Review: Command & Conquer: Red Alert for Commodore Amiga

Who would ever taught of playing Red Alert on a classic Commodore Amiga? Westwood’s alternate history RTS presented unparalleled strategy that perfectly married currently-applicable RTS interface conventions with diverse units to create some utterly compelling gameplay. When taken online or played over LAN, Red Alert simply excelled. Broken alliances and heedless harvester rushes still bring tears to our eyes. It didn’t start the genre, but it probably started the craze. Although still set in the future, the game is set on an Earth where time travel has eliminated Hitler from history and the Second World War never happened. As a result the Western Allies are left facing a powerful USSR with both sides equipped with futuristic technology. The design and functionality of these units is arguably the best ever in a real-time strategy game, and certainly the best since the aforementioned Dune II. The variety of forces and structures is unmatched, providing players with an almost unlimited palette with which to paint their strategic strokes.

The Allies have virtually no air force, and their base defenses are not nearly as devastating as those of the Soviets, but they have a far superior navy

Red Alert is fast, fluid, easy to learn, but with many nuances and layered complexity for experts to master. Like GDI and Nod before them, the Allies and Soviets are not evenly matched in all areas of combat. The Allied ground vehicles are weaker than their Soviet counterparts, but are faster and cheaper to build. The Allies have virtually no air force, and their base defenses are not nearly as devastating as those of the Soviets, but they have a far superior navy, and have more crafty and sneaky units and powers to use for turning the tables on their enemy. Graphics are a difficult thing to judge in older games, because they are the one aspect that tends to age the most quickly, and the most poorly. So in order to accurately judge them, you have to take into account how good they were for their time, and relative to other peer games. Red Alert’s graphics are just right for what they need to accomplish. All of the buildings and units are visually distinctive, the environments are well rendered, and the combat effects are well executed. However, all of that said, nothing about this game, visually, goes above and beyond what you might have expected from a game in 1996. Hence, this RTS legend can be played on your Commodore Amiga classic using the OpenRedalert release! Don’t try this game with a standard Amiga 1200, 68040 is highly recommended. To play this game you need the data (.mix) files from the original Westwood Red Alert 1 game. Good luck commander!

News source: GenerationAmiga / Image source: GenerationAmiga

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