{"title":"Westwood Studios","description":"\u003cp\u003eWestwood Studios was one of the defining PC developers of the 1990s, the Las Vegas studio that helped turn real-time strategy into a mainstream phenomenon. Brett Sperry and Louis Castle met in Las Vegas in late 1983 while both were working as contract programmers, and in 1985 they founded a company together as Brelous Software. Within two months it became Westwood Associates, a name Castle credited to the \"entertainment meets professional\" character of the Westwood neighborhood in Los Angeles, with \"Associates\" added to stress that great games take a team. The early years ran on contract work, porting 8-bit titles to 16-bit systems such as the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST for Epyx and Strategic Simulations, Inc. (SSI), and those proceeds funded original design. Mars Saga, developed for Electronic Arts, arrived in 1988, and BattleTech: The Crescent Hawk's Revenge laid groundwork for the real-time strategy genre with its real-time tactical combat. Eye of the Beholder (1991), a real-time Dungeons \u0026amp; Dragons role-playing game made for SSI, became one of the studio's first great successes, and Virgin Games acquired the company in 1992, renaming it Westwood Studios. A team once known for shipping late had by 1993 earned a name for delivering on schedule and, in Computer Gaming World's words, \"a reputation for good product,\" on the strength of Eye of the Beholder, The Legend of Kyrandia and Dune II, with Lands of Lore following in the same era.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWestwood's greatest commercial success began in 1995 with Command \u0026amp; Conquer. Building on the gameplay and interface ideas of Dune II, it added pre-rendered 3D sprites, video cinematics, a pop and rock soundtrack with techno elements streamed from disk, and online play, and the series that followed earned a Guinness World Records listing for 30 million copies sold worldwide. In August 1998 Electronic Arts acquired Westwood, together with sister company Burst Studios, for $122.5 million as part of its purchase of Virgin Interactive's North American operations. At that point Westwood's games held a 5 to 6 percent share of the PC market, and the studio worked from a 50,000 square foot Las Vegas building with its own motion capture facilities. Sperry worked to keep the two corporate cultures separate, but after Command \u0026amp; Conquer: Renegade and Earth \u0026amp; Beyond fell short of EA's expectations, the publisher announced in January 2003 that Westwood would be merged into EA Los Angeles, and the studio closed for good on March 31, 2003. Its people carried the craft forward, with former staff founding Petroglyph Games in Las Vegas that April and Sperry later co-founding Jet Set Games in 2008. The work itself endures in Command \u0026amp; Conquer The Ultimate Collection, which gathers Westwood's run from the original Command \u0026amp; Conquer and The Covert Operations through Red Alert with Counterstrike and The Aftermath, Tiberian Sun and Firestorm, Red Alert 2 and Yuri's Revenge (built with Westwood Pacific), and the shooter spin-off Renegade - the games that set the pace for a generation of strategy on PC.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"command-conquer-the-ultimate-collection-pc-download","title":"Command \u0026 Conquer The Ultimate Collection","description":"\u003cp class=\"lead\"\u003eCommand \u0026amp; Conquer The Ultimate Collection gathers ten base games and seven expansion packs from the series that defined real-time strategy, starting with Westwood Studios' 1995 original and running through EA Los Angeles' Command \u0026amp; Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight. You can harvest Tiberium for GDI or the Brotherhood of Nod, rewrite the twentieth century in the Red Alert timeline, lead the United States, China or the Global Liberation Army in Generals, and fight on foot in Renegade, the series' only first-person shooter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003eThe Tiberium Saga, Start to Finish\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe center of the collection is the long war between the Global Defense Initiative and Kane's Brotherhood of Nod over Tiberium, the alien crystal that spreads across the planet, transforms everything it touches and pays for both armies. Every chapter is here, along with the expansions that extended each war.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdl\u003e\n\u003cdt\u003eCommand \u0026amp; Conquer and The Covert Operations\u003c\/dt\u003e\n\u003cdd\u003eThis is where it all started. You harvest Tiberium, build out from a construction yard and fight the First Tiberium War as GDI or Nod, with live-action briefings led by Joseph D. Kucan's unforgettable Kane. The Covert Operations adds a set of tougher standalone missions for both sides.\u003c\/dd\u003e\n\u003cdt\u003eTiberian Sun and Firestorm\u003c\/dt\u003e\n\u003cdd\u003eThe Second Tiberium War moves to a future scarred by Tiberium, with cyborgs, subterranean units and the return of Kane. Firestorm picks up after the war, when both sides have to deal with CABAL, Nod's rogue artificial intelligence.\u003c\/dd\u003e\n\u003cdt\u003eRenegade\u003c\/dt\u003e\n\u003cdd\u003eA first-person shooter set during the First Tiberium War. You play Havoc, a GDI commando, fighting your way into Nod bases, climbing into vehicles and seeing the series' familiar units and buildings from the ground.\u003c\/dd\u003e\n\u003cdt\u003eCommand \u0026amp; Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars and Kane's Wrath\u003c\/dt\u003e\n\u003cdd\u003eThe Third Tiberium War begins in 2047 with a nuclear fireball high in the night sky, and the alien Scrin arrive as a third playable faction. Kane's Wrath follows the Brotherhood from the end of the Second Tiberium War through the aftermath of the third and adds six sub-factions that change how each side plays.\u003c\/dd\u003e\n\u003cdt\u003eCommand \u0026amp; Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight\u003c\/dt\u003e\n\u003cdd\u003eThe end of Kane's story swaps traditional base building for mobile Crawlers in Offense, Defense and Support classes, with a leveling system that unlocks new units as you progress. It needs a persistent internet connection and an EA account to play, including the campaign.\u003c\/dd\u003e\n\u003c\/dl\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003eRed Alert: The War That Never Was\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRed Alert starts with Albert Einstein traveling back in time to remove Hitler from history. The result is Stalin's Soviet Union rolling west into Europe. Tesla coils, Tanya's commando raids and Frank Klepacki's Hell March made it a classic almost overnight, and the timeline kept getting stranger from there.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eRed Alert, Counterstrike and The Aftermath\u003c\/strong\u003e - The original Allied and Soviet campaigns. Both expansions add new missions, units and maps to one of the most replayed strategy games of the 1990s.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eRed Alert 2 and Yuri's Revenge\u003c\/strong\u003e - Soviet forces invade the United States, and Kirov airships, Prism Tanks and Chrono Legionnaires join the fight. Yuri's Revenge turns the Premier's psychic advisor Yuri, played by Udo Kier, into the main villain, with his own faction built on mind control.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eRed Alert 3 and Uprising\u003c\/strong\u003e - A doomed Soviet leadership goes back in time to erase Einstein and accidentally creates the Empire of the Rising Sun as a third power. The cast includes Tim Curry and George Takei. Uprising adds four new mini-campaigns, one of them about the origins of the psionic commando Yuriko Omega.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003eGenerals and Zero Hour\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGenerals takes the series into a near-future war between the United States, China and the Global Liberation Army, and it was the first Command \u0026amp; Conquer strategy game built in full 3D. The three sides play very differently: American air power and precision weapons, Chinese massed armor and propaganda-driven hordes, and GLA tunnel networks, scavenged salvage and toxin weapons. Zero Hour adds new campaigns and nine specialist generals, from Superweapon to Stealth, plus the Generals Challenge, a series of battles against AI commanders.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003eCollect, Build, Conquer\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe formula Westwood Studios set down in 1995 still holds up. You gather resources, expand your base, research new technology and build an army strong enough to break the enemy's defenses. Playing through the collection shows how that formula changed over time, from the sidebar build menus and full-motion video briefings of the Westwood years to the 3D battlefields, sub-factions and support powers of the later EA games. EA shut down the online services for Red Alert 2, Generals, Command \u0026amp; Conquer 3 and Red Alert 3 in 2014, so today you play them through their campaigns and skirmish battles against the AI.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eChoose your side, whether that's GDI's discipline, Kane's promise of peace through power or a Soviet march on Washington, and play through fifteen years of Command \u0026amp; Conquer history. Welcome back, Commander.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Electronic Arts","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":38003678412,"sku":"PC_10373096844_DL_GL","price":24.29,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0875\/3268\/files\/card-command-conquer-the-ultimate-collection-pc-ea-app-game.jpg?v=1790448373"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.pjsgames.com\/collections\/westwood-studios.oembed","provider":"PJ's Games","version":"1.0","type":"link"}