Classic DOS Games Forum

Feel free to rate and discuss this game.

Hmm, I could never quite get what all the fuss was about. Sure, it's a decent-looking game and the cutscenes were neat. The music's alright and the gameplay was fine. But I suppose that's one of this game's major flaws to me - it's just 'OK'. This game did not bring as much innovations to the RTS genre as some might have you believe. It's really just another 'OK' strategy game that happened to be quite succesful - thus a franchise got born. I bought the First Decade DVD set last year and was disgusted with the game after spending a few minutes on it. It wasn't too stable on Windows XP either (despite claims on the cover that it had been 'updated' for modern operating systems). Still waiting for that 'fix' they were going to put out months ago.

I wasn't aware it was freeware now. That's kind of cool, I guess. Yo Westwood, how about a freeware release of 'Dune 2'? Now THAT's a classic.

I have to admit, I got "addicted" to level 10 in the demo. My first victory took an hour and 22 minutes, and I had to play the level again and again, balancing the need to create tiberium refineries to get money with my desire to rush to create helipads so that I could use Orcas to destroy the enemy laser and take out his refineries and power plants. My mammoth tanks get slaughtered by footsoldiers with rocket launchers when I send them in to take out infrastructure in the base, so helicopter attacks and air raids seem to be the most effective attacks. After playing the level for a few days, I got my time down to 54 minutes. Destroying stuff and launching a successful attack is really satisfying, and developing and managing infrastructure like refineries and harvesters, factories and repair bays appeals to the part of me that loves SimCity. I love this game.

I found the game to be OK. I found the most fun method of playing for me was trying to mess with strategies that broke game mechanics without explicitly cheating somehow. I'd say it's quite worth the download and the update procedure. I'm sure it would make an even better multiplayer environment, but I have nobody to play against on a local LAN.

To play, you should get the following:

1. Daemon Tools Lite(Free for personal use):
-Read this whole Daemon Tools section before installing. It's not much effort, and it'll save you from having a hissy fit-
Daemon Tools lets you load the games into a simulated CD/DVD drive, and play them that way. Should be faster this way, have fewer errors, requires 0 CDs(nor an actual CD drive in the machine), and lets you switch disks faster than with hardware. No scratched disks either.
http://www.daemon-tools.cc/eng/products/dtLite

Important: As of version 4.30.4, On the "Choose Components" screen, uncheck all but the "Desktop Shortcut" and "Start Menu Shortcuts" options, and on the next screen, uncheck "Browser's Start Page", or you'll end up getting more installed and changed than you want.

For C&C at least, when you restart the computer, right click the task bar icon, go to the "Recently used images", and click the one you had loaded to restore it to working order.

Filename: Varies by version

2. The game disks(Gamestop requires a free account to download. Just use a throw-away Hotmail.com account to make the account. ZIP contains 2 ISOs, 1 for GDI, another for NOD. Each is for your chosen course in the game):
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/com ... 78099.html

Filename: CnCGold.zip

3. The 1.05 patch(Makes it work in XP, it seems):
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/com ... -content;1

Filename: TD105UPD.exe

4. Optionally, to enable LAN play in windows XP, you can get this:
http://www.understorm.net/cnc/lan/cnc95_ra1.php/

Filename(1.01): cnc95_ra1_lanpatch_1_01.zip

How to put this info into practice:
1. Install Daemon Tools. Read above to avoid getting a toolbar and having your browser home page changed. You'll need to restart during the installation.
2. Unzip one or both .ISO files from CnCGold.zip and load either one with Daemon Tools. Install the game from it.
3. Run TD105UPD.exe, and let it update the game for you.
4. Optionally, if you want to play against other people on other on-site computers over a Local Area Network, you can unzip cnc95_ra1_lanpatch_1_01.zip to the C&C95 install folder, which defaults to "C:\WESTWOOD\C&C95\". Overwrite the file when it asks.

Now, just go to the start menu, and play the game. It'll tell you if and when it needs the other disk.

but that's for the 95 version.

It's listed as freeware on the main site. I just figured I'd put together all the data needed to run the free version, DOS or not. It's still essentially the same game, even if it does have improvements, so I figured I'd take some of the guesswork out of getting it to run for those who aren't aware of the best method to do so. Steps 1 and 2 alone may be what it takes to run the DOS-based version. I just don't know about that one.

The easiest way to play this is to get the First Decade DVD (recommended - not too expensive, comes with a bunch of C&C games) and download this fanmade update patch which will make the games XP/Vista-compatible and fix a crapload of bugs as well as add additional content. It's really mandatory if you own the First Decade set.

If you're only interested in C&C95, you might want to check this out.

Thanks for the info. I may even make use of it out eventually.

I'm not severely interested in this style of game. For a freeware game, I think it's a nice diversion. Beyond the fact of it being different from what I'm used to playing, I can't say it would motivate me to buy, or even pirate the newer stuff.

I finished the NOD disk just today, and I'll say the mechanics were starting to lose their appeal near the end. The boredom of it after a while is more telling than anything else. It was quite good the first disk, and started a steady drop in gameplay entertainment from there. Still, I thought it was worth finishing at this point.

I'm sure some people would find this a gateway into the C&C world, but I'm just not one of them, it seems.

I still think it would be nice to try some LAN action with the game though. I'll probably give that a try eventually. I'll also see about 1.06b r1 in due time, if/when I'm prepared for more gaming of this type.