Total Annihilation

Total Annihilation (TA) is a strategy game that was made in 1997, designed for Windows 95. It was the game I grew up watching my father play; the one I dreamed about playing. Now, 14 years and nearly a dozen versions of Windows later, I'm playing it. It's just about the only game that works almost flawlessly on my netbook. I play with a mod called TA: Escalation, and you can see a few screen shots of it (and download link) after the break.

The mod just adds more units and the ability to upgrade others. Since TA was officially discontinued, this is a good way of getting new content. It's amazingly fun. As in every strategy game, there are sides: the ARM and the CORE. I believe they stand for something, but I can't remember. The storyline is that there's basically a war raging across millions of planets. TA: ESC promises to add a new race in the future, called Talon, which should be interesting. The CORE are portrayed at the evil side, and I always end up playing as them against the ARM. The CORE is more destructive, which is helpful in war. You start out with your Commander unit, which can build resource harvesters, small tower weapons, and factories. The 2 resources in the game are Metal and Energy. You can acquire Energy using several different kinds of buildings, like solar generators, windmills, and tidal generators. I won't spoil everything, though. I did install TA with the original disks (yes, from 1997), so I'm not sure how to do so without discs. Google might know. It'd surely be worth the effort. Here's the link to the latest TA: Escalation beta thread on the Total Annihilation forums.