I know precisely what I was doing on this week 25 years ago, give or take. While the exact release date of games wasn’t always as set in stone back then, especially on PC, we know that roughly this week marks the 25th anniversary of the release of Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2. One of the greatest games of its kind, it today inspires sorrow and joy in me in almost equal measure.
25 years ago, eleven-year-old Alex would have been excitedly tearing through his local Comet store looking to see yet, then heading home, installing… and watching one of the greatest video game intros of all time.
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 – Intro, Opening Cinematic 4K Watch on YouTube
A masterwork of pre-rendered full motion video storytelling, it’s simultaneously strangely well-shot and unmistakably cheap. These were the days when C&C was proudly presented by Westwood, not EA, and so the big-splash play of getting people off Battlestar Galactica or WWE Wrestlers or the like hadn’t emerged yet. You instead get jobbing actors, usually known for relatively thankless work on telly (RA2’s US president later played the Vice President in 24, for instance) instead undertaking equally thankless work in the realm of video games.