Command & Conquer: The First Decade

[lecter]

Unfortunately by the looks of things, also its last, RIP Westwood and so on...

I just bought the title boxset, containing everything ever made in the C & C Universe (including Renegade)...totally worth the 20$, they have all the games on one DVD (which installs 9GB for everything ) and the old ones have been nicely tweaked to run in XP. The pack also contains a bonus fan DVD, which I have yet to check out, which has commemorative videos, interviews, etc.

Highly recommended for any fan of the series!

[schmosef]

I hope to pick it up in the summer when i might have some time to enjoy it.

[Gurm]

Huzzah! And boo...

(For the game, and the decline of Westwood, respectively!)

[breezer]

Each new version got easier and easier to play, try the dos version of dune2 and you'll know what I mean.

Breezer

[KvHagedorn]

Do you actually say "Huzzah?"

[schmosef]

I don't know anyone who was able to beat Dune2 when it first came out without some sort of cheating. I know people who claim that they did it without cheating, but they always cracked under questioning and admited that they hadn't played completely fair.

That last level, where you could get nuked all the time, that was though.

IIRC, the strategy was to save often and if you got nuked in a sensitive building you'd just reload and hope that the next time the missile fired it would hit in a different spot. That's still a form of cheating.

There were also easy ways to modify the save files to give you more money. Plus, I also seem to remember that there was a code word that you could type in that would infuse a few thousand credits at a time.

Also, the 486 computers that were around at the time would slow to an almost standstill with all the active units in the later levels.

It took a few years for the PCs to catch up performance wise and be able to handle that load.

I remember this one time I played a mini marathon of Dune2... I stopped because I'd been frustrated with one of the last levels and was getting a headache. About an hour later I tried to go to sleep but every time I closed my eyes I'd dream of this giant screen with Dune2 units moving around. It made me wickedly dizzy and nauseous. I was exhausted but couldn't let myself sleep because I kept having that dream that made me feel sick. It felt like my brain was desperately trying to deal with that day's input and having an impossible time of it.

I swore of RTS games for about a year. And even then I only got into them very slowly.

There were two other times that playing a game made me feel sick: 1) decent2, after an abusive amount of hours; and 2) RTCW on triple head with 21" CRT screens after only 15-20 minutes. That was the first and last time I tried triple head gaming.

Dune 2000 was so easy it was a joke.

[Umfriend]

He, I won Dune 2 fair and sqaure for all three teams, during work running it windowed under OS/2 1.3 (or 2.0, not really sure). No cheats. Ordos (?) I found the hardest to win with.

Although I say no cheats, I'm not sure I can actually remember seeing nukes in Dune 2. C&C for sure, but not Dune 2

I sorta quit qith tiberian sun. I really disliked what they did to the community, having th echat wihtin the game instead of a nice and simple friendly client form which you could start a game as with Red Alert.

[Wombat]

Hmm, I wanna buy this. Can't find it for less than US$35 though.

[SteveC]

Seems to not have any real updates to networking on older games, or even network has been removed in RA1 Awaiting my amazon delivery still tho...

[schmosef]

I might be remembering wrong but didn't RA1 require IPX/SPX for network gaming? The other option I remember for multiplayer was modem play. Is that right?

Technically IPX/SPX is non routable isn't it? Or at least it's very inefficient on routed networks... something like that.

I remember that Novell came out with a work around for that. You had to setup a PC for IPX/SPX routing. It would transcode IPX/SPX to TCP/IP in real-time and shoot the packets across the network. One of my customers had that setup as a temporary measure while they migrated their corporate WAN to TCP/IP.

[Tjalfe]

I too won Dune2 without cheating back on my 286

[schmosef]

Did it even run on a 286? Didn't it need protected mode?

[Tjalfe]

I forget what it needed.. I last played it in august 1994, before flying to Canada
It was a 286 with 4MB of Ram and a 170MB hdd.. pretty beefy

[lecter]

Been playing Generals: Zero Hour for the first time...I think it's not a coincidence that it's the last product Westwood ever made, it's more than a little bit freaky to be going with tanks thru burning oilfields, while suicide bombers (people, cars & trucks) keep blowing up in my face.

Also, one of the mission objectives is to defend my base and try to stop the suicide attacks by destroying the terrorist propaganda towers in the town

[schmosef]

Been playing Generals: Zero Hour for the first time...I think it's not a coincidence that it's the last product Westwood ever made, it's more than a little bit freaky to be going with tanks thru burning oilfields, while suicide bombers (people, cars & trucks) keep blowing up in my face.

Also, one of the mission objectives is to defend my base and try to stop the suicide attacks by destroying the terrorist propaganda towers in the town

Are you saying that you think Westwood was shut down on purpose?

I remember reading about this bundle a few months ago. Some VP or product manager type from EA was being interviewed about it.

He said that they very intentionally called it "the first decade" because they really did intend to continue the series.