retro games

Blastoff!

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Developer: Edmundo Ruiz Ghanem
Publisher: Edmundo Ruiz Ghanem
Year: 2001
Genre: Adventure Game

a woman standing in a purple convenience store
Reality-On-The-Norm has discovered gradients

My playthrough of Reality-On-The-Norm continues with the 8th game in the series. It was nice to play two entries in a row without having to fuss too much with getting them to work. This one has you playing as Elandra, who has appeared in some of the previous games, and you must help an amateur rocket builder. On average the series has been improving in the quality of the art and gameplay design. This one even features a really nice location select screen.

a screen containing a notepad listing "places to go" like a town square, launch site, and airplane graveyard
The game’s location select screen

I think the writing is the best in the series so far too! It’s genuinely fun going back to these and seeing topical nerd humor like an unironic All Your Base Are Belong to Us reference. Part of the fun of playing this series is that it’s a time capsule of a specific point in the adventure game community.

a woman talking to a man outside of a building and one of the dialog choices is "All your base are belong to us"
Folks, we’ve got an All Your Base reference

Another way this thing is a time capsule of the community is how many Yahtzee references it has. I posted the following screenshot without any context, because I forgot, and someone thought that there was maybe some in-community fighting happening but no, he had helped with the art in this game and someone in the team threw this reference in there as a fun joke. Maybe there was drama at some later point but it certainly wasn’t happening with this game.

view of the outside of a military base and the words Yathzee Sucks! is spray painted on the wall

I mentioned in a previous review that a dev saw my RON posting on Bluesky and this was that game. It was entirely positive, since I did have a good time playing this game, but I still imagine that it’s probably weird to see someone playing a game you made almost 25 years ago. They even mentioned that it was like doing an excavation on their 19 year old brain when I mentioned that reference. So generally I’ve kept any and all criticism off social media, as light as it may be, because who wants someone throwing rocks at something you made that long ago when you were a kid. The only real criticism I even have with this is just that it had some frustrating pixel hunting but that’s kinda it. I may have played an updated version too? It makes references to picking up items later and a walkthrough I found references picking up an item and going to rooms that I never came across.

A fun thing about it being a shared universe is that we’re starting to get more callbacks and it’s almost a sequel to the first game. I thought the epilogue and animated cutscene in an early AGS game was fun to watch. Even though I just complained about this game having some goofy design stuff, so far I think it’s the best one I’ve played and it’s fun watching a community learn how to make adventure games and referencing stuff that happened in this universe 8 games ago. Overall I had a lot of fun with this short game and would recommend it to others. Just be sure to play previous entries like the first game before doing this one.

Blastoff! is available for free on the Reality-On-the-Norm website.

Return of Die Vie Ess

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Developer: Ben Pettengill
Publisher: Ben Pettengill
Year: 2001
Genre: Adventure Game

Well this one was weird. My playthrough of the Reality-On-The-Norm shared adventure game universe continues with the 7th game in the series. I skipped ahead a few because I couldn’t get some to work in DosBox, ScummVM, or my Windows 98 VM. Return of Die Vie Ess is about a scientist in Reality who has plans to take over the world. You play as Nameless Law Official and must stop his scheme. Other than the return of Davy Jones as a character you interact with, and walking around the town of Reality, there isn’t that much of a connection to the previous games. Most of the characters are new and the scientist does all of his scheming from a room that you never go in, so it feels very disconnected from your actions. I’m assuming that some of the new characters will pop up in later games.

a young man standing in the middle of a town square

The game itself is very straightforward and only took about 5 minutes to beat. It’s still pleasant enough, except for the ending making a very odd detour with a random joke from the scientist about a sex worker and Davy Jones having a comment about unprotected sex. They come out of nowhere and it’s unfortunate mark on an otherwise fine game. Other than that, the game is ok enough and I think it’s worth playing if you’re going to take the same odd journey as I have and try to play through this series.

Like I said in other reviews, it’s hard to be too critical because these were games by teenagers and folks in their early 20s in the early 2000s. I cannot even imagine what 14 year old me would have put in a game if I made one at this time, probably jokes that have aged much more poorly than anything in these games, so I can’t judge anyone for a joke in a freeware game from almost 25 years ago and really isn’t as bad as I’m making it out to be.

I’ve been posting about these games as I play them on Bluesky and Mastodon and even with me being completely positive about the games on there, because I am genuinely having a good time playing these including this game, I think it did trip out one or two devs who worked on these when they saw them on Bluesky, since they had worked on them decades ago. I took a screenshot of an All Your Base joke and a dev commented that it’s like I’m doing an excavation of their 19 year old brain. They liked the post so I don’t think they were mad about it. I wasn’t dunking on the game, but it’s still probably a trip to have someone commenting on what you were doing at 19, 24 years later. I don’t know how I would feel about it if I had made games at that age, which is why I’m not really broadcasting these reviews despite enjoying the series, other than the automatic posts my blog does to Mastodon.

Is this probably more thought than what should go into a 5 minute freeware game from 2001? Yeah probably, but I like logging everything I play through on here since other folks aren’t talking about these games. Not that I’m really expecting anyone to talk about something like this on social media, and demanding that people do would probably make me sound like Jim Gaffigan wanting to talk about the movie Heat, but I think someone should since it’s an interesting time for the genre that I don’t see discussed too much. It’s also why I went back and removed the “Review: ” title from all of my review posts. You can still check out the Review category that all of these posts have, but it’s almost more of a log at this point and having it categorized in the post title made it sound too dang formal. But who knows, maybe I’ll sell out and throw it back in when I desire that SEO boost.

Return of Die Vie Ess is available for free on the Reality-On-the-Norm website.

Quake

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Developer: ID Software
Publisher: GT Interactive
Year: 1996
Genre: FPS

Much like with my attempt to review Doom, there’s nothing about this game that hasn’t been said a billion times! There’s multiple books about the making of the game so this review is more of a grab bag of thoughts about it that I had as I played through the game. My absolutely lukewarm take on the game is that it holds up. It’s still a lot of fun to play and the controls feel great.

The game occasionally gets some criticism for the weird mix of aesthetics it has, with it combining Lovecraft, medieval, and futuristic stuff all together and it not completely meshing. I get it, it’s a mess since the game went through development hell, but I dig it. There isn’t really another game doing this mix, even the ones strongly inspired by it, so it still stands out even if it’s a bit sloppy. Maybe it being messy is part of the charm too.

The plot is meaningless junk, even more so than Doom. This is what happens when you push Tom Hall out of your company! I think this is one of the reasons why they haven’t really revisited this specific Quake game with sequels or reboots. There’s just nothing to really grab onto.

I used to really dislike the boss in the first episode, I think everyone was pretty critical of it at the time, but I’m into it now. Doom’s bosses aren’t actually that interesting mechanically so I think it’s fun that this one is kind of a puzzle. I’m guessing the disappointment is that it’s this massive guy but you don’t even shoot at him, which is understandable, but if that was the case I think the boss battle would have just been circle strafing around the boss and shooting it, much like the cyberdemon.

first person view of a goofy green fish with two buck teeth and the text "The dopefish lives!"

The secret level in the first episode has the really fun novelty of it being low gravity. There’s no other level in the game like this so it’s a really fun gimmick for a one off and feels like a nice reward for finding the secret level. Which makes it odd that none of the other secret levels have any gimmicks. They’re fine, but they’re just more levels.

I think it’s odd that Episodes 2 and 3 do not have bosses. I really wish they did. The end of ep 3 is especially a big “huh, that’s the end? Well ok.” At least the end of Episode 2 introduces a new enemy type, the Vore.

Speaking of which, the enemy types introduced towards the mid point and end aren’t as fun! The projectiles for the Vore are too accurate so it feels like you have to slowly work your way through them, which hurts the pacing. The leaping blobs are the absolute worst. They’re no fun at all to fight and they may actually be the most difficult enemy in the game since they’re the hardest to hit. The first episode of Quake is the strongest partially because it doesn’t have either of these.

The other reason I prefer earlier Quake levels is because of the designers. Sandy Petersen’s levels in latter of the game are a mixed bag for me. They either work really well or they’re too big and ruin the pacing. All lean into the Lovecraft theme very well though, which I suppose makes sense because he was the Call of Cthulhu guy. I get why they relied on him to make the last episode of levels.

I know everyone hates the last boss. I used to as well but now I don’t mind it! To me the final boss is getting through all of those enemies and then actually killing the big boss is just doing the final blow to end the game. It works for me!

first person view of a big church like building that's on a very narrow bridge

I played this through the Nightdive remaster from a few years ago, which includes the two official expansions from the 90s and the two newer episodes from MachineGames. It’s fantastic and IMO much, much better than the more recent Doom rerelease, which I thought was poor and can go into in a later post. The two official expansions from the 90s are a mixed bag for me but the newer episodes have some incredible level design. Whenever new levels are made for an old FPS, they often make the levels too big and have you hoarding ammo to make it more difficult, but all it does is kill the pacing of the game. Not a problem in these! I loved them and would recommend them to any Quake fan. The first MachineGames expansion is available for free so even if you don’t have this remaster, you can still play them.

There, those are my thoughts on a game that’s nearly 30 years old. The first time I played this game was on Thanksgiving at my cousin’s house, so much like how people have Christmas and Halloween games, this is a Thanksgiving game to me.

Quake is available on Steam, GOG, and a billion other platforms.

Lunchtime of the Damned

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Developer: Ben Croshaw
Publisher: Ben Croshaw
Year: 2001
Genre: Adventure Game

In the early 00’s, adventure games were in a weird spot with Sierra imploding and Lucasarts pulling away from adventure games. There were still a few commercial adventure games being made but with the advent of tools like Adventure Game Studio, the adventure game community decided to make their own adventure games. One of the most interesting projects from this time was Reality-on-the-Norm, a community effort to create a shared universe. This universe ended up having dozens of games, with the most recent being released in 2019. Anyone can still make a RON game, you just need to follow the rules that have been established over the development of this universe, created so one game dev doesn’t step on the toes of another dev by doing anything drastic like killing an established character.

a man standing in the center of town, with a dead body on the ground

I had never actually played any of these before, so I thought that it would be a fun opportunity to check out the series through the Adventure Game Club (see link at top), starting with the first game. Lunchtime of the Damned is a point-and-click adventure released in 2001 and created by Ben Croshaw, who went on to be the YouTuber Yahtzee and makes a lot of videos that I don’t think are any good. This one has you accidentally creating a zombie and then stopping him before he can murder more people.

So, what did I think about it? It’s alright! It’s hard to be critical of it because it’s a game created by a community that was not only learning how to make adventure games, but also learning a new tool. It’s got obtuse moments with some puzzles being implemented in a clunky way and it’s doing the adventure game trope of an area not having anything interesting, but then leaving and coming back revealing something new to interact with. Some of the humor is dated and edgelordy but it’s still way better than I expected. There’s still something about it that’s charming to me though. I didn’t play any of the RON games at the time but I did play some of the other ones created by the AGS community, so the MS Paint art and lack of polish really works for me. I also think parts are genuinely funny and while there are some bits of puzzles that have issues, most of it is perfectly fine. It makes me wish I had played more AGS games at the time, because I think I would have really loved following along with these games and playing them as it came out. I also wish I didn’t spend more time figuring out how to get it to work, but that’s not the game’s fault. ScummVM does support AGS but I don’t believe it supports anything this old at the moment, so I ended up using a Windows 98 VM because DOSBox wasn’t working for me either.

It’s hard to have a Would I Recommend? thing for this because it’s only 15 minutes long and so much of it hinges on if you have been playing adventure games for a long time since it’s a little tricky to get this working. I can tell you I had fun playing it though. I would definitely recommend going back and just exploring the early AGS games if you’re a fan of the genre. Not just because I think it’s historically interesting and you can see where a lot of today’s adventure game designers came from, but also because there’s still a lot of good stuff in there.

Lunchtime of the Damned is available for free on the Reality-On-the-Norm website.

Indie Game Roundup (Feb. 21, 2025)

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Don’t have a whole lot to say in this intro paragraph. If you enjoy these, do a blog post with your own game and art recommendations. If you don’t have a blog, consider starting a free one on neocities or bear blog. I also have start putting more effort into my recommendation list on Itch.io if you want more recommendations. Consider starting one of those too. I’ve heard they’re way cooler and sexier than Steam Curator pages. I like these ones by Meagan and WildWeasel. And leave nice comments on things you like! Anyway, as Geoff Keighley always says, “Now more than ever, video games.”

Video Games

I have been playing adventure games my whole life. If there’s a hater of slider tile puzzles, it’s me. That said, I think landflip (Itch.io) is different enough that it’s not one of those, or at least they cracked the code and made a good one. It’s probably the best looking one too.

mausimus released version 1.0 of ShaderGlass (itch.io) last night and it does a really need CRT monitor effect on whatever game you’re playing. I tried it with Doom 2 and it was really neat. I don’t buy into the thought all old games must be played on a CRT by some folks in the retro gaming world, but it’s still fun to look at.

I haven’t played twin stick shooter roguelike Star of Providence (Steam/Switch) but I guess it just got a release on the Nintendo Switch and I’ve seen so many people praise it. It also got an update on the PC.

view of a curved bowling lane with floating stone heads. One says "Bowl" in blue letters except for a red O.

Super 10 Pin (Itch.io) just got a demo and I haven’t seen a game nail the feel of the N64 era of games like this in long time. Even it being a bowling game makes it feel like more of a N64 game to me. Fortunately it’s a good one and does more than just “roll a ball down a lane.”

Open-and-Shut (Itch.io) is a free noir sci-fi point-and-click adventure game made for the Cyberpunk Jam on Itch.

I missed this one when it came out early this month but Slender Threads (Steam) is a paranormal point-and-click adventure that I’ve seen get a lot of praise by folks in the adventure game community.

Oplero (Itch.io) is just a really solid bullet hell shmup that you can play in your browser window.

FISH FEAR ME (Steam) by Heather Flowers is possible the world’s first fishing roguelike?

Adam Saltsman has been on a roll lately with all the PICO-8 games he’s been making. His newest game Weasel (Itch.io) is a Snake-like.

SNØ: Ultimate Freeriding (Steam) looks like an incredibly chill skiing game and has a demo too!

text saying "You are inside the cave. You hear the sounds of small animals scurrying away. You look for a place to dig. You dig and find some gold coins!"

People are still making games for the Commodore 64. Pirates of the Black Seas (Itch.io) is a new text adventure available for Pay-What-You-Want created with the classic IF writing software Quest Writer by Loadstar.

Smol Gods (Itch.io) is the newest game by game dev collective PUNKCAKE Délicieux. It’s a card deck creating game where you try to have a powerful deck of monsters by drawing and swapping cards.

I love covering games by local devs and this week some students at Michigan State University have created a zero gravity horror game called BURN (Steam), which looks like if someone used the classic game Descent to make a horror walking sim (complimentary).

This bluesky post describes it better than I could, so please read that, but Fahmi Mohammad’s final game Afterlove EP (Steam) is here after being completed by his studio after his passing.

view of a very low poly cruise ship

Rapture Island (Itch.io) is a low poly walking simulator where you explore an island in a relaxing environment. Available for Pay-What-You-Want.

This week’s Downpour game is Back of My Hand #HISS (Downpour site) by Florence Smith Nicholls.

guy with a small face tattoo in a large curved room looking at you and talking

Neyyah is a Myst-like game that’s been in development for quite a while and now it has a demo on Steam!

Peripeteia (Steam) is a first-and-third-person role-playing stealth game taking place in alt-history cyberpunk Poland. It has just entered Early Access and sounds wild. A lot of folks are excited for it but have recommended playing the demo first before buying it.

Star Fox-like Whisker Squadron: Survivor (Steam) has just left Early Access and is on sale as part of the full version launch.

The tabletop rpg Pale Dot is running a Kickstarter for a print run. It has already reached its funding and is just looking for additional funds to do more now. The digital version of the game has been out for a while now and I recommended it if you’re looking for an Outer Wilds inspired ttrpg.

Doom (1993)

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Developer: Id Software
Publisher: Id Software
Year: 1993
Genre: First Person Shooter

I’ve done another playthrough of the classic Doom as my comfort game for dealing with everything going on lately and what can I say, the game still slaps. There’s nothing really unique I can say about this game that hasn’t been said before. It’s all been said before a billion times because it’s the most heavily discussed FPS on the planet and people are still making levels and mods for it.

I played the Ultimate version through Bethesda’s rerelease so I guess my only real criticisms are as follows:

  • That 4th episode that was added in Ultimate Doom? Meh, it’s an episode I guess. I don’t find it particularly interesting and my preference in Doom levels has always been shorter ones, which this starts to pull away from. It doesn’t add anything new so it’s just there. More Doom levels are fine, it’s just not that interesting beyond that.
  • The more time I spend with the recent Bethesda rerelease, the less I like it. I keep running into bugs where it crashes and that mod browser has so many issues since anyone can upload a mod, screw up the crediting, and it may not even work! Who knows how much moderation is even happening. It just feels like a way for Bethesda/Microsoft to try to build walls around a community when Doom just should be free since it’s 30+ years old anyway and no one who worked on the game is still at ID Software.

There, those are my Doom hot takes. Still a great game though and holds up very well.

Doom is available on Steam, GOG, and basically everywhere else.

Playing Asheron’s Call 1 in 2025

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I’ve decided it now, 2025 is the year of Asheron’s Call. It’s a game I’ve always wanted to play since Asheron’s Call 2 was the first MMO I ever played and I’m taking the time now to revisit it. That might seem a little odd since it was a MMO that started in 1999 and shut down for good in 2017, but fans have managed to keep it alive!

If you would like to play it, the instruction on this website are actually very straightforward and were easy for me to follow. The page has a warning for it at the bottom, but a few folks including myself have run into an issue where the game crashes when you sign in and it’s easily fixed by just playing in Windowed Mode.

Once you have this all setup, you just need to pick a server to play on. A couple of us in the Discord for Twitch streamer BogusMeatFactory (Twitch link) are going to be playing a retail release Asheron’s Call fan server called Levistras that also enforces a strict, no-bot policy. This means we will experiencing the retail game experience around the era of 2004-ish. If you are interested in playing with us, you can download the launcher through the link here.

This is an easy executable that is your hub portal to all of the different servers available now and is incredibly easy to use! The server we will be playing on is the Levistras server, whose information can be found at the link here.

I also highly recommend checking out the manual. The game actually has a solid in-game tutorial but the manual provides all the lore and additional info for playing the game. It’s readable in the browser on the Internet Archive.

You’re more than welcome to join me! I will be on Fridays around 9pm EST, but playing other times as well, with a character named TofuPirate. I’ve only played a tiny bit of the game so far but I’m having a good time and very excited to play more of it.

Jazz Jackrabbit Holiday Hare

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Developer: Epic MegaGames
Publisher: Epic MegaGames
Year: 1994, 1995, 1998
Genre: Platformer

For whatever reason, it has become a tradition over the last 10 years to replay the three Holiday Hare episodes released for Jazz Jackrabbit. They were three Christmas themed episodes released for free in 1994 and 1995 for Jazz Jackrabbit 1, and 1998 for Jazz Jackrabbit 2. Jazz Jackrabbit isn’t a game that I think is especially great. The game is built around your character being able to move fast, inspired by Sonic the Hedgehog, but punishes you for doing so because the game is too zoomed in on your character for you to be able to react in time when an enemy appears onscreen. This is fixed in the sequel but that’s not the one that most people seem to have a fondness for.

Last week was my time to revisit this tradition, first time on Twitch, and it reinforced my belief that I think the Holiday Hare levels are some of the better designed ones for Jazz Jackrabbit, especially Holiday Hare 1994. It moves quick, features a lot of variety in enemies and level environments, and features great music, like you would expect from the series, but with a holiday theme.

I think Holiday Hare 1995 maybe dips in a quality a little bit due to its difficulty spike and some enemies that I consider annoying, but is also worth checking out if you’re a fan of the series. One thing that I think is interesting about it is the background artwork of a rabbit that would later become the…hmmm…unfortunately named second playable character in Jazz Jackrabbit 2. Holiday Hare 95 came out three years before Jazz Jackrabbit 2, so either they were working on that sequel for a very long time or just liked that character design.

a green bunny with a gun in a lego land, with a large stuffed red bunny
Screenshot of Holiday Hare 95 taken from MobyGames

Like I said earlier, Jazz Jackrabbit 2 fixes the design quirks and is a much better designed game in my opinion, even if I don’t enjoy the art as much. The version of Holiday Hare 98 on GOG is actually Jazz Jackrabbit 2: The Christmas Chronicles, which is apparently a third release of Jazz Jackrabbit 2 that has a slightly updated engine and has the third playable character, Lori, who was added in the Jazz Jackrabbit 2 expansion that was only released in Europe. These levels are perfectly fine but there’s not a whole lot to say about them. They’re fine! I wish it leaned more on the holiday theme and the final boss fight isn’t well designed, but it’s fun to revisit them.

So would I recommend these even though I just said Jazz Jackrabbit isn’t really a well-designed game? Yeah sure. It’s quick, I think the design of the first Holiday Hare pushes back a lot on the design flaws it’s stuck with, the music in all three is fun, and I think Jazz 2 holds up aside from the one character’s name. They’re all free too and the first game runs fine in DosBox, so give it a shot if you like platformers.

Jazz Jackrabbit is available on GOG

Gabriel Knight Speech Repair Patch

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AllTinker has just released a patch (Itch.io) for the first Gabriel Knight game that fixes the pops and crackles in the audio. They made a video showing the before and after and it’s really quite impressive. The page for the patch also goes into detail how one can fix the mixed resolution effect in the cd version where objects you can interact with are displayed at a higher resolution. I’ve always wondered if you could make a patch for the remake that moves the audio from this version into the remake and replace the new recordings but someone pointed out to me that the remake also has new lines that the original cast did not record. Anyway, thought this was really cool and just wanted to share.

Command & Conquer

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box art for command & conquer showing a guy with an explosion in the reflection of his goggles

Developer: Westwood Studios
Publisher: Virgin Interactive
Year: 1995
Genre: RTS

After developing the massive hit Dune 2, Westwood was looking to make another RTS but set in a property they owned and created Command & Conquer. C&C is about a war between two factions, the Global Defense Initiative, which is a military force setup by the United Nation, and the Brotherhood of Nod, a terrorist cult. The war is focused on their fight over a resource called Tiberium, a material that has arrived from space and is a powerful resource, but at the expense of it destroying the planet wherever it grows. Bretty Sperry, a producer for the game, had slowly been developing a fictional universe for a few years which would set the foundation for the C&C universe. The game was designed to be set in the very near future since modern military combat was on the minds of folks at the studio due to news events at the time such as the Gulf War. From watching the GDC classic game postmortem, development of the game seemed to go along very smoothly. It was described as a very collaborative environment and morale was generally high during development. 

It’s clear from playing it that a great amount of love went into each part of the game. Even the installation process is very elaborate and visually impressive. The game was originally planned to have mission briefings given through text but after some testing, realized this was too boring and went with the approach to have actors in live action video describing the mission to you with graphics overlaid to show you what you needed to do on the mission’s map. Since it was still the early days of full motion video, the game’s cutscenes were very loosely put together. The set, consisting of just a green screen, was a room that Westwood rented out on the other side of the office building they were in, and Eric Gooch, who oversaw video and film and played the Brotherhood of Nod’s Seth, just bought some linoleum from a store and painted it green. Rewrites frequently happened too, including on the set on the days of filming. Joe Kucan, who worked in casting and direction at Westwood and had even voice acted in some of their previous games, portrayed the game’s main villain Kane, the head of The Brotherhood of Nod. His performance is the standout in the game’s cutscenes and even in later games when Westwood started to hire famous actors for their games, his scenes usually remained the most interesting. Many of the other actors in the game came from the Las Vegas strip, since Westwood Studios was in Las Vegas, while others were employees of Westwood or people that the developers knew. Even if they’re low budget, the cutscenes are very charming in their unique and cheesy way. It’s not quite as intentionally campy as the cutscenes would be in later games but they never feel cringeworthy either and are a nice little reward after completing levels.

top down view of a military base
Screenshot of the game from the remastered collection

Multiplayer also contributed to the game’s success. The game supports 4 players over a network. It helped that the game shipped on two CDs, one for the GDI campaign and one for the NOD campaign, so two people could play multiplayer with one copy of the game. Multiplayer would be a big component of future games as well and there was even a multiplayer focused Command & Conquer game released in 1997 called Command & Conquer: Sole Survivor. This was a multiplayer only game where players each controlled one unit and would explore a map and gain power ups, while engaging in deathmatch with other player controlled units. The game was considered a disaster at the time but could maybe be considered a proto-MOBA today.

The memorable soundtrack by Frank Klepacki, which took advantage of the switch to CD and streaming audio, features a mix of influences from basically everything and determined the sound for the rest of the franchise. Westwood must have been confident in how great their soundtrack was because the game also features a Jukebox option, which lets people select what songs they want to use while they play. Highlights of the soundtrack include the tracks Mechanical Man and C&C Thang.

The game is a bit dated due to all the advances made in the genre since it has been released but I was pleasantly surprised that most of the game still held up for me and it was very enjoyable to revisit. It featured enough quality of life items like being able to select multiple units at once to attack that kept it from feeling too dated for me to enjoy, like Warcraft 1 and Dune 2. The story and cutscenes were good, cheesy fun that kept me playing and there’s still nothing else like that game’s soundtrack outside of the C&C series. It might be a little harder for people with no nostalgia for 90’s PC games to get into it, but if you grew up playing the game or other RTS for the era, consider going back to play Command & Conquer. 

a general saying "nod forces have fortified this beachhead at x16-Y42
Screenshot of the upscaled video

In 2020, we got the Command & Conquer Remastered Collection, a compilation of Command & Conquer, Command & Conquer: Red Alert, the expansions for both games and levels that were originally exclusive to console versions of the game. The compilation was developed by Petroglyph, a company started by ex-Westwood employees, so it was nice to see the original creators of the series still involved in some capacity. It’s a pretty nifty package and the unused and behind the scenes videos from the making of the original game are interesting. The game also features some upscaled videos and 4K graphics for the art, to mixed results. The updated art looks fine enough but I turned that off and the upscaled videos mostly look ok but occasionally you’ll get the thing in AI upscaled art where a frame will look off and you’ll see a nightmarish image for one frame. That said, it’s not a bad way to check out the game if you’re apathetic about playing the original DOS version, and the accessibility options are nice too. Electronic Arts also released the source code for the original game, which has been released as freeware, so people have made some nice source ports and mods for the game as well.

Command & Conquer is available either as freeware on various websites or through the Command & Conquer Remastered Collection on Steam.