Wow I own this? I apologize but I’ve not touched it.
Christ, all of those C&C clones. I’d forgotten just how many of them there were. I used to see them in magazines all the time, but I didn’t get any of them here! I really want to play some of them though, they look enticing.
What I did get was the more obvious AAA ones. But even those were hard, because amongst the sea of generic, forgettable games they really blend in. Even StarCraft made me pause and think "is this another C&C clone… ?)
- Dungeon Keeper
- AOE2
- Z
- WarCraft 2 (but this looks higher res than I remember?)
- StarCraft
- Total Annihilation
- Red Alert
- Earth
- Dune 2
- 7th Legion!
- Dune 2000
- WarCraft
- Age of Empires
- Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds (this was an AOE clone! It must have used the same engine?)
- Total Annihilation Kingdoms
- Tiberian Sun
- Red Alert 2
- C&C (incorrectly named Tiberian Dawn, pah)
- Netstorm, though I always forget the name of this, and can only ever remember it as “something net”
I’m also disappointed by what’s missing! No Rise of Nations? Almost all of the RTS games that have since been claimed as RTT games (e.g. Close Combat, Blitzkrieg series, Outfront series, all of the Relic games, the rest of the Earth engine games etc)
ps the fact that imgur shows the caption under each image is a bit disappointing, I’d like to have guessed and been completely wrong. I think guessing “7th legion???” for each C&C clone would have eventually worked. ;) Also it made scrolling difficult as I wanted to see the image but not the answer.
The list is less than complete, or accurate. There is a game listed there called Fallen Heaven, but with a picture of the game Fallen Haven, a Turn-Based game from the 90s that I played a lot of.
Not sure what it’s doing there, but okay.
As for my list
Dungeon Keeper
Dominion Storm over Gift 3 (the worst)
Age of Empires 2
Z (at least as a Demo)
WarCraft 2
Starcraft
Total Annihilation
Dune 2
Dune 2000
Fallen Haven (as mentioned, not an RTS)
KKND
Warcraft
Age of Empires
Dark Reign
Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds
Total Annihilation Kingdoms
Tiberian Sun
Tiberian Dawn
Blood & Magic
Battle Isle (another TBS Game)
20 of the games, but only 18 are RTS.
Yeah, that list is missing a lot of important ones and has waaaay too much trash C&C clones. Unless there is a year cut-off date or some shit I am not aware of.
Where the fuck is…
- MechCommander
- Myth
- Battlezone
- Warzone 2100
- Machines
- Homeworld
- Majesty
- Ground Control
- Sacrifice
- Kohan
- Emperor: Battle for Dune
- Conquest: Frontier Wars
- Warlords Battlecry II
- Rise of Nations
- Rise of Legends
- Spellforce
- Act of War: Direct Action
- Empire Earth
- Darwinia / Mulitwinia
- Battle for Middle Earth II
- Dawn of War
- Company of Heroes
- Supreme Commander
- Nexus The Jupiter Incident
- Sins of the Solar Empire
- AI War
- Eufloria
This game was great! It was also extremely hard (but I was just a kid, so maybe I didn’t know what I was doing).
It was easier if you played as the Tauron. Their units cost more and were better, so a single dropship could do much more damage. But it was a hard game.
That is until you unlocked the Gunship for the Humans. Best unit in the game, and most expansive. The Tauron equivalent was a cheaper hover artillery,
There was a Fallen Haven 2. It was… different.
While officially correct, it is a retronym “post-release” in-hindsight retconned defacto nickname for the game.
IIRC I think this has to do with some cooked up original trilogy concept: Tiberian Dawn, Tiberian Sun, and Tiberian Twilight.
Crap, I’m an RTS nut and there are a lot here even I’ve never heard of. I’ve played a lot these though:
- Dungeon Keeper
- Dominion Storm over Gift 3
- Age of Empires 1 and 2
- Z
- WarCraft 2
- War Inc
- Conquest Earth
- The L.E.D. Wars
- StarCraft
- Total Annihilation
- Outpost 1 and 2
- Red Alert 1 and 2
- Mayday Conflict Earth
- Earth 2140
- Dune 2
- MAX 1 and 2
- 7th Legion
- KKND 1 and 2
- Dune 2000
- Fallen Heaven
- Dark Colony
- Dark Reign
- Outlive
- Tiberian Sun
- Original War
- Blood & Magic
- Enemy Nations
And y’all are right, there are some great one’s not on this list. War Wind? Seven Kingdoms? C’mon.
So they literally left out every RTS I actually care about.
According to the Giant Bomb, there were 40 C&C clones.
I remember a seemingly endless stream of C&C clones being released back then and reading in one PC game magazine about how they seemed to be coming out on a “conveyor belt.”
Hah that’s nowhere near all of them.
So with @SamS game we had to guess the game names from the pics, which I couldn’t do. But from your list I have to picture the games from the names, which I’m glad to say I can almost 100% do! (Never played Act of War: Direct Action or Nexus The Jupiter Incident)
I know, I know! But I don’t like it. I also don’t like how they’ve all lost the Command & Conquer prefix.
I think those are just the ones in the imgur library we just looked at.
I’ve never even heard of most of those games, I’ve played like 10 or so. I never even played any of the original C&C games, I came into the series in Red Alert 2.
And no Warlords Battlecry games in the list!
Notable for a very good AI back then.
Oh yeah, so good.
Ah Dark Reign, the second RTS I ever played. I took it back to the store to return it and, when asked why, replied “I’ve already played Warcraft.”
Little did I know!
Honestly, just about every interesting twist on the genre seems to have been neglected and, perhaps unsurprisingly considering my story above, those are the only ones I like. :)
Yeah one of my all-time favorites is Seven Kingdoms (both of them) and it seems barely remembered.
People who make lists generally come from some area of gaming that doesn’t explore it very thoroughly. Also, that looks like some dude went to Moby Games and started copying screenshots. Also very Eurocentric. They got a click from us though so I guess mission accomplished?
One game missing that most will probably not consider an RTS is Icewind Dale.
I know, party based RPG, but with the game so focused on combat, I think you could make a valid argument that it’s a RTS/RPG hybrid, much like the Spellforce series.
Or, I guess a Real-Time Tactics game, which some people were using for Real time strategy games that didn’t include resource gathering or base building (although you did gather resources in Icewind Dale in terms of Loot and XP but I’m not willing to die on that hill).