Command & Conquer (1995)
Command & Conquer is a 1995 real time strategy (rts) video game made by Westwood Studios and Virgin Interactive Entertainment (Europe) Ltd..
The war for Tiberium runs on grit and grainy live-action briefings. You pick a side, the blue-armored Global Defense Initiative or the Brotherhood of Nod, and the choice colors everything from your units to the men giving you orders. Kane, Nod's scarred and magnetic leader, addresses you straight through the screen. Between missions you harvest Tiberium, raise a base, and push tanks and infantry across scrolling maps in real time. Westwood laid the template here: gather resources, mass an army, break the enemy. Grim, direct, and quick to reward aggression.
Quick answers
What is Command & Conquer about?
The war for Tiberium runs on grit and grainy live-action briefings. You pick a side, the blue-armored Global Defense Initiative or the Brotherhood of Nod, and the choice colors everything from your units to the men giving you orders. Kane, Nod's scarred and magnetic leader, addresses you straight through the screen. Between missions you harvest Tiberium, raise a base, and push tanks and infantry across scrolling maps in real time. Westwood laid the template here: gather resources, mass an army, break the enemy. Grim, direct, and quick to reward aggression.
When was Command & Conquer released?
Command & Conquer was released on 26 September 1995.
Who made Command & Conquer?
Command & Conquer was made by Westwood Studios, Virgin Interactive Entertainment (Europe) Ltd. and Nintendo.
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Command & Conquer in our writing
- Companion guide: Westwood Studios: The Studio That Invented Real-Time Strategy
A few thoughts on Command & Conquer
If the base-building and two-sides-of-one-war structure hooked you, StarCraft refines the same real-time formula with three sharply asymmetric factions, and Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos adds hero units and a heavier story to the mix. Both owe a clear debt to what Westwood Studios set down here.
Military sci-fi about soldiers fighting someone else's war
Command & Conquer splits its world into GDI's order and Nod's fanaticism, Kane addressing you straight through the screen about why his side deserves to win. Old Man's War follows soldiers into a similarly cold draft, Appleseed and Ghost in the Shell build hardware-heavy post-war societies, Stargate SG-1 sends a team into someone else's war, and Mass Effect 2 assembles a crew for one more front in a losing fight.
Two-sided wars fought over a resource worth killing for
Command & Conquer never lets you forget why GDI and Nod are fighting, Tiberium is worth killing over, and every mission is a resource grab dressed up as a war. War of the Worlds and Avatar: Fire and Ash send two mismatched sides after the same prize, The Matrix turns humanity itself into fuel worth harvesting, and Avengers: Infinity War runs a galaxy-spanning war on the hunt for six stones.
Cult-like leaders who want to remake the world in their image
Kane leads the Brotherhood of Nod like a doomsday cult, speaking through the screen, giving Command & Conquer a grimmer edge than most strategy games. 20th Century Boys centers on a cult leader remaking the world, Fist of the North Star runs on warlords fighting over a wasteland, Bio Booster Armor Guyver and The Dark Knight Returns hide iron-fisted control behind the chaos, and Silo buries a rigid regime underground.
Concept albums that build an entire dystopian future war
Command & Conquer tells its Tiberium war through grainy in-universe news briefings, building a fictional future out of propaganda and combat footage. Deltron 3030 raps through an entire future war as a concept album, Universal Migrator spins the same idea into an alien invasion, Simulation Theory and Black Holes and Revelations run on that same tech-dystopia paranoia, and Repo! The Genetic Opera stages its corporate-controlled future as a rock opera.