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It's crazy how much I played the Command & Conquer games on Playstation back in the day, considering how much they were compromised.

Fallout-NL

Fallout-NL

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I remember standing in our local video game store looking at the box for PSX C&C, talking to my brother about how we would save up for a Playstation and then getting C&C with it. But, the faster pc came first and that's where we ended up playing C&C and Red Alert. Probably the better way to play them, but I wondered for a long time what it would be like on a tv and with a controller. Good times nonetheless. Still listen to the soundtracks often.
 

Deleted member 16876

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These games are still awesome no matter where you played them. Would be cool if EA did the same thing with the remakes.

As for RTS on console in general, I remember Army Men RTS being really cool on PS2. The controls were really well done and smooth.
 
StraightToHell

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AuthenticM said:
That said, these versions of the games were definitely inferior to their original PC releases. The resolution is super small, so you only see very little of the map at any given time. You had to play with the dualshock instead of a mouse. I am also pretty sure the player didn't have access to the repertoire of commands they could give to their units, such as guard and attack move. I might be wrong on that, but the low resolution and lack of mouse alone make these versions unrecommendable in the year 2019..
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I think you're underselling these a little. The controls were ported well and included button shortcuts for quick actions and groups on the controller, and there was mouse support on RA & Retaliation. And the resolution wasn't an issue, you got a decent view of the battlefield and could scroll around at 2 different speeds.

Ontop of that, the build bar was superior to its PC counterparts.

They were damn fine ports and a reminder of the days before we used to hear crap like "no one plays RTSs on consoles".
 

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Phantom88 said:
why buy a console especially in the 90's when computer games were making history on all fronts, shooters, rpgs, strategy, adventure, simulations, flight games. I feel the most important years were wasted this way
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Why buy a console in the 90s? Wow, man... I hope that's not a serious question.

PC was in its golden age back then and we all wanted it too (besides a console), but you know, that little thing called life and all that... I guess I should have known better as a 12 year old kid in 1996....
 
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Segaswirl

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I was so happy when C&C3 came out for the 360 after spending much of my childhood playing C&C on the PS1.

The 50 unit cap sucks though.

Edit: PS1 introduced me to a lot of the PC's best games. X-com, Civ 2, Theme Park, Theme Hospital, Sim City 2000, Transport Tycoon, Populous etc

KKND Krossfire was decent on the PS1 too, it also had split screen multiplayer.

Good times.
 
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Kresnik

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I own all three of the PS1 C&C games and love them all. I'm really gutted they aren't compatible with Vita as all three are also up on the PS Store.

Used to love them back in the day. It's how I got into the franchise and RTS games in general.
 
RadicalDreamer

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I agree that I don't think they were "inferior" versions of the game, though if you were used to RTS games on a PC the controller had a bit of a learning curve. But yeah, overall I remember them working well and being pretty solid ports!

Like someone above mentioned, I put in a lot of time with friends linking our Playstation units together with the Link Cable and playing skirmishes on separate TVs. Things definitely got a little bogged down after a while, but we still had fun with it.
 

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Will never forget playing a link cable game with my brother, and sending around 30-40 MAD tanks stealthed in round the back of his base on transports, setting them all off to explode, quickly running out the room and hearing from downstairs "WTF YOU FUCKER". Good times.
 
Barrel Cannon

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Not having the internet as much and learning about the vast differences between games as easily helped me enjoy a ton of shit a lot more. It gets annoying to hear for the upteenth time on places like Era that ____ console has the best version and ____ version is trash. A game can still be immensely enjoyable even if its the inferior version.
 
Vex

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Jawmuncher said:
God, that soundtrack always takes me back.

"New Construction Options" "Moving out" "YESSIR" "Affirmative"

then you got that funky beat hitting you with

I'M A MECHANICAL, I'M A MECHANICAL, I'M A MECHANICAL MAN
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YO that shit was FIYAH! Also HELL MARCH (RED ALERT 1 version AKA the best version):


Man command and conquer and red alert 1 were my fist introduction to RTS. I didnt know jack shit about RTS until I played these and I absolutely loved them back then. I dont even remember how I got these games They just appeared in my house one day and I remember playing the fuck out of them?

EDIT: I think it's the same way people didn't know the ps1 Mvc games also weren't arcade perfect. I know all MvC games except the Dreamcast version(?) weren't arcade perfect and had slowdown of some sort but people played the fuck out of them at home. I know i loved MvC1 on ps1.
 
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PucePikmin

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Ah, the good old days before Digital Foundry comparison videos when you just played whatever janky version of a game came out on the system you happened to own.
 

Jraphics Horse

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FyreWulff said:
Even if you were playing this on PC, the jump from C&C DOS to C&C '95 was like a generational upgrade, even if it was technically the same game.

C&C DOS:

command-conquer_17.gif

.
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Yeah I was going to say, the PS one version doesn't look like it has worse visibility than the original DOS game. Whole game was 320x200. I never got to play C&C Gold but I remember Red Alert being a big step up.
 
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Prophane33

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PucePikmin said:
Ah, the good old days before Digital Foundry comparison videos when you just played whatever janky version of a game came out on the system you happened to own.
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Ain't that the truth. It's amazing how much you can enjoy a game if you don't know what you're missing.

I put a ton of time into Diablo on PlayStation. I eventually had the PC version, but still put way more hours into the PS1 version as that was the one I played first and was used to.
Rainbow Six on N64 was another game that I loved, but it was a bit different as I actually knew it was better than the PS1 version, which was missing important features. I eventually ended up getting this on PC too (though far after it was relevant) and still enjoy the simplicity of the N64 version. The PS1 version IS completely unplayable today (and was a baffling decision to include on the PS Classic).

I'm sure there were a few other games I played on console that had superior PC versions, but by the latest of 90s I was already starting to dabble in PC gaming and was reading PC gaming mags on top of of the consoles mags I'd already been reading, which would usually gloss over how different a game was compared to its PC counterpart unless (in the case of Rainbow Six) it was missing something fairly integral.

Now we live in a world that despite me playing the hell out of Diablo 3 on PC, I still bought it on PS4 and enjoy it as much if not more there.

Also for those young people that don't understand why we loved/bought janky PC ports, back in the 90s PC gaming was not as big as it was even 10 years ago, especially in the US where it was a niche market, due to the 8/16 bit PC boom having less of an impact in the states compared to Europe. So frankly a lot of us didn't know better. Hell I was well into my 20s before I ever heard of a ZX Spectrum, let alone a Commodore Amiga.
 
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Fliesen

Fliesen

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FyreWulff said:
Even if you were playing this on PC, the jump from C&C DOS to C&C '95 was like a generational upgrade, even if it was technically the same game.

C&C DOS:

command-conquer_17.gif


C&C '95:

cncgold-dosgamers.jpg


Someone made a handy comparison:

cncversions_sizes.png


Even after playing tons of the PC version, I got C&C 64 (have a copy right now, actually). It's still amazing that the one 3D remake of the original Command and Conquer is still only on the N64.
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What's the 1.06 resolution?

With 1:1 pixel mapping, would you be able to see the entire battlefield on a 4K screen?

edit: oh, C&C on DOS was 640x480, so the largest resolution shown here would be 1920 pixels tall, which is rather close to 4k.
 
edo_kid

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Yep same here, i played a ridiculous amount of Red Alert and Retaliation during my young days.
Having a pc was a pipe dream at that point and to be fair i really didn't care since i was having a blast playing it on console.

83212173-item-big-PS1-COMMREDR-A-1.jpg
 

Jraphics Horse

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Fliesen said:
What's the 1.06 resolution?

With 1:1 pixel mapping, would you be able to see the entire battlefield on a 4K screen?

edit: oh, C&C on DOS was 640x480, so the largest resolution shown here would be 1920 pixels tall, which is rather close to 4k.
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No it's 1024x768 like the image. DOS was 320x200.
Iirc there were small multiplayer maps that would have fit on that screen.
 

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Fliesen said:
With 1:1 pixel mapping, would you be able to see the entire battlefield on a 4K screen?
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Using OpenRA or mods/patches for modern resolutions, one can indeed see whole maps with sufficiently large resolutions, though largest maps probably don't fit even on very large resolutions.
(Too large resolution can actually crash the game, at least Dune 2000.)

But large resolutions also make units somewhat difficult to see...
 
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AuthenticM

AuthenticM

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Bishop89 said:
Played the hell out of retaliation.
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edo_kid said:
Yep same here, i played a ridiculous amount of Red Alert and Retaliation during my young days.
Having a pc was a pipe dream at that point and to be fair i really didn't care since i was having a blast playing it on console.

83212173-item-big-PS1-COMMREDR-A-1.jpg
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I really hope the Red Alert remaster includes the Retaliation FMVs as well as its UI and progression design. It would be a shame if instead of that, it just did what the original game did, which is simply offer the expansions missions in a boring list on the main menu. :/
 

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BlackManLovesKUF

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I didn't own a PC until college so the bulk of my strategy gaming was on consoles; I personally don't consider them inferior because I never really had the other option to begin with to make that comparison. I absolutely appreciated that PC focused developers offered console ports of their games and still do to this day. I've played all the games mentioned here on consoles and loved them; I can't play games without a gamepad and that includes RTS, CRPG, etc. too stuck in my ways now lol.
 

Deleted member 10795

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I have a vivid recollection of playing all sorts of strategy games on the PS1. And yeah, the PlayStation Mouse was obviously a thing (although I never owned one).

I find it endlessly frustrating that consoles have never moved on from that, and if anything have gone backwards.
 

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Are there any magazine reviews of Command & Conquer PS1 games, I'd love to see what they wrote back then :)?
 
xyla

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Anyone here who played C&C or StarCraft on the N64?

There was a time when we bent around the controls and just made it work since there was no alternative.
 
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