Command & Conquer

Command & Conquer by Westwood Studios from 1995 ranks among the games that defined the entire real-time strategy genre for many years to come. The player chooses between the GDI faction, defending world order, and the Brotherhood of Nod led by the mysterious Kane, with both campaigns telling the story of a struggle for control over the mysterious substance tiberium, which transforms the landscape and the people who come into contact with it. Both sides also offer a different perspective on the same conflict, so the player effectively goes through two interconnected yet separate storylines.

The gameplay was built on gathering resources via harvester vehicles, base building, and choosing between a defensive or offensive strategy, and the game became one of the first to massively popularize real-time base building and unit micromanagement, following the model of the earlier Dune II. Live-action cutscenes with actors were inserted between missions, an unusual and highly impressive way of storytelling in 1995 that set the game apart from the drier strategy titles of its time and gave the campaign a cinematic atmosphere. Multiplayer over a local network and modem also opened the way for the game to have a long life among players who wanted to compete against each other directly.

Frank Klepacki's music, full of electronic and rock motifs, became an inseparable part of the atmosphere and is still remembered by fans today as one of the best game soundtracks of the 1990s. Command & Conquer had an enormous influence on the development of the entire RTS genre, inspired countless successors, and founded a long-running series whose later installments Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2 remain beloved classics to this day. Even with the passage of time, strategy fans regard it as a mandatory entry in the genre's history and as one of the reasons real-time strategy became such a popular genre on PC.

Why play: Because of Frank Klepacki's unmistakable music and its role as founder of the entire RTS genre, Command & Conquer ranks among the mandatory entries in the history of strategy games on PC.