I will not say this was my first video game. No, that would be a Timex Sinclair 1000 and then TRS 80 and Commodore 64, and the Atari 2600. (all of which are on a shelf in my office)
But why C&C? Well, I was a first year graduate student at North Texas. A friend (Thank you Brian) recommended it to me. I noticed a "LAN" option. long story short, My soon to be Brother in Law bought a few NIC's and a single network cable. It did not work. Upon investigation, we needed a 'hub' OR we could modify a network cable making it a crossover cable and directly connect to the two systems. It was glorious.

then friends, we added a hub.
More friends, we upgraded to a Switch. You have to manage those collisions.
Other games, now a community, ah the great all night LAN parties was born.

I was supposed to be a History teacher. I became a network tech, net admin, and now professor of IT.

maybe it did not start with C&C. Maybe it started with a 10 year old, and his Timex Sinclair 1000. But yeah. I bought the new HD Remastered version. It is just as much fun now as it was back in 1995, with my then girlfriend and now wife of 29 years and she still doesnt get it. so here you go C&C:

Ode to Command & Conquer
O mighty Command & Conquer, born in '95,
Thy Tiberium fields where heroes strive!
GDI’s gold banner, raised ‘neath skies of war,
With Mammoth Tanks, we settle the score.

Thy LAN-born battles, a digital rite,
Bound friends in basements through the night.
From modem hum to ethernet’s embrace,
You taught us networks, gave our dreams a place.

O Ion Cannon, gleaming wrath divine,
Your pulse of light made victory mine!
Frank Klepacki’s chords, a battle’s roar,
Still echo loud on tomorrow’s shore.

To you, old friend, we raise our cry,
For GDI, for glory, we’ll never say die!
So gather, comrades, let’s build once more,
In Tiberium’s glow, our saga soars.

Have a great Friday.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: redstone,

Many hours in HS playing these, and Starcraft.
Good times.

Oh 90’s RTS games…C&C, the Red Alert derivatives, Warcrafts, StarCraft…so many late nights playing single-player campaigns! I didn’t experience the joy of LAN parties until the early 2000’s, and thinking I was a decent player until going against other humans.

I thank Command & Conquer for developing strategic thinking and setting a basis for financial planning. Numerical superiority did not always guarantee success, and without the ability to incur debt you had to care as much about resource gathering as you did building and unit development. It was a good developmental step up from chess.

C&C and Red Alert were my JAM.

I downloaded them to play on my Win 11 machine. Awesome.

Generals Zero Hour with so many mods...wish we could still play it

Loved those style of games! I probably still have my C&C and Red Alert disks for Win95. Think I have C&C for my NIN64 too.

Thanks for the flashback, and a great ode too, David!

Age of Empires

quote:

Originally posted by Ronin101:
Age of Empires

I can still hear the priest chanting to heal units.

quote:

Originally posted by Ronin101:
Age of Empires

With the Camaro mod! Nearly invincible with a small fleet of Camaros

quote:

Originally posted by Ronin101:
Age of Empires

I still play AoE II HD Edition.

I still have Warcraft passcodes and the old Starcraft. Free as long as I was paying monthly for blizzard account.

Girlfriends showed up at my office late at night, not believing their missing boyfriends were really playing C&C at 4am.
They were told to be patient and wait for the network to crash to open their mouths.

I kept 4 gaming PCs and two others were brought by other players. Some of them i met when the game crashed and we got a break. We were in three separate rooms.

Good times.

0-0

I'm still playing Empire Earth.