Back in the mid-90's, I couldn't get enough of Command & Conquer. The real-time strategy, genre has always time-tested in my eyes, though in recent years it's not the staple of gaming it once was. In a recent article I wrote, it's worth pointing out the widening skill gap in RTS titles chasing away the casual gamer. It got me thinking how Command & Conquer fit the perfect medium of a respectable skill ceiling with accessibility. Some traits of the very first game are a touch archaic, but it still works.

Developed by Westwood Studios, Command & Conquer was released for various home computers before making its way to consoles like the Sega Saturn and PlayStation. I played it originally on MS-DOS and Windows 95. Selecting between either the Global Defense Initiative (GDI) or the Brotherhood of NOD, this was one of the first games I remember playing that had a definitive means of playing as the villain or the heroes. Assemble your armies and apply upgrades, maintain your power supply, and destroy the enemy bases. There's other objectives like mild escort missions, but area control and ridding the map of enemy forces is essentially the name of the game. The GDI and NOD forces have branching stories, carried out by of the operatives, be it Mark Jamison or Kane (whose orders are carried out by his second in command Seth) in FMV cut sequences. 

The control scheme is guided by the reticle and mouse. There's hot keys and fast action commands, and I used to be great at it. Command & Conquer is easy to play, and can be a little bit tricky to master. Not the highest skill gap of RTSes, but there's a little more substance and nuance to C&C over the more straightforward WarCraft games at the time, which prioritized speedier commands over the slightly more intricate meta in Westwood's game.

Currency is earned by harvesting Tiberium, an exploitable substance that appeared on earth after a meteor crashed, spreading this stuff across the planet. It can only be gathered with the Harvester, but if your soldiers wander through it without the aid of an APC, they lose health, and can even die. God, I felt like such a dick destroying the harvesters or targeting Power Plants to knock out their radars with a fleet of bomber jets. Sometimes it's fun to just train a ton of Engineers, take over enemy structures, and sell off their entire base.  

The visuals are pretty good, though I recall initially being a little underwhelmed by how tiny the sprites were. Boy, my dumb 13-year old self, but it certainly was a graphical styles clash to what I was accustomed to by this point. I had also started out playing the MS-DOS version, which scales back the horsepower some and adopts a minimalist output for memory preservation. The Windows 95 version sports greater detail, more robust style in the menus and icons, and cleaner sprites. 

Command & Conquer may seem tiny, but from an artistic perspective, it makes the scale of battle that much larger. As the armies you amass grow in volume and descend upon the opposing forces, there's something really satisfying about this. The same can be said about when enemies begin their assault on your base. 

Speaking of the structures, the color-coded bases (GDI's primary gold and the Brotherhood of NOD's red) are more striking as they contrast against the generally tan and grey terrains. With most of the map obscured until you explore more, it can be daunting to stumble across an outpost and get overwhelmed. It's a well designed game, embodying the grittiness of combat and the sleek, ruthless efficiency of these heavy metal death machines.

This is a game I can play for hours. While Red Alert is one of my favorites in the series, the original Command & Conquer has a very comfortable feel to it. It's easy enough to play, the soundtrack by Frank Klepacki remains some of my favorite video game music on the planet. "UNIT LOST" is embedded in my brain. The narrative (with some poignant social commentary that still holds up about the abuse of military force for perceived economic good) is fascinating, and even the characters are iconic. Kane, for a period, was one of gaming's most popular villains. So, I'm going to wrap this up, and go play some more, because I'm ending up hooked again.