I’ve just got my new PC up and running, so If you see less and less around here, you should know what I’m doing instead of blogging…
I’ve played quite a lot of games over the years since the mid-80’s, and I have had lots of favourites, spanning Apple, PC and Playstation (and Gameboy even). These days real time strategy (RTS) games are dime a dozen – you see so many of them at the shops. You have them based in medieval Rome, exploring the New World, outer space (Starcraft!), global domination, almost every thinkable historic or fictional scenario for a RTS, its probably been done before.
Basically, the concept is the same – gather resources (usually involving some environmentally unfriendly activity like chopping down trees and mining gold), build city, then amass bad-ass army, and go and battle. Some games has levels with slight variations, like ‘cross to safety, Hero must survive’ (made famous by Warcraft) and even hold against the zerglings for 15 minutes (ditto by Starcraft)…
The very first RTS I ever played was Dune II, back in the 1993. I think it the very first major one ever released. Before that, strategy games were turn-based, not ‘real-time’ so to speak. It was a bit like playing board games like Risk – everyone waits for one person to finish his turn. I doubt in real life George W. Bush would wait for Osama to ‘finish his turn’ before mobilizing his troops.
The graphics back then were pretty crude by today’s standards, and the level of difficulty was low. The game was loosely based on Frank Herbert series in name only. Here you gather the spice mélange, the primary commodity in the game. Harvesting the spice was super-dangerous, if you weren’t careful, giant worms would come out and swallow your precious equipment.
You had 3 factions to choose from – the noble House of Atreides, the insidious House of Ordos and the evil House of Harkonnen (my favourite). The Atrides have to advantage in the Ornithoper, the fastest craft in the game, and the help of the Fremen, the native warriors that could camouflage themselves. The Ordos were pretty weak (they didn’t exist in Herbert’s books), but they had this annoying gas launcher that could convert your units into theirs (something like the priest in Age of Empires). The Harkonnen were the best – they had long range missiles. Kaboom.
Undoubtedly Dune 2 inspired that other great series, Command & Conquer and it’s many sequels, and ultimately Microsoft’s Age of Empires and of course, Blizzard’s super successful Warcraft (and it’s many incarnations…)
Some years ago they released an updated version called Dune 2000, although I didn’t get to play it.
Anyone want to recommend a new RTS for me to play? The last one I played was Rise of Nations, I think.
[tags]microsoft, age of empires, dune II, command & conquer, games, pc, starcraft, blizzard, warcraft, starcraft, rts[/tags]
14 Comments
Edrei
Dune II was actually the FIRST real time strategy. Without it, there wouldn’t be the RTS games we know today.
I loved it because all the coding done was in english so we could mod it easily…like Windtraps with turrents. 🙂
Of course the followup of that was Super Dune II where you play the Saudakar, Fremen and Mercenaries. Those were the good ol days alright.
andycjw
there’s no better RTS came out after rise of nation, should just stikc to that, but there’s one expansion pack for it though, adding some new units, and functions, like the states and senator or something.
Ken
My first RTS was warcraft… man did I have fun… hahaha…
Then came red alert 2… i still think it’s one of the best ever made… made me miss many classes 😉
mypapit
hahaha, yes I agree. Dune 2 was my first RTS game too. And the way they present the game was revolutionary at that time 🙂
Jason
Dune II was a superbly classic and basically started a new legend in the PC world games. I could play the game hours. Haha!
And at that time, Dune II was only like 3 diskettes, while now is like 3 DVDs.
Naz
I was actually quite good at Red Alert 2. But I remember getting creamed by some Yank I played against over the Internet. I’ve never played RTS games since…
Unladen Swallow
My first interest into the RTS genre was Warcraft II, though I never really took more than a slight interest into Dune II. Dune 2000 was not bad, though if you ask me, it was a little under-developed, not much variation in units and so on.
If you really want to get into it, I would suggest to you Company of Heroes. Everything about it just blew me away, seriously.
simon
Company of Heroes, eh? Must check it out…
Buaya69
i’m still playing Generals! but i prefer starcraft. damn evil 😉
Silencers
I started my RTS days with Age of Empires… followed by Starcraft, then Tiberian Sun [which sucked] and went back to Starcraft.
In 2003 I started playing Warcraft 3 and havent seriously played any other RTS ever since.
JoeC
ahhh, brings back to good old days, yes, DuneII was my first rts computer game. It was brilliant then as it is now with all those new shiny ones. It’s good cuz it is original, the best of the best!
The others include, WarcraftII (funny), AOE series (love those 3d units running around), C&C series (gripping) then is was college, it all stopped 🙁
Yeah, I loved the Harkonens, they are dirty, buts thats good. Cheers!
simon
buaya – bila mau upgrade? 🙂
Silencers – Starcraft was great too, since then i refer to schoolkids swarming out of school as ‘zerglings’.
JoeC – AOE was also a great game with good memories for me. i still play it once in awhile. looks like the oldies are still gold…
Zer0
The original c&c red alert was my first. Awesome classic..The sight of your mammoth tank tearing apart ur enemy’s base is just priceless..*grins*
Douglas
Cool blog, interesting information… Keep it UP »