The original? Coming right up!
The original Command and Conquer game
"Command & Conquer, abbreviated to C&C and also known as "Tiberian Dawn",is a 1995 real-time strategy computer game developed by Westwood Studios for MS-DOS and published by Virgin Interactive. It was the first of twelve games to date to be released under the Command & Conquer label, including a prequel and five sequels. On August 31, 2007, current publisher and owner of the C&C franchise Electronic Arts made Command & Conquer (Windows95/Gold version) freely available for download from their official website, to mark the franchise's 12th anniversary.
Set in an alternate history 1995, Command & Conquer tells the story of two globalized factions: the Global Defense Initiative of the United Nations, and the ancient quasi-cult, quasi-state organization, the Brotherhood of Nod. The factions become locked in a mortal struggle for control over a mysterious resource known as Tiberium that is slowly spreading and infecting the world.
Met with acclaim by consumers and critics, Command & Conquer was released for seven separate platforms along with becoming the initiator of the Command & Conquer franchise, and today generally is considered as the title which originally defined and popularized the modern real-time strategy genre." ~ Excerpt from wikipedia
This game has quality rarely seen in today's market. Command & Conquer's gameplay mechanics will typically require the player to construct a base and then acquire a flow of resources, in order to fund the ongoing production of various forces to assault and conquer the opponent's base. Command & Conquer features around 50 different units and structures. However, virtually every type of structure in the game acts as a tech tree node, and additional units, structures and special abilities become available to the player as new structures are built and placed. Access to advanced units and abilities can be temporarily blocked if the required structures are destroyed, or if they are not being provided with adequate power by the supporting "power plant" structures. This was one of the first games to implement such features, alongside 4-player multiplayer which was one incredible feat to pull off when video games were still in fledgling stages.
The diverse teams have gameplay constantly shifting, with Nod's cheap-yet-fast units fighting against the GDI's strong and sturdy force. The interweaving single-player has around 50 missions whereby the player is required to complete 15 missions as either Nod or GDI to successfully complete the campaign. Most of the mission briefings in the single-player campaigns are presented in the form of a full-motion video which features live actors, with the two campaigns together having over 60 minutes worth of FMV material, which I am led to believe is the first of it's kind to do such a thing. Some of the missions of C&C first innovated various twists to the standard RTS single-player formula such as limited or no base building, and mission-specific rewards for goal completion. A common bonus reward for the GDI faction for example is the availability of the "Airstrike" power after the destruction of all SAM sites on the map.
Five "secret" missions are included on the Command & Conquer CDs, and can be accessed by providing the word funpark as a command line parameter. In the original DOS release, The Covert Operations expansion pack (which updated the game version to 1.20) was required to access these missions. The DOS C&C 1.22 patch also unlocks the funpark parameter and the 'Untamed Land' track. According to the release notes of patch 1.02 of the Command & Conquer: The First Decade compilation pack:
"Creating a shortcut for Command & Conquer and adding on 'funpark -cd.' (without quotes) to the end of the 'Target' will allow the funpark missions to be accessed when the user selects 'New Game' from the Command & Conquer in game menu."
Note that the -cd. parameter is added to activate the game's inbuilt No-CD system, which is used by the First Decade compilation pack.
The original MS-DOS release features multiplayer with up to four players, which was a rarity at the time, and supports play over network, null modem and modem. Multiplayer over an internet connection was added in the Gold Edition/Windows 95 Edition release of Command & Conquer, which sports several other improvements over the original DOS version.
As a result of changes to the IPX protocol libraries for the Windows XP and Windows 2000 environments, however, network play through this method has been rendered unavailable, except for matches that are played over parallel or serial link. Westwood Studios released a patch that disabled the game's LAN function to prevent the malfunctioning protocol from crashing the game on startup. This problem was later solved when an alternative version of the patch was released by a community member. The patch converts the game's network traffic to the UDP protocol.
Despite the fact the combination of the community-controlled XWIS servers and the unofficial network patch enabled online play again, the method to start a game through an external application remains tedious, and the system only supports 2-player games. Several attempts have been made to enhance and facilitate multiplayer gaming. In 2009, an anonymous community member calling himself "CnCNetServer" released the CnCNet application for this purpose. It works with a server which sends the game's packets to all other players that are logged in, but which intercepts and replaces packets so the game uses online IP addresses in its LAN player list. The game then runs a normal LAN game, the only difference being that the opponents are online.
Overall this game isn't too bad, if you don't mind the graphics (which have since moved on a bit
) then you are sure to have fun. The game has a lot to keep it going, and solid coding and constant updates from the community (Westwood Studios was liquefied in 2003, RIP) will ensure this game will stay on tops
That good enough Sharn?
![[Image: Bulbasaur_by_bigsharn.jpg]](http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2010/113/9/8/Bulbasaur_by_bigsharn.jpg)
