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[derFeef]

These games are one of those games I will always have great memories of - even more so than CnC or Warcraft.
I can't really explain it, but to me they were just one of the best strategy games, besides Dark Reign and Total Annihilation. I remember it to be gory, loud and fast. I loved building giant scorpions, shotgunners, hippos with a gatling gun on their backs and other crazy stuff.

The setting and units were so crazy that it felt fresh and hilarious, it had a good B-Movie quality to it and I highly enjoyed that. I was looking forward to every new cutscene, be it unit introductions or briefings.

They just don't make games like these anymore and it makes me sad. And oh, Z also has a special place in my heart.

 

[Gala]

I love KKND! The first one is still one of my favorite games of all time. The moment you found a mech in one of the bunkers <3.

 

[FrakkinFordy]

My little brother adored the first one during his C&C phase.

 

[ekim]

Oh I loved 90s RTS games like KKND, Z, Starcraft, Dark Reign, C&C, Total Annihilation, Dark Colony, Genewars etc... but KKND and KKND2 were really special.

Anyone remember Akte Europa?

 

[Com_Raven]

I preferred C&C and WC2, but I had a friend in school who LOVED KKND. Though I think I remember him preferring the first one over the sequel...

Talking of old RTS games- anybody remember War Wind?

 

[lazygecko]

Decent games. Out of all the ones from the first wave of RTS, they're certainly among the better ones. I liked the concept of the robot faction in KKND2: Once peaceful farming robots that learned to hate humans after the nuclear war destroyed their crops. The KKND2 intro was pretty great as well.

Melbourne House also went on to make a pretty good Transformers game for PS2 which was one of the best looking games on the system.

 

[drotahorror]

I loved this back then. Thanks for reminding me about it. I honestly have not thought of that game since the 90's.

 

[Nikodemos]

A mid-90s RTS many people tend to forget about is War Wind (and its sequel). The four races had some differences in their playstyle.

 

[Card Boy]

GOG wins yet again.

 

[Wiktor]

The first one was nice, but by the time second camed out the formula was already very dated. But I still enjoyed both because of the unique atmosphere.

 

[Wiktor]

A mid-90s RTS many people tend to forget about is War Wind (and its sequel). The four races had some differences in their playstyle.

There are a lot of forgotten RTS ges from that period. There were just too many of them.
Another two forgotten titles are Submarine titans and Netstorm.

 

[derFeef]

There are a lot of forgotten RTS ges from that period. There were just too many of them.
Another two forgotten titles are Submarine titans and Netstorm.

I played a lot of Netstorm....

 

[Falk]

Game was great, but I really couldn't stand the forced humor.

edit: Isn't there a Z remake out on Steam? I dread getting it because it has the potential to be either the worst or best thing ever.

 

[adamma666]

I can't believe that it is 16 years now that I first played KKND 2. While I thought that the first one was decent, the second one grabbed me instantly. It was hard as balls with very little margin for error, so I replayed some missions a dozen times (I remember an escort mission or something like that, where you had to guide one guy through the map - "§$%&*!). The atmosphere was so awesome with a soundtrack absolutely nailing what was going on.
Sad that the gog.com version of this game keeps crashing on me, reading their forums this is a known problem. Oh well :/

BTW: one of the best(!) intro cinematics of all time. Of. All. Time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Cg0lxqOzcA

Great stuff there!

 

[murgo]

Holy shit, I remember playing this with my dad millions of years ago. I have fond memories of it

 

[SnowTeeth]

Yes! The FMV's (and accompanying text) were hilarious and the game was real fun to play. One of the better C&C clones of the era.

I remember the sequel had a two-player mode on the PSX which worked rather well if I recall correctly.

 

[Cheeky]

There are a lot of forgotten RTS ges from that period. There were just too many of them.
Another two forgotten titles are Submarine titans and Netstorm.

Submarine Titans had an amazing concept but poorly executed(still enjoyed it though). Too bad nobody ever did anything with the idea.

 

[Nikodemos]

Submarine Titans had an amazing concept but poorly executed(still enjoyed it though). Too bad nobody ever did anything with the idea.

I still have it installed. It was probably the first RTS which employed the Z-axis in a semi-meaningful fashion (subs attempted to dodge shots by diving/climbing, but it was relatively iffy).

 

[CTLance]

The day that this showed up on gog was a very very good day indeed.

Anybody remember Krazy Ivan? For some reason I always think of this when I see KKND, and vice versa.

But yeah. KKND. Very fun. Perfect cooldown game after a long and usually fruitless RTS session.

 

[m360]

I really loved KKND. They were not only crazy but even fun to play ... and remember: the experimental units that you could free from vaults! Fantastic!

 

[Zarx]

Oh man I must have played through the demo mission like a dozen times as a kid. Back when demo discs was my main source of new things to play. Never did play the full game. I wonder if it would be worth grabbing it on GOG.

 

[derFeef]

Gosh, the OST was so good as well!

 

[doomquake]

Ahh kknd. I wrote a strategy guide for the first couple of missions for a known gaming mag when I was 15. Best kid intern job you could ask for.
Memories...

 

[RayStorm]

No mention of M.A.X. as of yet? Mechanized Assault and eXploration was pretty good. And, while I have no concrete Memory, I believe it had a unique twist as well.

 

[Nikodemos]

M.A.X. was a TBS. Excelent game nonetheless, but the thread is mainly about forgotten RTS-es during the C&C/Warcraft-clone years.

 

[Sloane]

Z was amazing, I spent more time with the demo than with most full price games back then. Probably one of the most innovative games of all time, in the best possible way. Too bad the sequel (and supposedly the remasters) sucked.

 

[:Motorbass]

I played the demos for all of these I think.

There was also Conquest Earth which was promising but bombed so hard in reviews!

 

[RayStorm]

M.A.X. was a TBS. Excelent game nonetheless, but the thread is mainly about forgotten RTS-es during the C&C/Warcraft-clone years.

It was turn-based? I really have no memory anymore it seems. Except that I initially didn't like it and a friend, after I lent him M.A.X. turned me onto it.

 

[lazygecko]

Gosh, the OST was so good as well!

I randomly came across one of the tracks from the game in a psytrance album which was really bizarre. Maybe the composer worked on the game and decided to throw it in there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_7Iju3upKg

 

[Nikodemos]

It was turn-based? I really have no memory anymore it seems. Except that I initially didn't like it and a friend, after I lent him M.A.X. turned me onto it.

From the scant memories I have of it, it was pretty hard. The AI put up a good fight on any difficulty level above the lowest. Didn't really play much of it, since at the time I was more into shooty games.

 

[barit]

Uh yeah good old times. But only played the shareware version irrc

GAF always delivers on the nostalgia front

Wonder when we´ll see a thread about this master piece

 

[Denton]

KKND demo was impossibly difficult from what I remember. It just kicked my ass, I always suspected the ai of cheating. But KKND2 was better balanced and more enjoyable in general, I loved it.

Also, I remember Earth 2140 and it's crazy ass amazing soundtrack ranging from eurotechno to jazz. Still listening to that from time to time.

 

[Nikodemos]

Also, I remember Earth 2140 and it's crazy ass amazing soundtrack ranging from eurotechno to jazz. Still listening to that from time to time.

I rank its immediate successor (Earth 2150 + add-ons) as one of the best RTS-es ever made.

 

[derFeef]

I rank its immediate successor (Earth 2150 + add-ons) as one of the best RTS-es ever made.

That game went too complex for me, it was a bit overwhelming. I also remind it being fairly unbalanced.

 

[Arkhanor]

I still have my KKND disc! This game is really great! I was more into C&C but KKND is awesome too!

 

[FrontalMonk]

Uh yeah good old times. But only played the shareware version irrc

GAF always delivers on the nostalgia front

Wonder when we´ll see a thread about this master piece

Hell yes.

side note, definitely named my softcore crusader in D3ROS "NoRemorse" and my hardcore crusader "NoRegret".

I remember buying them both in a two pack and really loving the first one, but the second started you off with a machine gun so I liked that one more. The controls were SO bad...but the game was SO good...

 

[Wiktor]

It was turn-based? I really have no memory anymore it seems. Except that I initially didn't like it and a friend, after I lent him M.A.X. turned me onto it.

Actually it was both. You could choose to play in real time or TB mode.

 

[lazygecko]

Hell yes.

side note, definitely named my softcore crusader in D3ROS "NoRemorse" and my hardcore crusader "NoRegret".

I remember buying them both in a two pack and really loving the first one, but the second started you off with a machine gun so I liked that one more. The controls were SO bad...but the game was SO good...

Well, the fact that they managed to turn the Ultima engine into a tactical action game is quite a feat in itself. Also the fact that you could blow up pretty much every prop in the game was so satisfying. And the death animations were some of the most gruesomely detailed ever at that point. I half-suspect they served as an inspiration for the ones in Fallout 1 and 2.

The screams from burning NPCs haunt me to this day.

 

[Hoodbury]

KKND and Z. Good times back in the day.

 

[lazygecko]

Z really deserves to be regarded as one of the great RTS classics on the same level as Dune/C&C and Warcraft. It was developed around the same time as the other groundbreaking strategy games (they started in 1993 I think), but it got released after C&C and Warcraft 2 and was thus unfairly compared to them, and was viewed as too unorthodox with its focus on territory control rather than base building and resource management. How ironic then that years down the line, this style of gameplay would suddenly be heralded as the new wave of RTS and that basebuilding ones were regarded as hopelessly old fashioned.

The pixel art graphics have also aged very gracefully compared to contemporary titles. The portrait animations of the soldiers are beautifully realized, with more detail and fluidity to them than Starcraft's choppy repetitive ones or even Warcraft 3.'s lowpoly 3D portraits. The game has a ton of personality to it and if you order infantry to attack a tank they'll go "Are you out of your mind?" instead of just a blissfully ignorant "affirmative!" as was the standard for years. It was also fun seeing sprites use scaling and rotation effects so debris, vehicle parts and such would fly up towards the camera when they exploded.

Z is arguably Bitmap Brothers' finest hour.

 

[Nikodemos]

Except the game itself wasn't particularly good. Z was basically Speed Chess meets Mouse Run. The latter missions had a single way to win. If you didn't perform some specific steps in a specific amount of time, you invariably lost.

It did have a good atmosphere (remember your bored robots shooting at wildlife? With occasionally destructive results) and funny cutscenes (with the two numbskulls and Zod himself).

 

[Unbound By Death]

Everything mentioned ITT is my childhood

Crusader No Regret was so good. One of the first games on the PC that I finished multiple times.

I played the demos for all of these I think.

There was also Conquest Earth which was promising but bombed so hard in reviews!

Conquest Earth was soooooo disappointing. I had read about this game in all the magazines, was eagerly waiting for it.

When I got it , I tried so hard to like it but it was impossible

Damn its sad when you try to like smth.

 

[Commanche Raisin Toast]

KKnD was good times back in my early PC years.

-got the shareware version and liked it
-thought it was neat how slow everything was (more on that later)
-dad took me to get the full game one day, but all they had was KKnD Extreme
-oh well. get home, and find out it won't run on our PC because Xtreme had higher hardware requirements...
-shelve it and then years later play it on a proper PC
-holy crap why is everything so fast???
-turns out my old PC could barely run the demo of KKnD so the slowness wasn't intentional

The good ole days: when you could tweak "game speed" in your settings and it depended on hardware.

I'll check these out on GOG. Good thread!

 

[Armaros]

ITT: all my childhood RTS games from the 90s.

So many memories. Need to play more from GOG.

 

[2+2=5]

I loved the demo(the robot saying krush kill and destroy was awesome lol), but i didn't buy the game.

 

[funkypie]

I used to Play split screen on the ps1. Was awful lol. Always wanted to play the pc version.

 

[GenericUser]

I think I made it to the last level in the first game. I enjoyed it a lot. Proper base building and resource gathering, exploiting the A.I. - awesome. I'm a little sad these games aren't made anymore.

 

[Cosmozone]

Funny, I just thought about KKnD this week. Great game from the past. Those live-action briefings wer pretty awesome. I played the mainstream hit Warcraft 2 afterwards and was pretty disappointed.

 

[desu]

Loved these games, kind of reminds me that I should play this again.

 

[barit]

Well, the fact that they managed to turn the Ultima engine into a tactical action game is quite a feat in itself. Also the fact that you could blow up pretty much every prop in the game was so satisfying. And the death animations were some of the most gruesomely detailed ever at that point. I half-suspect they served as an inspiration for the ones in Fallout 1 and 2.

The screams from burning NPCs haunt me to this day.

I´m listening to the soundtrack right now from my old .mod files. Fucking amazing all i can say. One of the best techno soundtracks you could ever hear in an action game. Yes the games were something special. Here in germany we had only the cutted version but with some easy editing of the config.ini you could play the uncut. The violence was ridiculous back at this time.

But enough with the offtopic sry