Month: May 2020

The anticipation continues to build around the upcoming release of the Remastered Command & Conquer / Red Alert games. I am waiting with baited breathe as it were. Especially with so much insanity currently about in our world, from fear of the COVID-19 pandemic to seemingly meaningless things like masks becoming politically charged topics, the release of this game not only heralds with it numerous hours of gaming enjoyment but also the promise of plenty of nostalgia to go with it. Right now that is something I know I could sorely use between this crazy world we live in and the impact that craziness is having on my life personally now. I know plenty of you are in a similar situation!
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve probably been playing more video games since the stay at home orders went in to effect than I have at any point in the last several years and my video game library has grown by a few titles in that same time period (sadly I can’t say I have completed any games in that same virus time period so I definitely have plenty of catch-up to do to finish up some of these new and old games before jumping in to more… which is easier said than done with all of the game sales that have been going on… but I digress). Some of those games have been new titles that have been a lot of fun while a handful have been re-releases of older titles, whether they be under a Remastered or Definitive Edition type label, and have been as much fun or more so than I remembered them being from years ago (which is my hope with the new C&C/RA Remaster release in a couple weeks). I look forward to firing up my MCV for the first time in 4K and start cranking out some Mammoth Tanks to go after NOD! Or fire up some Tesla Coils for base defense as the Soviets in Red Alert! All of those bring back memories of fighting with DOS to free up enough base memory to play the game well on my 386 along with all of the other hacks and tricks necessary to play games back in those DOS days. There’s a lot of great old memories of days and years past well before any of this pandemic stuff. Each of those re-releases definitely brought with them those memories of video gaming days past and a hope that someday soon we can get back to the corner Gamers Cafe, office LAN parties and video games galore…. wait…. Internet Cafe’s and LAN parties may not be coming back as they were already gone from our previous “normal” but a man can dream still can’t he? – Tom S.