C&C: The First Decade for free

[Maitre]

I bought The First Decade package a year or two back for 20 or 30 bucks, and considered it quite a value. 6 games plus several expansions, most of which were major titles when released. Most of the multiplayer support is long gone, but it is a pretty nice collection for people who like single player RTS and don't need the absolute cutting edge of graphics and complexity. Of course, the C&C games kind of fit in that "If you hate one, you probably won't like the others" category.

I still have the discs from those original releases. The first time I saw C&C played was freshman year of college when we ran LAN games on our floor in the dorm. I still remember the cries of hatred echoing down the hall when my roommate's APC stopped in the middle of an opponents base, discharged 5 engineers who took over the construction yard, refinery, war factory, barracks and the next closest structre, which would then simultaneously disappear beneath the sell cursor on his screen.
I think the hate, for me at least, really came in when Generals was released. I felt that the look and feel of that game was really different than the previous titles and it really lost my interest. Each game had a little bit of its own feel, RA: revisionist WWII with cheap spy movie overtones including the comic explosions (tseeeeeeeeeeeeeer -- ka-Barzh-buh); TS: with the futuristic hovertanks, walking battleunits, and rampant evil AI; RAII: cartoonish graphics and unit sounds, especially in the expansion's "rescue hollywood" mission; Generals: annoying swivelling visual frame with limited range and tons of obstructions, with difficult to control units.
Enough wasted space. Two final comments: I'm still impressed with the "get" of James Earl Jones as the GDI commander in Tiberian Sun, and in the Allied cutscene ending for RAII:YR, I'd go with Lt. Eva, but YMMV.