By Alec Meer on February 13th, 2010 at 12:01 pm.
Free C and C Four Three. C Free and Three Four C. She sells seashells on the seashore. Aaargh. Anyway! The first three Command & Conquer games: no-pennies. A welcome promotional wotsit by EA on the eve-ish of C&C4: Tiberian Twilight, the only price you have to pay to get your hands on C&C, Red Alert and Tiberian Sun (plus the Firestorm expansion) is to take the time to burn/extract some ISOs. It’s all over here. Of course, you’ll need to buy C&C3 to get the entire Tiberium story, but that can be summed up as “Earth’s screwed, nasty aliens arrive, Kane wants to pal up with them, Kane’s killed again (except not), Earth’s even more screwed.”
It’s nice to see that some developers are happy to let some of their stuff go for free as opposed to shackling up their ancient titles in their copyright dungeons.
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agreed, free is good. Are EA bipolar? I can never work out if they are good/bad guys any more..
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They’re just layering up the shades of virtue in time for their planetary enslavement initiative.
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I don’t think EA – even if they tried – could possibly compete with Activision Blizzard on the Evility Scale
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EA have been trying, and fairly succeeding for a while now to be good guys – giving studios more freedom, trying new IPs, making their main goal quality games.
Sadly it’s not paid off for them in the short term, John Riccitiello has been doing a great job – but it’s a long term strategy, one that might get him fired as public companies don’t care about long term health, just quarterly reports.
Activision are the “bad guys” now, Bobby Kotick is the worst kind of corporate douche, having gone on record that he wanted to take the fun out of games development – still his strategy has been almost opposite from EA – crank out the trash fast, short term profits, no new IPs.
Good thing that this strategy is going to crash and burn in 2010, given that Activision won’t have a new modern warfare to shore up the books. They’ve saturated the plastic instrument market, and drove many of their decent IPs into the ground with crap version after crap version.
Blizzard will single-handedly keep the Acti-Bliz holding companies stock up, and hopefully Kotick will be fired.
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Personally I predict by the end of 2010 we’ll all be wearing magic trousers that never ever ride up in the crotch. That’s my prediction.
I also believe, with Carl Sagan, that one day aliens will descend from the skies and suck us all off. It’s a thought that gets me through the day.
Essentialy my point is predictions generally aren’t that accurate. Also I think MW2, WOW and Guitar Hero DLC alone are enough to keep Activision a loft for another two years.
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Meh it is my prediction and I can make it if I want too (just like crying and parties).
I said that Acti-Blizz will be okay, but only because WoW, starcraft will prop up the holding company.
But when Vivendi look at Bliz, and look at Activision (as the separate entities they are).
Of course predictions are not accurate, you might as well state the sky is blue for equal obvious-o-meter score. They are still essential in business. The people who are good at it get paid very handsomely.
It is very important to Vivendi if Acti-Blizz makes X billion (maybe around 4) and Blizzard is responsible for over 60% of that.
Aside from that, I already have magic pants that don’t ride up in the crotch – patent pending.
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Now if only they hadn’t dissolved Westwood… I’m not sure I’ll ever forgive them for that. Still, they certainly appear to have not ruined Bioware, for which I am most grateful.
I’d quite like to see activision fall but somehow without destroying Blizzard. I like Blizzard.
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I have no problem with the duality Evil/Coolness of EA, since something can be evil and awesome at the same time. EA make some good games because have talented people that work really hard, but also have some true genuine evil people on marketing and “command”. I make decissions in based in his deccisions on particular game, not the whole company. Maybe this is like the old URSS, not everything on the old cccp was bad…
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If Red Alert 2 was in there I would be all over this.
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F.U.C.N.C.
S.V.F.C.N.C…. 4.3.
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F.U.N.E.X.? X.N.M.? 4.3.2?
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9.
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This is awesome, for more than you think.
Theres a open source engine, now that everyone can download the game for free, what stop you from installing the 2010 engine + the original datas to play the game in 2010 resolution? …now.. if the 2010 engine is not good enough, I am sure the 2011 will be since this will push using it even more :-)
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Have a link for this? AFAIK freecnc has been on life support for years so I’m presuming you’re talking about something else.
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Free is always good!
I might try out Tiberium Sun, never really got into the whole C&C franchise.
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Last month I installed Red Alert and the two expansions just to play Aftermath (Aftermath was the best part of Red Alert 1 in my opinion). Too bad it doesn’t run on my computer no matter what I try. I may have to go dig out my Pentium 233 Win98SE machine. Yes, that’s right, I keep my old computers, because DOSBox and Windos XP/7 don’t have the same feel of old schoolish gaming.
Red Alert 1 has always been my favorite C&C game and the expansions made it even better. I think I got the game back in 1997 as a 4 CD set. I remember playing Red Alert Aftermath for hours on rainy days when I was 9 or 10.
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tiberium !!!
my first RTS ever, I still remember holding the big box in my little sweaty hands, oh my !!
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I don’t know who came up with this ingenious new PR strategy of giving away free stuff and not abusing your fanbase, but it’s totally winning me over.
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I wish they offered a torrent – if only to cue them and throttle my download speed a bit, hell I’d even seed it for them save them some bandwidth costs.
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C&C Original gets a free release almost every year. Pretty sure Red alert has one disc or another given away for free at varying times. Interesting to see Tibsun in there though.
I may in fact download these, just so I don’t have to install the whole silly first decade launcher when I only wish to play one of the games
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Anyone else having problems playing Tiberian Sun? As far as I can tell, I’m just supposed to extract it, and then be able to play it. But I just get a “one or more DLL files are missing” message. Which really sucks, since Tiberian Sun was the one I most wanted to play. (I had the CD a long time ago, but feck knows where it is now).
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You need to run the “tibsun_regadd” registry file which came with it. There’s also extra stuff you need to do to get online, the steps for that are in a readme file in the same folder as the registry stuff.
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I did run that, but still the same problem. I haven’t tried running it in compatibility mode, though. I’ll give it a go.
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Yup, same problem. I’d love to know how to get this working. I’m running 64 bit Windows 7, if that makes a difference.
Edit: Ah, compatibility mode does the trick.
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HAVE YOU INSTALLED IPX?!?!?!?!!
Holy shit, that takes me baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack…
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Run it in compatibility mode for XP SP3. Worked for me!
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That did it! Or rather, running it in compatibility mode for XP SP2 worked. I tried “troubleshooting compatibility”, and it suggested that. I’m still getting used to the stuff Windows 7 can do, after only switching from XP a week or two ago.
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this is fing amazing, i’ve long since lost my discs
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Woot, saves trying to get readable rips of the CDs. Shame their site is being utterly caned right now.
I guess they don’t want to use P2P things because they feel that gives them less control over distribution, and makes it harder to get an idea of how many people grabbed it (which will presumably be fed into the C&C4 marketing machine as an estimated userbase).
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Hmm, now that I got Tiberian Sun to work, I thought I’d try Tiberian Dawn. Unfortunately, running it in compatibility mode for anything doesn’t seem to work, considering I’m running 64 bit Windows 7.
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I just stained my jeans.
DAMN YOU RPS!
<3
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I get to play the original C&C again!
*building* *building* *building*
*The mission… is a failure*
I’m impressed EA. That game was the first that had me playing until daylight. Absolutely brilliant at the time. Everything about it. Even the installer was cool.
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Best installer ever. Why does no-one else do cool installers?
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very much <3 the c&c installer
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Used to joke with my mates that I should run the installer on a laptop whilst on a plane and frantically say “no! no!” whilst bashing the keyboard.
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C&C Tibdawn high-res patch > http://nyerguds.arsaneus-design.com/cnc95upd/cc95p106/
Only goes as high as 1024 due to some map bugs, but it’s still better than 320. Also re-enables multiplayer and allows you to play skirmish games using multiplayer.
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Aw, cool…I’ve got both TS1 and RA1 with all expansions, so now I can add TS2 to it! Splendid…
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TS1? TS2? O.o
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Every game company should do this. It’s silly and almost criminal when companies refuse to stop selling their older games.
1) They probably make almost no money from it
2) The main result is that older games either get pirated or disappear entirely
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Is this the original DOS C&C (which works in DOSBox for those of you having issues running it natively), or the “Gold” re-release which was rebuilt with the Red Alert engine to run under Windows 95 at a slightly higher resolution instead?
ISTR the 20th Anniversary one being the former.
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Oh, typical, right there in the unofficial patch someone just linked: “That includes the C&C95 ISOs which EA has released.”
Yay!
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Does multiplayer work? Or do they even have any…?
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If it wasn’t for his C&C games, Tim Westwood would never be forgiven for the horrendous rap stuff.
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I’m not sure how to break it to you.
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Good times. I cut my RTS teeth on the original C&C, and still play it from time to time. I also first got into modding with the C&C engine, which was a blast. Too bad I already own The First Decade.
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Jesus Christ, how many files are required for this? I think I have 12 downloading as we speak.
Not complaining, just… wow, that’s a lot to get these working, haha.
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I strongly suggest downloading the original C&C here:
http://digiex.net/downloads/download-center-2-0/games-downloads/2929-command-conquer-gold-full-hard-disk-install.html
Makes one’s life much easier and includes many missions not included in the EA download (including Covert Ops and console missions) as well as a hi-res patch and bugfixes.
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This is still win.
Even if I still have the original CDs. Somewhere.
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Multiplayer would be pretty hot, but the game’s SP action is still damned sexy, even while the game is this old :D
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I just realized that I paid for command and conquer 4 times in the past 15 years.
Original Dos Version – check
Win 95 version – check
Playstation 1 version – check
and C&C first Decade -check
Honestly I think adding it all up (the squeals the expansions the differing formats) I’ve probably spent more money on C&C than any other game franchise (with the possible exception of WoW which I played for 2 years).
EA should give me CnC4 for free.
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I was about to say. “With the exception of WoW,” indeed. If you actually do the math of what a four year (in my case) subscription + all the addons cost, you just kinda have to break down and weep.
I could have bought a computer with that money. A decent one.
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I’m pretty much in the same boat having bought c&c 95, playstation, worldwide warfare comp, TFD, all at least once. It’s the game that made me buy a playstation. Up until 96ish I was still an Amiga holdout.
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Scary timing ive just this week started playing Tiberium Sun againas I found out that its possible to run it in modern resolutions if you first run the game to create the SUN.INI file, then edit this and under the [Video] section add AllowHiResModes=true, this also works under wine.
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How do you change the resolution, then? Do you change it manually in the .ini file under Video? Do you know which resolutions work?
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Thats jolly nice of EA. I never did have the Firestorm add-on, so I’ll look forward to giving it a whirl. Good timing as I just finished Mass Effect 2 too and need something else to occupy me.
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Which games do you C&C pros suggest a C&C noob try first?
I kind of like the Red Alert cold war theme, but I’m interested in whichever has the easiest interface and difficulty curve.
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N.W. – D. 42 (http://tiny.cc/On93B)
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Does this work on Mac? lol nope
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