install C&C on my new PC and play it; naturally, I said "sure," wanting to be nice to the fellow but also harboring an ulterior motive: I wanted a sneak peek at this game that had such a buzz around it. Well, he installed it, and what ensued was positively horrifying. Yes, it was cheesy, with the videos and all, but at least it was kind of slick. (I suppose it's like the difference between low-budget and high-budget porno flicks -- although I certainly haven't watched enough porn to say for sure.) But then the game started. My friend proceeded to use the mouse, clicking on things on the screen more or less at random. "I dunno what I'm doin' here," he said, and he was obviously telling the truth. And bizarrely, unforgettable, maddeningly…he was doing REALLY WELL! Yes, that's right, no thought, no previous gaming experience, nothing required but a Pentium with a CDROM drive, and you too can be a master strategist!

I picked up C&C when it hit bargain bins a couple years later in the hope that I was mistaken in my hunch that it was a bad game. I played it and disliked it. A few years later, I got it back out and reinstalled it, thinking that my greater maturity, and the perspective of the post-StarCraft and Age of Empires II-era, would enable me to see what seemingly everyone else saw in this game. Nope. I'm pretty sure that if I reinstalled it and played it today, it would still suck.

It was a big mistake for us to label C&C a "real-time strategy" (RTS) game in the first place. First, it doesn’t really seem to be in real time, but accelerated time. In some ways, C&C's roots are in the video arcades. That opening beach-landing sequence wants to be reminiscent of D-Day, but it really reminds me instead of 8-bit era action games like Commando and Guerrilla War. The difference being that I loved those two games, because they didn't pretend to be anything but shoot'em-ups. Not so with C&C. Second, this game doesn't involve strategy in the traditional PC wargame sense; if anything, it's more of a puzzle game (an incredibly annoying one, at that). It's much more like Lemmings (minus the charm) than Civilization, so "strategy" was just the wrong word to use. In fact, C&C was the perfect game for the 1990s—the decade of declining standards. Strategy was still for wargamers and chess players in the 1980s. Thanks to C&C, even a drug-dealing juvenile delinquent who made straight D's since junior high could consider himself a master of strategic thinking.

And don’t get me started on how buggy and broken the game feels. You’ll grow old waiting for your units to actually start responding to your orders. Sorry if I seem bitter. Did I mention that I really hate this game?

Just for the record, I don't hate all RTS games. Warcraft and Warcraft II are undeniably charming and addictive, if not particularly substantive. I could make other exceptions. C&C just stands out as a tremendously disappointing game that influenced way too many of the shoddy titles that followed it.



The Bottom Line
An arcade-puzzle game that came along at just the right time, unfortunately. Future historians will no doubt look back on C&C and ask of our gaming generation: "What were they thinking?"

DOS · by PCGamer77 (3158) · 2011

The yardstick by which all RTS are measured.

The Good
The gameplay is a refinement of Dune II : The Building of a Dynasty. You establish your base, build defences for it, and ensure you have a supply of income through the collection of tiberium.

C&C established the standard gameplay elements that all latter RTS were based on. The User Interface was well done with it being possible to create groupings of units that could be easily called and sent into battle.

Unlike WarCraft, C&C did not counter the two sides with duplicated units, but had GDI and Nod forces possess unique units that countered each other. Infantry could be effective in groups against tanks, yet were vulnerable to artillery. Artillery was in turn vulnerable to tanks. An intricate rock-paper-scissors balance was crafted.

Graphics were excellent and the carnage that ensued from the battles was a delight to behold. Infantry crawl on their stomachs to avoid being pulverized, tanks smoke when damaged, the bases are all well drawn and distinctive. Full Motion Video filmed top notch actors to help set the scenes of the game. Most of the missions had clear goals.

The music and sound is top-notch. The sound of the battles is loudest when your screen is centered on the action and is more muffled when you are away from the battles looking after your base or harvesters.

The Bad
The AI is weak, not mounting much of an assault, and is helped with some challenge base layouts. Basically, tackling a based requires a tactical hand, first of all disabling the defensive turrets, then throwing waves of armour at the enemy. It is not very skillful, but is a lot of fun. At times, units reacted poorly to being attacked and not responding with returning fire which was frustrating.

The Bottom Line
Set in a fictional future where two global forces (Global Defence Initiative & the Brotherhood of Nod) battle over an alien and powerful resource called Tiberium. Players must help guide their chosen faction through a series of missions by balancing micromanaging resource collection, base creation, and mortal combat all in real time!

Each successive mission introduces the player to new units and structures that they can build and employ. By creating a Tiberium Refinery, you create a Harvester that will intelligently collect resources, return to base, and refine these resources into credits that you then use to enhance your base and army. The interace is intuitive and incorporates mainstay features like grouping and map deployment.

Command & Conquer is the undisputed yardstick by which all following Real Time Strategy games were measured by. I give this game 29 out of 30.

DOS · by Doc Surge (7) · 2006

Genuinely dislikable.

The Good
Not much; the graphics are appealing at first, but this is definitely not the kind of game you'd expect from the company which brought you the everlasting Dune II.

The Bad
A lot of things. It was overhyped and completely lacks in many respects.

The unit AI is just absolutely crappy (the game also has a tendency to lose track of units after a few clicks); the graphics are OK but not all that good, the missions are annoying and the two sides are completely unbalanced. The music isn't very good, nor is the gameplay (annoying units, no-fun "specials") and it completely lacks the atmosphere which made Dune II the great game it was.

The Bottom Line
Play it once, I assure you you'll keep away from it long afterwards.

DOS · by Tomer Gabel (4539) · 1999

[ View all 12 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Windows version Freeman (64836) Nov 27, 2016
Infringement Indra was here (20756) May 22, 2015
Hotkeys Donatello (466) May 12, 2014

Trivia

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

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by robotriot.

SEGA Saturn added by Kartanym. Macintosh added by Kabushi. Windows added by Plix.

Additional contributors: Terok Nor, MAT, Derrick 'Knight' Steele, Xantheous, Alaka, Xoleras, formercontrib, ケヴィン, Macs Black, CaesarZX, Paulus18950, Patrick Bregger, Plok, MrFlibble, FatherJack.

Game added October 31, 1999. Last modified March 16, 2024.