Nintendo wouldn’t end up with a version of Command & Conquer on their consoles until 1999, but the wait was worth it. It was at first a Saturn exclusive, released in 1996, but the Playstation version came out the next year. So, what are we doing talking about this PC release that came out a full year before the Nintendo 64 arrived in North America? Command & Conquer actually received multiple conversions to consoles, with the first of those being on the Sega Saturn and the Sony Playstation. It’s Westwood all the way down, is what I’m saying, and Command & Conquer was their release that hit the big time, critically, commercially, and influentially. Command & Conquer predates other long-running series like Age of Empires and Starcraft by a couple of years, and even games like the original Warcraft, which released a year earlier, were influenced by Westwood’s own genre predecessor to Command & Conquer, Dune II. The Westwood-developed title helped to popularize RTS games in general - it sold over three million copies - while also setting the genre into a form that is still recognizable today. The real-time strategy genre owes a debt to 1995’s Command & Conquer. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link.

Throughout the month of September, I’ll be covering the console, its games, its innovations, and its legacy. On September 29, 2021, the Nintendo 64 will turn 25 years old in North America.

Command and conquer 64 bit