RTS History

Real Time Strategy are currently a very "hot" genre of games. With the release of Blizzard's Warcraft II, this category of games has proved itself to be profitable causing most big gaming companies to produce their own "clone".

So where did they first come from? Most will chant Dune 2: The building of a dynasty, but for me personally it started with the Sega Genesis game Herzog Zwei witch came out in 1989.

Herzog Zwei was a very simple game. But it's main appeal was that it supported 2 players. Back in those days, multiplayer games were scare. So me and my buddy would battle it out for 2 hours or more, hogging the controllers (everyone else wanted to play Joe Montana or NHL). Well sad to say I didn't own the game so I lost most of the time, but I made sure that it was very hard (I surrounded my base with about 50 tanks or so). That was about 6 years ago. With the emulators for the Genesis that have been made, it's been fun reminiscing.

So now let's get to the PC world. Civilization was a massive hit and Dune 2:The building of a Dynasty was released in 1992 by Westwood. Dune 2 won best strategy game for that year. The game play allowed you to choose three races, each with it's own unique units, who were fighting over the control of spice on the planet Dune. The first game Dune was based on the popular book and was sort of a rpg adventure game.

In 1994, Blizzard released Warcraft. This game was more or less a clone of Dune2 with some added features. These features included, more than one resource, ability to select up to four units at a time and modem play. I really didn't have anyone to play till I went to University in 1995. There, warcraft became a very popular way to help us skip, besides alcohol.

December 1995, Blizzard released Warcraft II. This game was (is) much more fun. It offers 8 players support over an IPX network and with the use of KALI can be played over the Internet. This game was far superior than any of the games in it's class. It had incredible play control, high resolution graphics and a new feature called the fog of war. It also had many features native to Dune 2.

Command and Conquer is released around the same time in 1995 by Westwood. The graphics were still in 320x200 mode. From a personal viewpoint, many of the features in Dune 2 were not included in this game most of them affecting play control. This game could also be played over the Internet through KALI.

Red Alert was released in 1996. It was designed for Windows95 and was a step up in graphics. But it was still Command and Conquer. All they did was re-do the graphics and reship it.

So what is it that Warcraft II missed ? That answer is simple: Better Ally Support. Haven't you ever played a game where you have wanted to share map information, resources and units with your ally? Well that's what most people today are looking for. The sharing of resources, technology, map information and units will definitely increase the complexity of the game allowing for more repeated play. The Internet has become the playground and gamewise; WE DEMAND ALLY SUPPORT! :). Well, lucky for us the upcoming games do offer them.

Dark Colony: I played the demo for this game. The graphics are beautiful and the game play is promising. There is one resource and it is collected on a gold/sec basis. So basically it's a race to acquire as many mines as you can. I have one beef with the demo though. It's a damn multiplayer game and they didn't even include 2 player support in the demo. From what I could see this game does have ally support, but I see a swarm type strategy to this game since you can select any number of units.

Dark Reign: I don't know much about this game till it hit's the stores.

Starcraft: This is the next installment in RTS games by Blizzard. This promises to include features like better ally support, a new "line of sight" concept for units, bigger maps and three completely different races to choose from.