Re: 90s RTS

On Thu, 23 Jan 2025 15:12:50 -0500, Mike S. <Mike_S@nowhere.com>
wrote:

On Thu, 23 Jan 2025 10:32:00 -0500, Spalls Hurgenson
<spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:
>

I always had more fun with the Command & Conquer series, but when it
came to games of the genre that I enjoyed the most, I tended to favor
the games that leaned more towards the tactical aspects. Games like
"Myth", "Ground Control", "Company of Heroes" or "WH40K Dawn of War".
>
But I tended to be fairly gregarious with the RTS genre, and made an
effort to play many of the games from that era. Still, a lot of the
RTS games that I remember best (aside from the obvious ones) came from
after the turn of the millennium. Games like "Nexus" or "Battle for
Middle Earth" or "Homeworld".

>
Besides Warcraft 1 and 2, I played Dune 2, C&C and Total Annihilation.
They were ok games to me but they never clicked for me the way they
did for others at the time. So I mostly gave up on the genre. When I
think of tactical games, I think of something like Jagged Alliance
which I like more then RTS games.
>
But one RTS series I do enjoy a lot and that is Age of Empires. I
always have at least one game in this series installed.

I really enjoyed Age of Empires, but I think I had more fun with
"Empire Earth". It might have had something to do with the fact that
the later eras had giant death-robots that you could unleash onto your
enemies.

At least, I think it was "Empire Earth". There were a number of "real
world history" RTS games, and I sort of get them all confused with one
another. But that one with the giant robots? That was my favorite of
them ;-)

*

Another fun game, although again more in the style of
tactical-real-time genre and akin to "Ground Control" (and, in fact,
made by the same developers) was "World in Conflict". Although, as it
was released in 2006, we're starting to stray more than a few years
from the ideal of "90 RTS" games that was the the initial point of
this thread.

Although, even though the genre was born in the 90s, I think it really
reached its stride in the early 2000s. There were just SO MANY of the
games in that era. A lot of them were terrible, of course ("Metal
Knight"! "Submarine Titans"! "Genesis Rising"! "Conquest: Frontier
Wars"! And just to be a little bit provocative: "Supreme Commander"!)
but there were some gems hidden amidst the cruft too.

*



In addition to the 'traditional' real-time strategy and the more
tactically-oriented spin-offs, there was also a third variation: the
RTS games where you could jump into the battle personally. The
"Battlezone" games (the 1998 ones, not the classic arcade game) were
the most famous, but there were a number of similar titles. Some that
come to mind were the excellent "Hostile Waters: Antaeus Rising" and
the less-successful "Sacrifice".