Music #27

Command and Conquer: Red Alert

DOS / Windows 95

1996

Miyamoto once said something that stuck in my mind: ““Video Games are bad for you? That’s what they said about Rock ‘n Roll.”

Remember when video-games used to be about ‘rock’n’roll’? Mega Man’s Japanese name being ‘Rock Man’ is a strong indicator of this fact. Rock ‘n’ Roll, that celebration of youthful energy, can be felt in earlier games. Perhaps developers are now old farts or something. But video games have lost the style of ‘rock n roll’. Perhaps this would explain a reason why games like Guitar Hero and all were so popular.

But one of the finest soundtracks is Command and Conquer: Red Alert. Games such as this allowed me to feel spoiled. The game came with two discs so you can play multiplayer with a friend (this never occurs anymore). Even the installation process was an experience. No game has a better installation experience than Command and Conquer. It shows they were thinking of the customer as soon as they popped in the disc, not when they started the game. Why can’t game companies return to that?

Red Alert is an alternate history type of game which was and still is very fresh and rare in gaming. There were no bloody aliens or vampires. The intro featured Einstein using a time machine to go back in time, killing Hitler, and returning to the present. What if Nazi Germany never rose up? The intro raised a very interesting question, something that intros normally do not do. And the answer was that instead of a World War 2, it was a worse war between the allies and the Soviet Union.

The music of this game is absolutely fantastic.This was still near the beginning of the CD revolution, and game companies were really strutting their stuff.

Is this the best menu music ever to grace a game? Keep listening for a while…

The music doesn’t sound dated at all (at least to me). Here are the ending credits:

More music:

Trenches

Smash

Roll-Out

If video-games want a renaissance, perhaps they should think back to the days where they weren’t trying to be so serious (but not goofy as Red Alert 2 and 3 are) and get back to the youthful explosion of rock-and-roll.