Command and Conquer

While Dune 2 may be the granddaddy of realtime strategy (RTS) games, Command and Conquer (or C&C) is the father of the genre. It followed in the tradition set by Dune 2, and set the standard for RTS to come. Similar to Dune 2, there was the need to build up a base, gather resources, produce an army and destroy the enemy.

The story line is simple. The bad guys (Brotherhood of Nod) are going to take over the world, so the Global Defense Initiative has to stop them. Each side has similar units (base, resource harvesters, foot soldiers, vehicles) but there are also differences. To get better units, you need to build certain buildings. There are also structures that you can build to help defend your base. And there was the superweapon, the trump card for each side, such as the ion cannon for the GDI and the nuclear missile for Nod.

The missions were not limited to the "build the base, build the army, destroy enemy" type. There were also missions in which you were given a limited number of units to achieve a certain objective (kill a certain enemy, escort a certain friendly unit to a certain location, etc.) These were sometimes more difficult as you are unable to build units to replace those lost during combat.

C&C was but the first of a whole series. Recently, EA has released Command and Conquer: The First Decade, which is a compilation of the C&C series released to date. I tried to capture a screen shot of C&C playing it on Windows XP, but as you can see from this post, I was not able to get the screenshot successfully.

Command and Conquer at Wikipedia
Command and Conquer Series at Wikipedia