Christ, it was 1995 and I should’ve been doing proper grown-up things, you know? Had this dead-end job writing manuals for household appliances – riveting stuff, let me tell you – and my bedsit in Hulme desperately needed sorting. Instead, there I was at half past two in the morning, eyes burning from staring at my chunky CRT monitor, muttering “just one more go” like some sort of digital junkie. Command & Conquer had grabbed me by the throat and wasn’t letting go.
I’d mucked about with Dune II a few years back – brilliant game, proper granddad of the whole RTS thing – but C&C was something else entirely. First time that bald nutter Kane showed up on my screen in those grainy video bits, I nearly jumped out of my skin. Actual people! In my computer game! Real actors speaking real words instead of those terrible text boxes we’d been putting up with for years. My flatmate wandered past during one of the cutscenes and asked if I was watching some dodgy late-night film. “Sort of,” I said, not wanting to explain why I was taking military orders from a bloke who looked like he’d stepped out of a Bond villain audition.
What Westwood did with those FMV sequences was absolutely mental for the time. Proper cinematic storytelling wedged between the shooty bits, making you feel like you were part of some global conspiracy rather than just moving pixels around a screen. Yeah, the acting was hammy as Christmas dinner – Kane chewing scenery like his life depended on it – but that’s what made it brilliant. Had this wonderful B-movie quality that shouldn’t have worked but absolutely did. I’d race through missions partly to see what barmy twist they’d throw at me next. Would Kane deliver another speech about the glory of NOD while staring directly into my soul? Would the GDI commander look even more constipated than before? Had to find out, didn’t I?
Before C&C came along, resource management in strategy games was proper fiddly. Remember clicking on woodcutters in Warcraft until your finger went numb? Westwood sorted all that with Tiberium – this toxic green stuff that basically grew itself. Plop down a harvester, watch it do its thing, money in the bank. Simple. Elegant. Still get a little thrill hearing that harvester dumping sound – chunk-chunk-chunk, credits added. Music to my ears, that was. Meant I could finally afford that weapons factory or maybe squeeze in another power plant.
My mate Dave was obsessed with GDI – boring sod, all about those mammoth tanks and heavy artillery. Me, I went straight for NOD every time. Something deeply satisfying about building a sneaky little base in some forgotten corner of the map, then unleashing hell with stealth tanks and rocket buggies when he least expected it. “You absolute bastard!” was his usual reaction around midnight when I’d catch his harvesters unguarded. Good times, until Mrs. Henderson upstairs started banging on the ceiling with her walking stick.
The NOD campaign had this mission where you’re supposed to assassinate some civilian scientist, right? Proper messed with my head, that did. Games weren’t asking you to do morally questionable things back then – it was all “kill the monsters, save the princess” nonsense. But here’s C&C making me complicit in what were essentially war crimes. I remember sitting there for ages before giving the attack order, thinking, “Am I supposed to be the villain here?” It was uncomfortable in the best possible way. Made you think, which was more than most games bothered with in ’95.
The controls were dead simple compared to what we’d been wrestling with. Left-click to select, right-click to move or attack. Job done. That sidebar interface with all the chunky buttons made base building feel like playing with Lego. You could focus on the strategy instead of fighting with the bloody interface. Even my dad had a go after watching me glued to the desk for an entire weekend. “So I just… build these tank things and smash the other fellow?” he asked. “Pretty much, yeah,” I said. He proceeded to build nothing but mammoth tanks and send them straight at the enemy base. No subtlety whatsoever, but he was having a whale of a time.
Frank Klepacki’s soundtrack was absolutely spot-on – this perfect mix of industrial rock and military percussion that got your blood pumping properly. “Act on Instinct” and “Industrial” still pop up on my Spotify sometimes, usually when I’m trying to motivate myself for a particularly grim Monday morning. And those unit acknowledgments! Still catch myself saying “Affirmative” in that same robotic voice when someone asks me to do something at work. Gets some odd looks from the younger lads, I can tell you.
My flat became ground zero for weekend C&C marathons. We’d stock up on pizza and whatever lager was on special at the corner shop, then settle in for hours of skirmish battles. My coffee table’s still got a ring stain from where Dave slammed his pint down after I obliterated his harvester line with an airstrike. “That’s proper cheap and you know it!” he shouted. All’s fair in love and Tiberium wars, mate.
Getting multiplayer working was an absolute nightmare. Dial-up modems, busy phone lines, constant disconnections – we had to coordinate like we were planning actual military operations. “Don’t answer the phone!” became our battle cry. Nothing worse than being on the verge of victory and hearing that horrible screech as someone’s mum rang to ask about Sunday dinner. We developed these elaborate schedules, warning notes stuck to phones, complex systems of who would call whom. Mad to think how much effort we put in just to blow up each other’s virtual bases.
I spent embarrassing amounts of time creating custom maps. My masterpiece was this asymmetrical thing with a Tiberium-rich island that could only be reached by transport helicopters. I’d obsess over tree placement, resource distribution, defensive positions – proper sad, really. Even printed out my designs at work (sorry, Mr. Phillips) and sketched strategies during lunch breaks. The office manager definitely thought I was planning something dodgy with all my scribbled diagrams labeled “northern chokepoint” and “hidden NOD base.”
Red Alert nearly got me fired in ’96. Pulled two consecutive sickies, emerging from my gaming cave only for toilet breaks and to pay the takeaway delivery bloke. The alternate history where Einstein erases Hitler from the timeline was completely bonkers – instead of GDI versus NOD, we had Allies against Soviets with Tesla coils and attack dogs. The storytelling got even campier, which I didn’t think was possible. Stalin twirling his mustache like a pantomime villain, Tanya spouting action hero one-liners – it was gloriously ridiculous.
What made C&C special wasn’t just the pretty graphics or fancy videos – it was how different the factions actually felt. This wasn’t just the same units painted different colors with slightly tweaked stats. GDI and NOD had completely different philosophies, different approaches to warfare. Building a NOD base with those curved, almost organic structures felt nothing like constructing GDI’s blocky, industrial facilities. You had to think differently, play to each faction’s strengths while exploiting the enemy’s weaknesses.
Base building became proper art. I’d spend ages creating these elaborate defensive networks – walls channeling attackers into carefully planned kill zones, guard towers positioned for maximum coverage, backup power supplies hidden away from the front lines. Even built decoy structures to draw enemy fire away from important facilities. Dave called it “playing SimCity with explosions,” but he stopped laughing when his rush tactics kept failing against my fortifications.
Managing harvesters was crucial – get it wrong and you were finished. I developed this whole system timing exactly how long collection runs took, staggering deployments to maintain constant resource flow. Nothing worse than having all your harvesters return simultaneously, creating traffic jams of expensive, vulnerable units. Watched a replay once where someone used a single engineer to capture three harvesters – like watching ballet, except with more explosions and swearing.
The soundtrack became the background music to my life for months. Installed a proper sound system in my room, much to the upstairs neighbor’s dismay. Those industrial beats would thump through the ceiling while I mentally planned base layouts at traffic lights. Actually bought the soundtrack CD – still got it somewhere, probably next to my Sensible Soccer disc.
Watching the FMV technology evolve through the series was fascinating. Early stuff was charmingly low-budget – you could practically see the cardboard sets wobbling. By Tiberian Sun they were doing green screen effects that seemed incredible at the time. Showed a friend Kane’s dramatic return scene and he genuinely asked what film I was watching.
Playing those games now is like stepping into a time machine. Got my original discs carefully preserved, though finding hardware that’ll actually run them is another challenge entirely. The pixelated units, the cheesy acting, the earnest storytelling – it’s all wonderfully dated but holds up brilliantly. Modern RTS games with their hyperdetailed graphics and complex systems are impressive, sure, but there was something perfect about C&C’s balance of accessibility and depth. Could teach someone the basics in minutes, but mastering the strategies took months.
Twenty-something years later, I still find myself humming “Hell March” while queuing at Tesco. Command & Conquer didn’t just change strategy games – it changed how I spent my weekends, how I bonded with mates, even how I thought about storytelling in games. Not bad for something that came on about fifteen floppy disks, eh? Now if you’ll excuse me, I think it’s time for just one more mission. For old time’s sake, obviously.
John grew up swapping floppy disks and reading Amiga Power cover to cover. Now an IT manager in Manchester, he writes about the glory days of British computer gaming—Sensible Soccer, Speedball 2, and why the Amiga deserved more love than it ever got.
