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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 มิ.ย. 2024
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Total Annihilation is one of the most beloved strategy games in history - and since its release in 1997, its had a massive effect on not only successor games like Supreme Commander and Beyond All Reason, but the entire RTS genre as a whole. Today, we'll take a look back at its development history, the game itself, and what the landscape looked like after its release - featuring interviews with Chris Taylor and the Beyond All Reason team.
0:00:00 Introduction
0:10:07 Part 1 - Development History
0:21:56 Part 2 - Mechanics and Gameplay
0:36:35 Part 3 - Campaign and Vibe
0:52:45 Part 4 - Kingdoms
0:58:35 Part 5 - GPG and Supreme Commander
1:10:21 Part 6 - TA Successors
1:22:53 Part 7 - TA Legacy
1:25:50 Part 8 - Total Annihilation
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'Retrospectives' playlist - • Retrospectives
Gameplay recorded on PC | Audio recorded using a Rode NT-USB
#rts #realtimestrategy #totalannihilation - เกม
Thanks Zade and BadGhosts for doing such an amazing job putting together this huge video! Very impressive!!
Wow!
I love all the work you've done on games like Total annihilation and supreme commander. I hope you're doing well!
@@jeramyneeley3351 Thank you! I appreciate that very much.
niceeee
You can be sure you hold a distinction, TA's the only game I played until the CD cracked in the drive. Well done.
Here you are making an hour and a half long video about my favorite RTS game ever, and you didn't even take me to dinner or a movie first. Great production values, sir!
except it isn't actually about TA as it is played today, it's just a promo video for BAR
that is insanely reductive LOL
Ay thanks mate!
@@Zade_95 but not overly reductive, since you say absolutely nothing about the progress with TA since 1999 and start talking about BAR instead.
@@JamesFaction What % of the video covers BAR? You should get out more.
Thank you once again for featuring us in the video! This brings so many warm memories, it is amazing how many of us share such silimilar feelings towards the legacy of Chris Taylor and Cavedog. Even after all these years, our core motivation remains unchanged: to capture the essence of the profound impact Total Annihilation had on us. This passion still drives us today. Hearing the maestro himself speak so fondly of BAR is beyond anything we could have ever wished for. It's difficult to express just how much that means to us. Hats off to you for creating such an amazing video, Zade :)
Balls of steel on you boys, certified by THE Chris Taylor. So Cool
@@aaronmorgan1989 *CLONK* xD
2nd best game ever. Thanks for all your hard work in making it. ❤
Love me some BAR... I speak highly of it often... But hot damn does it need some enterprising people ot whip together a campaign and good UX. It's SO hard for me to get people to get into it if they haven't played TA or similar.
wow, Is there any video where Chris Taylor speaks or playes BaR?
I remember arguing with someone on USENET how TA was better than StarCraft. I'll die on that hill.
I think they're so different that they're barely comparable. A former pro Starcraft player described that game once as a bunch of minigames that you all play at the same time. In TA, it's all about setting up production pipelines so you can focus on different things. They are the same genre, but about as different as you can get while still fitting the description of "gather resources, build army, fight opponent who does the same".
good man, I salute
"we purposely made units stupid and control groups limited because.. because we did."
If that's the case, don't have any automatic actions, and don't have any control groups. It's like running a day care for special needs toddlers with chopsticks glued to your fingers.
TA's design philosophy truly is a strategy game, very freeing. StarCraft is an APM rock paper scissors game.
Same. TA is the goat RTS.
Thanks for having me!
All hail emperor Ghost! Fornicator of fine women and money multiplication expert!
10 year old me loved everything about this game. I even had my own moment of realising I need to moderate myself after playing for so long that the sun was rising outside and I had gone about 6 hours past bedtime without realising because I was so wrapped up in the game. Thank you for making this video and thank you to the team who made TA!
You can tell Chris Taylor played Panzer General because everything he mentioned about what he didn't like. Great game designer and programmer. Here's for you Chris: 👍👍💗
Beyond all reason feels so good to play, it's hard to play anything else now
And it has hooded skulls ( at 3:51)
Such an underrated game, played this all the time as a young teenager and watching my army skirmish the enemy on their own while my fighters dogfight in the sky as I race to finish my big Bertha cannons to slug the enemy's base across the map was top-tier RTS
Play some Zero-K or BAR to relive those moments ;-)
THIS GAME IS A HUGE FOUNDATION OF MY WHOLE LIFE! I learned so much computer stuff from installing mods
This is an excellent production. It's really long but it's well paced, doesn't drag on, doesn't belabor any points. We often see 3, 4, 5+ hour video game essays on youtube with very little actual analysis. Great mix of history, introspection, and developer commentary, with a captivating presentation.
appreciate it! it was a blast to make
BAR is *the* new standard in RTS - at least in my book.
Especially regarding command options and hotkeys
Indeed. Every other attempt at a TA successor is clunky and just horrible to play.
I hope it isn't, because at lest for me the game is just too fast paced - everything is made out of glass and dies in a moment, and even a single cheapest bot coming through can do extremely annoying damage to eco, and all of that is annoying to manage for me even with my SC2 past and over 1.5k hours of FAF which gave me some really good APM - majority of RTS players just do not have so much. It definitely works well filling the niche of such active players, but it should not and can not be the standard.
Area commands though are really convenient and I would definitely like to see more of them, like in upcoming RTS - Sanctuary: Shattered sun.
@@volodymyr_budii no way you have a Sc2 past and think BAR is too fast paced?! Maybe at the pro level 1v1 but i don't feel like that at all.. stuff like being able to give patrol commands out of the lab etc make it so low apm friendly
@@vinceb8123 In SC2 max I had is Diamond 3 with protos, which is still more APM than majority of players, especially if you take supcom player base.
Patrols do not protect form this issue completely, since you usually can not afford them spread out in early game, and in later game I often have to drag all units to the front lines for push or defense. Miss microing bots is also an option that happens regularly.
That is unless AI in those scenarios is much stronger than most regular players
Reminder that TA feels like a much darker Transformers and both Arm and CORE feel like grimmer, more morally ambigous Autobots and even more mercyless and heartless Decepticons respectively.
Hell. CORE makes Decepticons at their worst look like Autobots at their best.
This is something of a failure of the lore vs games as Arm were not robots, they were people in vehicles fighting against the evil machines. This is why the EMP missile for Arm didn't affect arm, but did core and then vice versa the neutron missile.
@@fuggles2kUnification No, they were basically meat sacks packed into life support tubes at this point. Near the end of the war the ARM had to start making quite a few concession for cybernetics and bionics to make up for the limitations of squishy humans. To say nothing of the specialty units like some of the walkers having things like spider neurons genetically inserted into the 'pilot'. At the end they were essentially just an endless army of heavily cyberized clones with bits of other animals stuffed in to compensate for human limitations. At the end of the war ARM soldiers were about as human as a WH40k Magos Biologis.
@@fuggles2kUnification - Clones, but still, humans... you can notice that every arm unit has a cockpit.
Still have the original disc and listen to the soundtrack time and time again.
I played it in my portable cd player at school sometimes
Such an amazing soundtrack.
I still remember my first play of TA - my friend borrowed money to buy it. I remember very well the first time watching a 3D airplane making sharp turns and twists, and tanks actually having to make turns instead of having set angles and instant rotation. And the first shots with the Big Bertha… Amazing sights back then!
Dude, my first experience was almost identical. A buddy rts enjoyer of mine got his hands on the demo that let you play the first three story levels of Arm. We were both used to games like Dune on the Genesis or the Westwood C&C, and the way TA _felt_ blew us away. The scope and feel, the destructive joy of that first Bertha shot... but when we saw the Spider is when we fell in love with the game.
Jeremy Soule? NOW that's why the soundtrack is THAT FKN EPIC!
TA was a big part of my childhood and I still play it from time to time out of nostalgia, but there's something about this game that even BAR or Zero K don't have, there's something magical about it.
That music, nothing like it. : )
What an absolute beast of a retrospective video! Grats to you and BadGhosts for putting this together. Chris Taylor is always a pleasure to listen to, he's our excitable and zany RTS uncle.
Worth mentioning is TA Escalation Mod, adds shit ton of units (some direct copies from SupCom), and balancing, really fun
This is one of my favourite games of all time. Using TA Conflict Crusher to create my mod packs to play multiplayer with my friends including the absolute massive titans. Using the Rumand race from MadTA, and the millions of units that you could get. TA will live in my heart as long as I live, and the soundtrack is forever in my soul.
It's such a treat to see TA run on modern hardware. The battles and explosions are buttery smooth. I remember the obligatory slowdowns when the screen started to fill with units even on the fastest PCs back then.
I still find myself impressed that I could copy TA's game folder from an old machine and paste it onto a modern machine - and it just works.
No fussing around or anything.
The first time seeing TA run on an Athlon processor was *chef's kiss*
@@SireSquishI went from a Duron 1Ghz to a Core 2 Duo 2.66Ghz and suddenly, I could play at 1440x900 with a 500 unit cap in epic skirmishes and things never really slowed down. It was like nothing else!
I play pretty much every week, a few skirmishes to relax, on a 4K OLED 43" TV (in 1440p or it's too small) on huge custom maps with half a dozen AI's. Hilarious to think how bad the game struggled on my Pentium 200 back in the day...
Oh, my, the music! "Attack!!!" & "Forest Green" still give me goose bumps. Every historical battle is in here, from Marathon to Hastings to Waterloo to Verdun & beyond.
Jeremy just took them all, shook 'em up nicely, & the result was astonishing.
A call to battle, triumph, sacrifice & despair. To glory, ablaze.
Greatest RTS soundtrack ever.
This game was the peak of OG RTS lanning. You knew the coax would 100% crash but you could rely on about 3-12 hour sessions. One night we all fell asleep and it miraculously stayed up. And we just kept gaming the next morning.
Likewise this game was the centrepiece of our lan parties. Shame it didn't have a Save button.
@@jonhatton-brownWent to a LAN once with some older guys who were friendly enough, they did all the networking stuff as well as hiring the warehouse. They said on day one they were TA players, so I looked forward to that! All my friends and I played back in (in terms of RTS) was TA, and we'd HAMMERED it every weekend for a couple of years.
As my vamp swarms were chewing up their entire team, I remember thinking ..... meh. They're never gonna play this again after this game.
And I was right :(
Im a bit of a younger whippersnapper. So my introduction to TA and all its successors was SupCom 2. and i loved it, i never understood why people didnt like it until i played the original games. Those games did everything i loved about SC2 and more. And just recently i found and got into BAR and ive been loving it, im not good enough to play with other people, but its incredible. As someone who wasnt there for it, who only showed up after the hayday of it all, this was such a great video to show me all the gaming history in something i loved. Thanks for the video, and good on the algorithm for showing me your channel.
You said it yourself, you played Supcon2 before TA or Supreme Commander. Expectations for a sequel was not imprinted.
If SupCom 2 was released under another name/artwork but kept the same units/buildings, I think it would have done way better but since it had SupCom name. The BAR was set and when we got our hands on it you felt it was a bait and switch.
I defended it's faults was due to "console" hardware limitations but hindsight is 20/20. 9/10 people who played both would rather play the "older" SupCom, even to this day.
I personally think if Chris would have taken SupCom 1(think what they have done with FAF/BAR even with netcode/interface) and upgraded/improved AI, more unit commands/pathfinding, Unit formations with the same graphic and factions.
Basically a game engine and UI update, People would have given it a better welcome then the current SupCom2 got.
Totally badass soundtrack for a totally badass game
One of the best things that BAR has done for me is shedding light on what role different units fulfill. In TA, almost all enemies shoot out the same orange projectile, so I could not really tell them apart. For example, I never knew before that Hounds/Fidos are actually medium range artillery units that should not be charging into the enemy base.
Not true.
Knowing that Chess, TA, and Foundation are connected makes me happy.
I remember renting Total Annihilation from the Auckland Public Library in 2002? It was revelatory after playing AoE and CnC. It felt like the next evolutionary step. I was so, so hyped when Supreme Commander was announced, though I wouldn't get to play it until five years after it released when I built my own PC.
I think the influence of TA can be measured by how many projects attempted to remake it, expand it, and succeed it. A game totally worthy of this documentary treatment.
Yes! More love to my beloved Total Annihilation! Nobody knows this game where I live, this damn sewer‑hole of a town.
*_Skeever-Hole of a town_*
Petition to hold TA over Skyrim as the most influential 3D game of the century.
Just started playing TA again and now I get too watch an hour and a half zade video about it at the same time, today's a good day!
Total Annihilation is one of my all time favorite RTS'. I remember accidently discovering that I could have a different music CD in when playing this game. So I remember one of the first CDs I burned in the late 90's was one loaded with progressive trance in a way that would play the music depending on the situation. Was always enamored with that.
TA is so very near and dear to my heart. It was the first game I worked to customize my PC to play it better. The first one I had LAN games. The first one where I entered the mod community. The first time I learned creators names on. This is a wonderful retrospective and beautifully put together!
And Yea, BAR is the successor I waited for, and that I spent an absurd time playing last summer.
I'm another one of those people who got their first PC and was introduced to the series (in my case, Kingdoms which still holds such an incredible place in my heart) its hard to not look at a genre I love and not yearn for that same feeling TA:K gave me. It makes me real happy to know that this love for TA and TA:K is so widespread.
TA: Kingdoms is a very fun game; I highly recommend for those of you who didn't play it yet to give it a try. I only discourage the Iron Plague expansion because it's campaign is unnecessarily hard, the fifth faction, Creon, is totally unbalanced and the new units for the other factions are mostly useless. Maybe that's the last straw in the camel's back for Cavedog being out of business.
"TA Kingdoms" *Shudders....
A game that in 1997 managed to give me believably behaving air units was a feat itself and I loved it for that. Imagine how much math all that intertia, tilting and turning of a swarm of planes generates for a pentium 90Hz that was the minimum requirements for this game at the time.
Dude, I struggled with a Pentium 200! How did you managed on a P90?!?!?! I remember playing a friend (he had a P166MMX so not too shabby) and we both had to turn off shading and shadows after our unit counts approached maximum. He had gone air units and I figured I was probably going to lose the game, so I fired a NUKE directly into his production and the impact of the nuke, the amount of destruction and subsequent math that had to be done, actually CRASHED his PC and he disconnected and I won.
Think about it. Nuked in original TA were so powerful they turned off your PC...
ahahahahahaha nice@@TheVanillatech
@@TheVanillatech Simple, a pre-school kid has no concept of what is an FPS slideshow and how it was meant to be played. :D 640x480 and only playing early single player campaigns that were really low unic counts. :D
@@networkgeekstuff9090Yeah I know what you're saying. You don't need 40fps to play an RTS game. But even on my P200, the third Core mission (when you have to save the transports and destroy all Arm units), was pretty sluggish!
I remember going to a friends house when I was at school, took my PC so we could play C&C over null serial link. When I got there he had a P75, and I remember Quake was unplayable (to me at least) on his rig, yet he played it as if it was "normal" to have 7-11fps. And C&C wasn't smooth either! I guess you're used to what you're used to!
Quake 1 ruined me in terms of what I demanded from performance, as I took that game seriously. But sure RTS games don't require 120Hz / 120Fps in order to enjoy! :D
Great to see a brief Zero-K feature! Game is a lot of fun and although the community is small we're open to new players and getting a good match is still quick and easy!
zero-k mentioned :O
im not sure id say this is the best rts ever but i certainly think its the biggest jump forward the genre has ever seen. the tactical aspects and ballistics are superb especially by 97 standards.
Has to be a matter of opinion, which RTS is "best", from Dungeon Keeper to Warcraft III to Starcraft to Total Annihilation and Rise Of Nations, the genre has such a spread of mechanics and gameplay ideas, but TA definitely stands tall and offers something unique which has still yet to be replicated, let alone exceeded.
I'm really glad that my absolute favourite game since my childhood gets a video as thorough as this one to highlight it in the current day. I hadn't ever heard of BAR before this, so that's now on my radar as well!
Chris Taylor doesnt get the recognition he deserves!
Dungeon Siege 1 (and 2 to a lesser extend), TA and SupCom were the pinnacle of their genre.
After all those years, TA has aged very well and SupCom is still the pinnancle of the RTS genre.
The soundtrack of TA........................................absolute bliss.
For me Taylor should be mentioned among the greatest visionairs in the industry OF ALL TIME!
Amongst the likes of Miyamoto, Carmack, Molyneux, Newell, Meier etc.
Fully agree - CT and many of his team which played a crucial role.
I was always a huge fan of TA, SC and also SC2 after I got used to the differences. His passion and vision comes across well in these videos.
TA certainly, and Dungeon Siege 1 was pretty visionary, if limited by modern hardware of the time. SupCom was passable, but definitely not as groundbreaking as TA.
Then again, what is?
Can we just take a moment to talk about how absolutely incredible the soundtrack is. All throughout the video, it was being played and its still epic.
I remember going over to a friends house and seeing total annihilation being played for the first time. My mind was blown away
I adore Total Annihilation. As a kid growing up in a trailer in the middle of nowhere AZ, my PC was vital in the 90s to having fun. And I probably put 1000 hours into that game in my teens.
Even though I don't make RTS games like TA, the visual communication, audio feedback, and that tactile feedback of realtime physics and unit behavior -- I remember that feeling and those lessons in design, and transport a lot of that to my work on games in radically different genres. Easily one of the most influential games on me as a designer.
The interviews with Chris and deep dive into development in this video were a treat. I had no idea what making games was like back then. Now that I do interviews like this are like... ahhh, I gotcha. War never changes. XD
what a video! excited for the future of these games. great job guys!
thank you mate!
God did i love TA! I will deffinately be checking out BAR!
Haven't had time yet to watch 1,5 hour.
But 1,5 hour on TA is well deserved, what a game it was! One of the best ever made for me. Supreme Commander is still a bit better, but also has a different pace.
Having such a good memories on TA. Simply epic, and way ahead of it's time.
Above all it gave you the feeling of being in an insane epic war. Having tons of units on the field helped, as well as the music, the explosions the different size of units etc. Etc.
Some may disagree, but I think Planetary Annihilation is a worthy successor and even innovates further on the formula. This with orbital units and (multiple) sphere maps.
It runs smooth as butter and recently got a balance update with a new unit.
massive video! love TA and TA:K
The amazing thing about Total Annihilation: It works even better on modern computers. Recently I played it on a 65 inch display with 3840x2160 pixels and 5000 Units per Team with four teams.
And it just amazingly worked!!!
listening to the soundtrack on the way to school is a core memory. made life epic
Total Annihilation, Age of Empires and Command & Conquer were all terrific games. The gameplay was fun and the music was AMAZING. Supreme Commander was a strong successor with some great aspects, but TA was still the best. The feeling of nostalgia surrounding this is great. Me and my brother would have played this on our first PC on a 17" or 19" CRT monitor. I need my sleep but my older brother would stay up in the dark with the sound off to play the game and I never knew a thing.
I used to take back in the days the CD with me in my CD-walkman and listend to the musik when I was going to somewhere as a kid. Thats how good this soundtrack was and still is!
TA was an amazing technological marvel. I did not understand how back then such a complex game could exist. It was a colossal step up from anything else on the market back then.
This game was my childhood, I can still hear the intro even after all these years in the back of my mind the words, the sounds, the animations and that epic music.
How much time did I spend on this game, enough that the skirmish and campaign disks broke from over use.
I remember Chris Taylor talking about programming in TA2 and its problems. Very nice.
Have some engagement for that massive nostalgia wave in the beginning. Basically my childhood in gaming.
And huge props to the BAR guys. I think they were early access ready two years ago, but clearly, they have standards in excess of mine. And I'll happily buy their game in steam when it comes out, probably through their site so they benefit 100%.
I love Chris Taylor, he's so passionate and positive.
i know right, total lad
Loved this game as a kid. The music has always been one of my favourites. I still listen to it regularly.
Heh. A good day.
My childhood game was Supreme, and probably because for me it is "The one" - when I played BAR, I saw a game that is less serious, less large-scale, it is not a planetary operation, but a separate skirmish for a front line with all the same aspects. IMHO Supreme took the logical next step (apart from those places where he reduced the variety of units and abandoned terraforming or the skeleton of technology) - SCALE. Huge robots, huge explosions, huge distances, it's often just a design, but it makes all the salt of the feeling from fifty-kilometer maps for me.
I'm interested and now I'm going to look on the channel for what you think about the Shelter that they plan to make an heir, apart from aspects like the fact that events take place on the destructible interiors of the Dyson sphere. They promise a lot.
I first played TA about 24 years ago when i was 8, i watched my dad playing it and i said that i wanted to try it too. He said "it's too advanced for you i don't think you would think it's any fun". But he let me try it out an hour or two. Next thing is i got his old computer and we played multiplayer against each other and together against AI and formed a strong father-son bond and a common interest that we both still have to this day. And i still play TA from time to time, it's still a great game with an awesome soundtrack. Modders and map creators have also been busy all these years so there is a ton of new high quality content aswell.
TA lives on my personal fav games of all time. Been playing that since I was middle school.
Wow, good work guys. That was really awesome. TA was core part of my childhood, and is still one of my favorites. i would play with my brothers all the time.
One of my brothers used to play on "above Crude Water" he would build up defense and i would try to knock them down.
I used to listen to the soundtrack all the time when i was little.
Had no idea Zero-K or BAR existed, been trying to scratch that itch for a long time. Thanks for this video.
It's brilliant. The amount of variation and freedom given to you to complete missions was outstanding! For example, I could even use the Commander for fighting many times (and in some cases solely to complete missions). I loved the setting, the physics, terrain, game mechanics, graphics, everything! Yet it was straightforward enough to get into, unline the later developments in the same universe (Supreme Commander), which I couldn't even play at all.
Really great video
Great video, takes me back. I remember for about a month straight when I came from home school I'd boot this game up in Skirmish mode and put Nirvana - Nevermind in the CD drive and play the same map over and over, trying to do it perfectly
There is a modding scene and a community built around one mod also still alive for TA called Total Annihilation Escalation which greatly expands on the original with a massive number of new units, new tech levels like t3 and t4 experimental units, balancing patches, new maps, a lively multiplayer community and dedicated multiplayer client and continued updates even now.
Oh man I loved this game so much! It was my first purchased PC game back in 97 and I actually came up with the idea of the Warrior unit for the Arm when I was just a kid. It was so long ago that I don't quite remember how that happened but I do remember being so proud of myself.
I remember getting this among other games as part of a bundle with our old family PC way back in 1999. It took me a while to get to it and I had no manual to figure out how to play it, but I got hooked. Before long my friends were playing it too. It's one I'll always remember. I even used to have backups of the free units on the TA website.
Still holds one of the most cherished spots in my heart, even thought the first RTS I played was command and conquer red alert and tiberian sun, then got addicted to red alert 2 and yuri's revenge and stronghold crusader and then my god supreme commander and forged alliance came along, so good, oh and let's not forget company of heroes, now I occasionally play BAR with some friends, but I personally like the slower pace and economy of Total Annihilation and supreme commander more than modern games.
Dark Reign has options to "automate" your units. And slightly change their AI.
You can set units to "scout" which means they will move around the map to explore it and avoid combat
"Harass" makes them seek out enemies and then retreat if their HP drops below a signed %, then heal at base and go back to attack.
oh wait nvm you got an entire video about Dark Reign too.
This game made me realise I actually really like strategic games, when I though I don't at all. Hell - it was incredible 24 years ago and it still is! It still looks good, sound design is amazing and it still makes me soak at lava and two hills for hours. Btw - this comment is written to the game score. Another amazing aspect :)
This game was the reason why my housemates and I drilled holes in our student dorm's walls and ceiling just to run cables through and connect our PCs together in 1998. We had no phone line and no internet, but nothing was going to stop us.
TA was mind blowing, i played TA on a Pentium 100, 25 years later I still play this game
The successor is alive and well in the free to play BEYOND ALL REASON That needs more exposure.
A couple points I'd like to mention. For one, I was really hoping that when you were discussing the unique economy of TA, you'd mention the _other_ unique part about it - that every attack you make on the enemy, that you fail to capitalize on, merely gives your enemy a boost in resources. Almost every unit and structure leaves behind a wreck, which can provide a massive boost of metal income to whichever side can swoop in to reclaim it, so if your army breaks on the enemy's defenses their wrecks will only serve to fuel the enemy's war machine.
The other point is about TA's imitators and 'successors', and on that point there's a surprising title from two decades back, called The Outforce. On the surface it doesn't seem much like TA, what with the lack of terrain and the space setting, but as soon as you play a bit of it you realize just how similar it is - the streaming resources, the tech upgrades through buildings, and even the physics - despite having no "vertical" component, the game still has some use of physics, such as when towing buildings and wrecks. I think it's an interesting title to delve a little into, if you're looking at the various titles TA has influenced.
The soundtrack for Total Annihilation was truly amazing for me playing it back when I was just 9 years old
Years ahead of it's time, and totally unexpected, TA is one of a handful of games (Quake, System Shock 2, Warcraft III, Shogun Total War) that has ALWAYS been installed on every single PC I've owned since the 90's, to this day.
In fact, just yesterday I played through the Core Contingency again, only now I play on a 4K OLED 43" TV (in 1440p) and I've added a handful of changes (much more aggressive AI, an increase to unit cap in skirmish, and excellent map packs) to the game. But thats it, the game still holds up today. It's just as intense and unique as it always was. It stood alone in the RTS world from the beginning, and did it's own thing.
I remember the only thing that frustrated me about the game was that PC's of the era had a hard time running it. I had a relatively great PC back in 1996/7, a vanilla Pentium 200 which ran anything from Quake to Carmageddon to Tomb Raider at smooth framerates. But TA was very power hungry, even at 640x480 with shadows and shading off, multiplayer games could get choppy. As the years went on, my friends and I we never stopped playing. When we finally all had Pentium 3 550's in the early 2000's, that opened up a different generation of TA. Then again, with the first Core 2 Duo CPU's, we could play in 1080p with 500 units on the larger maps, and it became even more epic. And now today, it's so amazing to play on a 4K TV in 1440p with absolutely EPIC battles with thousands of units on screen.
Supreme Commander failed to capture what TA had. We all dreamed of TA 2, but neither SupCom or Planetary Annihilation, while both decent games, come close to replicated what TA is. And that's truely all we wanted, was a revisioning and streamlining of an already perfect game. Same way none of the Dawn Of War sequels captured the original Dawn Of War's gameplay and magic.
Maybe one day, I live in hope! :D
I replayed the original and Core Contingency a few months back and they 100% do hold up. The units are more memorable in it than SupCom, Planetary Annihilation, Ashes of the Singularity and all of the other games that followed after it. Having said that, I'm really looking forward to Beyond All Reason.
Awesome video! Thanks very much from the UK.
Fantastic content, subbed
This was an amazing video, i don't think i really thought about a full historical breakdown of Supreme Commander like this. I at least played a little Total Annihilation, though that was mostly because i recall the box art from when i was younger. Something in my mind kept it there for a long time and i got it a few years back, i realized while playing a little that i got a little to used to modern games telling me what to do because, i figured out that i could build buldings and units around mission 4 or 5... i want to restart the campaign and relaern what i was supposed to learn...
thank you mate!
Seeing as Chris Taylor has spoken here there isn't much I can add, but "I was there", when TA first came out, and it was one of most played games of my childhood.
As far as I'm aware RTS can be divided into two families, the "stockpile resource" and "balance resource" ones. First ones, like Warcraft, C&C, AoE have usually a limited amount of resource on the map and few (if any) options to sustain economy indefinitely. The second ones are based on having limited storage capacity, where you "use it or lose it".
The second type was Total Annihilation, and as far as I'm concerned there have been only one successor, essentially a direct remake, Supreme Commander. Because till today people who love this kind of game play SupCom, a.k.a FAF - Forged Alliance Forever. I know there were attempts and there are current developments, but nothing really dethroned the SC:FA experience.
Currently possibly the most popular RTS is AoE2:DE, which I love and play. But every RTS where I can't just zoom out to a strategic view, where I can't zoom in to single unit, where I cannot QUEUE ORDERS, not to mention stuff like split-screen, customisable minimaps etc - all that is not even about the game's main content, it's about the USER EXPERIENCE when playing RTS. Nothing came as close to perfection as FA. Shame.
I loved Demigod and Age of Empires Online.
Thanks for the great video guys. One of the best RTS games ever made and a timeless classic
This was my all time favorite RTS.
Great retrospective on a game I have fond memories of growing up :)
thanks!
Great video! TA and SA are some of my all time favorite games.
Damn, I forgot this game has one of my favourite soundtracks of all time.
Since the disk had Redbook music, got plenty of time in the cd player in the car.
The Music, with a capital M! I still remember going to school 50 min away and listening to the soundtrack. The soothing music on the way to school and the action music for my way home. Ready to play until the sun went down. Also, and unrelated, this is also one of the first games I ever stole from Circuit City, for those that remember ;)
Man, seeing the precursor to Sup Com is great! I’ve been doing my own dive into gaming history, looking up some old RTS games i remember seeing the boxes for like the Earth 21xx series to see the obvious CnC influence, but to find out its from Germany. Or finding a warcraft 3 clone i enjoyed but wasnt smart enough to get very far in as a kid, only to find its from the Ukrainian studio that makes the Stalker series and is based off their take on an Age of Empires kinda game. So great seeing history like this!
There are also a lot of modders that are making insane progress on the original TA engine, today you can play TA in 4k with higher resolution texture, higher frame rate with full tab support and lots of QoL updates
Great close-up look at the history of the game and what made it so great. By the way, what is the song playing during the BAR interview around 1:15:00? Those horns caught my attention...
Loved the Brawler unit, such a badass plane
If you ever read Postal's guide to core. the shadow bomber gets its own entire page.
this is how good the game is, some units need an entire page just to describe what they are capable of and how good they are.
TA was insane.
Back in the day my buddy and i had a session that started around 10pm and lasted until around 6am. It was over when the first nukes went flying, i had more defense missiles and more nukes than him and had air superiority.
Oh boy! I love TA Content!
If anything, I already loved TA because it allowed me to play with planes and land them on AIRCRAFT CARRIERS! I also really liked how some of the guns had serious range.
You should have BadGhosts' channel in the description and end card.
Grew up on TA, man. That shit was great.
oh man, so many nights spend playing TA with friends
Yes! You mentioned zero-k! one of my favourites!