Total Annihilation under Virtual PC

Normally I try to post about gaming under Virtual PC every Wednesday and Friday. As you may have noticed it has been two weeks since I have posted about gaming - what can I say - things have been very hectic around here. But now Friday is here and Ben has to play :-)

Looking over my shelf of games I saw an old classic that I had not played in a while - Total Annihilation - and much to my joy it runs perfectly under Virtual PC (it also runs under Windows XP - but where's the fun in that ;-).

Total Annihilation was one of the earlier RTS (real time strategy) games to come out - and it was the first one to attempt any form of '3D' effects (though this is all done in software). One of the neat things about Total Annihilation was that game play was greatly affected by the 3D terrain - it is possible to have soldiers on cliff tops sniping on tanks that are unable to return fire because the soldiers are too high.

The other interesting aspect of Total Annihilation was that of the 'Commander' - this was a robot that was capable of healing other units, building new buildings, cloaking to hide itself, and causing mass destruction with its all mighty 'D-GUN'. The problem is that if your Commander dies - then you loose the whole battle - so it was always a calculated risk to send him into battle.

Total Annihilation under Virtual PC

   Total Annihilation under Virtual PC   Total Annihilation under Virtual PC   Total Annihilation under Virtual PC

For the curious - the last screen shot shows my commander cloaked and standing in the middle of the enemy base. In order to pull this off you need to have over ~40 excess solar energy collectors built to power his cloaking module.

Cheers,
Ben