Games How did you get involved with Command & Conquer?

[SilverShark]

The first and one of the few RTS I ever played was Bitmap Brothers' Z. The Command & Conquer series was relatively obscure to me for a long time, until it was 2009, when I became more involved with PC gaming, I found my brother's old copy of RA2 and tried it out, quickly becoming addicted to it. I usually played the skirmish mode, and it was fun although I couldn't play online, as it was no longer supported. I used to look for Red Alert related videos on YouTube, and remember seeing development footage of AR there.

During Summer in 2013, I was bored and decided to find out if you could still somehow play RA2 online. While searching for C&C related stuff online, I came across the A Path Beyond project on ModDb or something, and downloaded the BHP launcher. I began playing the games more avidly in 2014-2015 (as part of escapism caused by some life issues), and developed a passion for a simple game with a small community, losing interest in mainstream games.

Edited August 18, 2018 by SilverShark

[VERTi60]

Our physics teacher in primary school gave out a RA1 CD in class to the classmates to try out so I played RA1 at my friend's place for the first time (that was back in 1997 so almost 20 years ago). I've tried to install original C&C via floppy discs I got by accident from a relative but I actually managed to finally play the full version after I've already finished RA for like fourth time and various other RTS games. I remember playing my first RTS games from gaming magazines, trying out different things (e.g. Netstorm, TA, KKnD, AoE, Dark Colony,...). By the year 2000, I think I tried more than 50 different ones. I also used to play Dune 2000 when it came out at other friends' place and then managed to get my own copy.

After that I haven't played C&C pretty much until the end of high school when I started playing Renegade with my gf (although just single player at first). When I finally got my own internet I moved from online chess and online RTS NetStorm to newly discovered Renalert (APB) - I think it was like 10 years ago. I played it way more than the original renegade online and was my 1# online team shooter for a long time. By that time I've played all C&C titles, replayed a bunch when TFD was released and finished with Generals. My most favorite played C&C games where Yuri's Revenge and Kane's Wrath but the only nostalgia I ever get is for classic RA1 which was my first

[delta]

Back in maybe 5th or 6th grade, I would hear a bunch of other kids talking about a game called "Red Alert" (you know, back when we didn't have to append a number to the end of the title). I had also seen this game on the shelves in computer stores, with the Hind shooting the Heavy tank on the green NVG scope...but didn't think too much about it for a good while. Anyway, my classmates were just talking about the game, how someone killed a cruiser with something called a "shock trooper", and was quoting his "extra crispy!" line. Eventually I got interested enough and got my parents to buy me the game.

 

This was also when the internet was starting to get going, so obviously I went online and spent some time looking up stuff related to Red Alert...the one site I remember browsing quite a bit was "IncREDible Alert" which doesn't exist anymore but I still recall as being quite pretty. I eventually discovered the original Command and Conquer and the upcoming "Tiberian Sun", and the rest is pretty much history. I wasn't really active in the community or anything, and eventually I reduced my C&C browsing to just checking one site, PlanetCNC, once in a while when I was bored...but yeah from there I discovered this mod called "Renegade Alert".

[AZ-Stalker]

Found Red Alert and C&C among a pile of Playstation 1 discs we initially got back when I was a kid. Same thing happened a few years later when we got a better PC and I found TS and Renegade among the CD cases. Some of the best years of my life - learned a lot, played a lot.

[forg0ten1]

i used to make fun of my brother for playing tiberian sun when we were kids. (As unbelievable as it may seem, i was kind of a dick back then). Then i tried playing it and i became horribly addicted

[NodGuy]

I used to watch my older brother play Red Alert on the PlayStation for hours on end. I was too young the play it myself, too complicated I guess, I was still playing my Nintendo 64 hehe. Eventually I got Tiberian Sun for the PC and I haven't stopped playing since.

[Isaac The Madd]

I played my older brother's copy of Tiberian Sun.

[Testament]

The year was 2001. I was still a wee lad, sorting through the bargain bin at the local Staples. I picked out, Hard Truck 2 and my brother picked out Tiberian Sun. I watched him play through the GDI campaign and thought it was the coolest game I had ever seen. I remember when my brother got to the Scrin ship, and I totally didn't believe him that there was an alien ship in it. Watched him beat the whole thing. I was more focused on Rollercoaster Tycoon at the time, but eventually when he moved back to the United States I got around to playing through the Nod campaign and was hooked for life. Got ahold of a burnt copy of C&C 95 and played through the GDI campaign for that. Eventually, I got my own PC and picked up The First Decade and was able to try all the other games in the series before deciding that my favourite had to be Renegade.

[MPRA2]

Long story short, my first 2 games were C&C64 and Red Alert on either PC or PSX (before my playstation got flamed by the heating vent.)

[Raap]

Like most things that occurred more than two weeks ago...

 

I cannot begin to remember.

[ChopBam]

My older brother received C&C as a birthday gift in 1997. I watched him play it, and I really wanted to play, so eventually I did.

[Cain Marder]

Hmm, that's a really good question.

Well, back when I was seven I got this PC from a friend of my mother who was and still is a very skilled IT engineer (or something similar) and before giving that PC, he installed all the games he had on his other PC for me and there were a bunch of classics like Airfix Dogfighter, Re-Volt and such, and a few (as well as the ones listed above) were some of my favorites but one game really caught my eye and interest and that was Red Alert 2, that was when I began to develop interest on RTS games, and so I started the campaign (the Allies one was the first one, I think) without a clue about what was happening in the game at all (worth to mention that back then I didn't knew how to speak English at all [not that I'm excellent at it now, I'm still bad, especially when it comes to past tense :/] so everything was so foreign for me and even though I was reading through the briefing, having no idea what any of the words meant and failing over and over but I enjoyed the game nonetheless instead of making me to leave it be, that actually motivated me to learn to speak English just so I could finally understand the juicy plot and briefing text

This game made me try hard to learn to speak English and back then this was one of my life goals.

It was until 2009 that I learned that RA2 wasn't just a single game but that it made part of the C&C franchise which made me even hyped about it,I started getting most of the other games, visiting websites (Heavily visiting ModDB and CNCNZ) and eventually heard of APB back when it was Gamma, played it, went away, came back a few years after which brought me here and, well, that's all I guess

[Killing_You]

I just remember sitting on my dad's lap while he played C&C, which I called "flopellar" as a toddler (I got that from "Low Power," I think). It got to the point where if my parents ever needed me to stay in one place for a certain amount of time, they'd just pop in the Red Alert disk and let me have fun. Heck I even got to the 4th Soviet mission before being fully potty trained. Then I remember being super excited when he took me to the store to get Red Alert 2 when it came out, and then sitting on his lap while he played through the campaigns... Man he would've LOVED APB.

[MechanicalThighs]

I discovered C&C purely randomly. I was like 7 or 8 at the time, and my older cousin's birthday was coming up, so I was at Walmart with my mom picking out a game to give him. I spotted this bright orange box, (I believe it was the Command & Conquer Collection. It had all the games from Dawn to Renegade) with some awesome-looking screenshots on it. I convinced my mom to get it, and when we got home, just to make sure my cousin would like it, my mom let me test it out. I was HOOKED. So a few weeks later I had my own set. Loved it ever since. Haven't ever been a huge part of the community, but I do watch a handful of mods.

[Alstar]

I think the first C&C i have ever played when i was 4 year old was Red Alert 1. From time to time i had to sit with parents at work, and was observing dad playing it. When he was out of office, i took his place and played on my own. Got hooked to it pretty quickly.

 

However when dad brought home PC with Red Alert 2, this is where it started. I still didnt knew english, so playing campaign was 100% of guess what i am supposed to do but after some time i got a hang on it and even managed to play against my dad from time to time. Then i followed every other C&C, replayed older ones. Later on i returned to RA2(YR) which got me hooked to mods. I played modded RA2YR for YEARS, because i didnt felt bored at all. Severals of them downloaded, several of them played, it felt refreshing playing the game which was constantly changed because of community. Later on when i got myself TFD i got hooked to Renegade, then APB.

 

Im still following modding communities, mostly RA2YR ones. Started from very bottom, now i am here. [Obligatory bragging] Tester for Mentalmeisters [/Obligatory bragging]

C&C is a big part of my life, im thankful for my dad for showing me it.

 

PS. I consider Generals not as good as people think and SWR productions = band of closedminded bastards. The end!

Edited June 3, 2016 by Alstar

[Isaac The Madd]

Generals is good-ish but the building mechanics are horrid.

[BigJoe]

My first encounter with C&C was getting a PC Gamer demo disk with a demo for the original C&C on it (it also had a demo for Darkseed 2, but I had no earthly idea what that weird game was at the time). My dad and I were walking through the Del Amo Mall in Torrance, CA and we happened upon some kind of magazine store, I think. We walked inside and we were immediately greeted by the owner of the store who offered us the demo disk without the magazine. I cannot remember why the man did this but we gladly went ahead and took the disk he was offering since we had recently got an IBM Aptiva for Christmas from my grandmother the previous year and we were still excited about trying whatever software we could on our new computer. I was unable to get past the first level (good ol' GDI beach landing level) because I had no idea what to do with the MCV that they gave you, but I was hooked and fascinated none the less. After playing the demo a countless number of times, I had found out that one of my friends had a different C&C game; C&C Red Alert. He let me borrow the Allied disk for a time and then he traded me the Soviet disk a few weeks later. It was then about a month or two later that after my C&C addiction was cemented with Red Alert, my dad had finally bought the original C&C for me.

 

The rest, as they say, is history...

[Pushwall]

First had Tiberian Dawn on the Playstation; I think it was either my older brother or my dad who bought it for themselves, but I loved it even though I was terrible at it, and that trend continued with Red Alert and Retaliation.

[OWA]

I borrowed my friend's copy of Red Alert 1 on the PS1 back in the late 90s and became addicted! After getting a PC I played through Tiberian Sun multiple times and then moved onto Renegade.

 

Through high school I was introduced to Red Alert 2 and Yuri's Revenge. Towards the end of high school (around 2005) I started playing a ton of mods and became inspired by Renegade Alert, so I decided to make my own Renegade mod. That mod became Apocalypse Rising.

[NodGuy]

Generals is good-ish but the building mechanics are horrid.

 

Probably not what you're referring too, but...

 

[delta]

I don't quite remember what the Generals U.S. bulldozer's voice sounds like, but I read that second line in the voice of the Starcraft 1 SCV...

[neko soldier]

I don't quite remember what the Generals U.S. bulldozer's voice sounds like

[Lavama]

I remember being in the basement in 2002, about the same time I started playing Unreal Tournament nigh-religiously, playing some version of RA2. It was pretty fun, but I was horrible at it. No, before that, I was actually playing RA2 at my babysitter's house, I distinctly remember a mission on the Allies campaign. Well, just that it was the Allied Campaign.

 

Fastforward seven years and I see that CnC collection and grab it, along with Tiberium Wars. That was my first introduction to Renegade, and had a ton of fun. Wish I knew how to run it on Windows 8.1.

[UnspokenHonor]

Probably early 2000s (before generals was released) i saw my grandfather playing CNC95... the GDI mission where your in the snowy maps when you first get the MRLS... he let me play that mission and guided me through how to build up resources and such... from that point i was hooked on it....weeks after i started with him... i started playing on my own... and then found the collection he had which had everything up through Red Alert 2 and Renegade... he had me beat each game in order to get rewarded with the next game... was cool and fun as kid back then... generals was probably the first one i actually owned... had that until the first decade sets came out... got that as a christmas present and gave the generals set to my brother... he downloaded that as i did my new copy and we tried yo get a lan game going... he was US Ait Force general and i was running as China nuke general... i remember beating him after about 2 or 3 hours on it... since then ive relived cnc95 RA and TS with CNCNET and now a new perspective with renegade... TSR and APB within the last year or so...

[ganein14]

Long story short, my first 2 games were C&C64 and Red Alert on PC

Same here!

[Kreubs]

I think in 1997 some family friends ended up with duplicate RA1 disks so they gave us a copy. I would watch my dad play and always ask if I could play too. I was only 5 so my dad made a map with a large center island, plenty of money, and one bridge that I could blast so I could figure out the game mechanics without dying at the easy AI's one and only spam attack. From then on, my dominant childhood strategy was turtling and cruiser spamming ftw.

Edited August 16, 2016 by Kreubs

[Einstein]

First off, welcome Kreubs! First post I see We hope you like it here and stick around!

 

Around 2000ish I believe it was (since thats when we got our windows 98 PC), dad got on a gaming kick and raided the local walmart for some cheap games Among those he brought home was the RA1 + Aftermath disk set, Hasbro's Risk (amazing fun game exactly like the classic board game, works fine even on win10, PM me if you want it ), Battle of the Bulge (another RTS), and some others that I have long forgotten. Risk and RA1 are the ones that stuck with me. I would sit and watch dad for hours play RA1, and then try to do exactly what he did when he got finished. I remember being stuck on Allied mission 4 for AGES before I finally got it.

 

Some time passed, and one day I located the big orange box set that contained all the C&C games to date! OH MAN, YOU MEAN THERE ARE MORE?!? My parents began to despise my "addiction" they called it. Pssh So I tore into RA2 and YR, and eventually TS and Renegade. Why I did Renegade last, I have no clue. Renegade was actually my first FPS game believe it or not. I was super impressed that such a thing existed, and even more so when soon after playing it and telling a friend, he replied "well you know they're coming out with one like that for RA1 right?" WOAH MAN. HOLD ON. MY LIFE IS SO GOOD RIGHT NOW . So I waited and waited....got really tired of waiting. During my wait, I discovered "the google" so I decided to look this sucker up! It was then (around 2004ish) that I stumbled on my first mod project....APB. Or as it was still being called at the time "Renegade Alert". My father was wary of things on the internet at that time, and the PC we had could barely play renegade anyway, so I was forced to wait a while. After a fateful lightning strike, we got a new PC. So loaded out with my Abit NF7 board, boasting a single core Athlon @1.6ghz OC'd to 2.2ghz, 512mb of ram, an Abit Siluro 128mb card along with a very early nvidia physx card, I finally played APB for the first time (LAN only) in 2005 and my life was changed forever

 

Looking back, I'm not sure why I didn't play online at first? Maybe I didn't know? Maybe that was in the time window where the project was basically dead and there were no servers? Not sure. Probably so, because I do remember the first time I saw some activity and some new stuff. Man thats all a blur now.... Sorry for the paragraphs guys, I don't know the meaning of "brief" obviously

[ChAoS]

When I was between 6-8 my friend brought over red alert. I thought it was cool to watch but I didn't understand how to play it at all. Fast forward to 2004~ and I saw a copy of RA2 at another friends house and borrowed it. I got really into it and one day I saw the expansion at the store "bundled with TS and renegade" so I bought it. Never really played TS but I did try renegade. Of course renegade never worked well "ati rage pro" graphics card. Probably a Pentium 2 processor

but I could play the first mission. In 2005 my parents bought us a new pc. Was a Pentium 4. I ended up getting a lot more games, just as KOTOR and Jedi Knight. I also got into this Petz game for a little bit and found a lot of custom content for it which eventually lead me to realize that the same may be true for other games. So I discovered mods for RA2 and that rabbit hole lead me to search for mods for every game I had Including renegade. I found apb in late 2005 but didn't play online until late 2006

 

Looking back, I'm not sure why I didn't play online at first? Maybe I didn't know? Maybe that was in the time window where the project was basically dead and there were no servers? Not sure. Probably so, because I do remember the first time I saw some activity and some new stuff. Man thats all a blur now.... Sorry for the paragraphs guys, I don't know the meaning of "brief" obviously

There was definitely no server when I first played. I hosted a game and someone actually joined and told me the game was moving to battlefield 2 engine several months later I checked again and found the conflict area's server.

[Kaskins]

I got recall of my memories how I started Red Alert, I was playing a shooter which called Counter-Strike back than. Than I came across a game called Red Alert Counterstrike, thought is a new counter-strike but it end up as a C&C game instead of counter-strike. I have no idea what was I doing back than but it was a fun game. I move on to Playstation 1 where my dad brought a game called DUNE 2000, and follow by C&C Retaliation and than follow by C&C Red Alert. I started in Retaliation than only Red Alert.

 

Never really play Tiberian Dawn that time but i did saw my nephew play a dark gloomy game called Tiberian Sun, I have no idea what was it but its like Red Alert but darker, maybe because that old CRT monitor with filters make the game so dark. Than 2004 happen so fast started playing Red Alert 2, yeah was a bit late but still interesting and what is Red Alert 2 back than? I still cannot figure out until when C&C 3 roll out than i understand the universe of C&C.

 

Than DISASTER! Red Alert 3 lol was a bit weird for C&C universe, with some wrecky and weird stuff. Than there is this Japanese young girl has super power capable of wiping out entire Allied and Soviet base. ( Expansion pack )

It was still fun doesn't quite fit into Red Alert from my point of view. After playing Red Alert 3 than only I found out of APB. Than follow by C&C Reborn and AR2.

[Missingno50]

I started playing... IDK... it's been pretty much my entire life, my dad used to set me on his lap when I couldn't even look up and play Tiberian Sun. Later, when I had some muscle movement and had a decent idea of how to open something(most of the time, my dad still opened it. I was only like... 9 months), I used to play it. Well as much as a 9 month old child could. I later found my brother's copy of the Decade Edition when I was 4. Loved the hell out of it, and loved messing with RA1's map editor.

Eventually, I got the ultimate collection(which BTWs is a ripoff, don't buy it-you should just pirate from EA like I did for Red alert 3 and C&C 4 with my cousin's account-I own it now though. Does that count as a rule break?).

So Kaskins, I'm going to lay this simple:after beating Red Alert as the soviets, you immediately move into the Tiberian Dawn(and CANONICAL) timeline. If you beat the Allied campaign though, well, you move into RA2. RA3 just throws out RA2 and RA1, and very well could've just been a reboot at this point.

Tiberian Sun is a game that, honestly, could've been better if it wasn't for EA. Look up a ton of old Pre-E3/E3 pictures of TS and you'll find these massive cities with great huge battles. Now if you look at it now, there's small cities and not quiet the selection of units. Also got rid of my favorite unit-and I cannot fix it thanks to a bug which involves the very first patch EA released for TS-the ORCA Transport. Still a good game though, and if you're into more of a COH battle system.

(thanks to bad grammar I can't exactly tell what you're saying by the ways. This is just my assumption that you were asking about it and all.)

On 8/21/2016 at 11:14 PM, Kaskins said:

Never really play Tiberian Dawn that time but i did saw my nephew play a dark gloomy game called Tiberian Sun, I have no idea what was it but its like Red Alert but darker, maybe because that old CRT monitor with filters make the game so dark. Than 2004 happen so fast started playing Red Alert 2, yeah was a bit late but still interesting and what is Red Alert 2 back than? I still cannot figure out until when C&C 3 roll out than i understand the universe of C&C.

Edited February 25, 2017 by Missingno50