COMMAND & CONQUER REMASTERED arrives on PC in June

Electronic Arts have confirmed that their remastered collection of the venerable Command & Conquer video games will arrive on 5 June this year.

The collection consists of:

• Command and Conquer: Tiberian Dawn (1995)
• Command and Conquer: Tiberian Dawn - The Covert Operations (1996)
• Command and Conquer: Red Alert (1996)
• Command and Conquer: Red Alert - Counterstrike (1997)
• Command and Conquer: Red Alert - The Aftermath (1997)

The collection also features the bonus content from the PlayStation edition, Command and Conquer: Red Alert - Retaliation, including exclusive FMV sequences which have never before been integrated into the PC version of the game.

The collection also marks the formal renaming of Command and Conquer as Tiberian Dawn (its long-standing, unofficial subtitle) and features a total overhaul of the soundtrack by the original composer, along with exclusive new music and restored tracks cut from the original release and bonus tracks brought in from the first-person shooter spin-off, Command and Conquer: Renegade.

The remaster is a re-vamping of the original games in higher resolution but otherwise untouched, so they are still 2D, sprite-based games. It will be possible to switch between the original, low-res sprites and the revamped graphics at will (in single-player mode). The iconic, cheesy FMV sequences have also been upscaled using the original recordings where possible or with AI algorithms where not.

If successful, the initial remaster collection could be followed by additional ones for the later games in the series: Command and Conquer: Tiberian Sun (1999), Red Alert 2 (2001), Command and Conquer: Generals (2002), Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars (2007), Red Alert 3 (2008) and Command and Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight (2010), and their assorted expansions.

Those hoping for a remastered collection of the same studio's Dune series of strategy games may be disappointed, as the Dune licence now lies with another studio, Funcom, making a re-release unlikely in the near future.