This Total Annihilation Is Beyond All Reason... A Legend Reborn 

Remember those maps that were just made of metal and you could put extractors everywhere? Those were the days.

Man this was one hell of a game. One of the hidden gems of this game was the soundtrack, classical music just went really well with this futuristic mechanical theme for some reason. And composed by none other than Jeremy Soule of Skyrim fame.

I still love Total Annihilation even to this day.

SupCom and TA are still my favorite RTS of all time. While most other people enjoyed their C&C/RA, AoE, WC, etc... I remained a devoted pilgrim of St. Chris Taylor Church. Not a single thing in our world can replicate the initial sensation of Big Bertha shooting and hitting a distant unseen target across the map. Man... those were the days :)

I'm old, just turned 40. I was 15 when TA came out, it was actually rated as the best game of all time by PC Gamer back then. The graphics were amazing for its time. It would cause a 1997 PC to slow to a slideshow when you got enough units. A lot of fun for its time. If you told me the RTS genre would have kinda died out I wouldn't have believed you at the time. I blame the Starcraft community for simply going to any game that wasn't Starcraft and shitting all over them lol. I got Supreme Commander at launch but only put like 20 hours into it.

One of the things I loved about Total Annihilation that many games still lack was proper height for units on high ground or in a hole and flying units and also for every projectile fired. This means projectiles could fly over units or under units hit a random hill in the Terran hit a different large unit that wasn't even being aimed at or once in a great while things like artillery would hit an aircraft as physical projectiles had an arc when fired. Most games only certain units can fire at air targets and others only at ground with Total Annihilation any unit could fire at anything and the projectiles were modeled as a physical thing that could miss or even hit something it wasn't even aimed at. Sure the short range and slow aiming units were mostly useless against air but it was still technically possible for any unit to hit any other unit.

I remember rushing to make a quick air transport… flying it over to the enemy base… if you’re lucky and the enemy wasn’t paying attention . You can pick up their commander and detonate it over their own base. Instant win!

I remember buying this game at a fleemarket back in 1997, with my brother. We had no clue what this game was about. It is one of the most memorable, playable, replay-ability, and just plain fun it was. The music is iconic, the maps and the units are memorable. It is challenging to do. It wasn't until later in life we added the expansion pack and fell in love with one of the missions where the Core had an experimental unit and if you were not fast enough during the first 10mins of the game... you were gone. Now that was an amazing map to play. So many attempts to beat it!

The BAR's more than just reskin for many reasons. There are more units, buildings. The BAR is the evolution of TA.

Thank you for this video! Really happy to see (more) people that like what we're trying to with BAR/Beyond All Reason. Also great you talked/explained the history - lot's of younger people don't know TA. For me personally, TA had the perfect balance between micro/macro gameplay, and for BAR we've combined that with an even (slightly) larger unit-roster, better balance and with modernized graphics, animations, sounds, AI, etc. We are pretty proud of what we've managed to do so far. Again, thanks for this video! Much appreciated!!!

A SUPREMELY under rated game. I played this game between the ages of 7-10 I'm 30 now and still have nostalgia thinking about it 😍 Does anyone know if there's a 2 player "arcade" version of this?

I remember playing this game as a kid. We bought a family windows 95 pc which came with a bundle of games, including TA, Fallout, Redline Racer and a few others. Loved playing those games back in the day, will be checking out BAR!

TA was a great game. The bugs it had were painfully hilarious. Planetary Annihilation - that... Was different. I would've loved to see SupCom with planets. XD

I remember picking up enemy commanders with an air transport and self destructing :)

Intel, AMD, Cyrix, and you forgot IDT Winchip but that is hardly surprising. Most people did even when they existed.

There is Zero-K as well on steam. It is not that much a replica of supcom or TA, but uses the same economy model, strategic zoom and some more aspects well known from supcom. I am playing the campaign in coop with a friend right now ... no idea how well custom games are.

This was my first RTS game and I played a ridiculous amount of hours for an 11 year old. To this day its still probably my all time favourite RTS.

version from GOG of TA works without problems on windows 10

This game RULED, I remember taking your commander to the enemys base when you knew you were gonna loose to just make some chaos.

This game was way ahead of its time and way underrated.

TotalA was/is amazing.

TA came with a Pentium 2 computer I bought back in the days and I loved it. Enjoyed the gameplay for 10+ years and the graphics were unmatched at the time. In fact, I think some visual/sound effects in TA are still superior to Supcom. The battle noises, exploding fireballs and flying derbies looked much better in TA and gives you a heavy metal and industrial feel, whereas in Supcom they felt a bit more "plastic". Only the nuke/ACU explosion looked better in Supcom.

Thanks for this. Took a stab on TA back in 97 and never looked back. Many hours of fun spent playing it.

I'd be interested if Beyond All Reason lets you import and play the TA campaign or comes up with its own campaign that's at least as good. Not interesting in competitive multiplayer, although I indulge in the occasional coop skirmish VS AI - the problem is finding an AI that provides a moderate challenge without being a pushover.

TA and supcom did something alot of games don't, trajectories on all weapons so if things get I the way they get hit. Have blown an interceptor out of the sky with a big Bertha because of that 😂

2022 and i still play this game and modded versions regularly. The original sound track is mega.

Man TA Metal Heck was my life when I was 6/7 years old. Was terrible at it but I still loved it.

Like the fellow two comments down I could never get into C&C AOE ETC. And this is a faithful remake of TA and it has been made so well and is much better. The team behind it are geniuses and I sure hope they make a fortune from providing such a great game for fans of TA.

The only thing that SupComm is missing from TA is the incredible soundtrack.

2:46 - Nah, WarCraft (1994) (though heavily inspired by Westwood's Dune 2) came out before Command and Conquer (1995), whereas Age of Empires was a relative latecomer, even coming out after Total Annihilation ! (1997) kotaku.com/the-inside-story-of-the-making-of-warcraft-part-1-5929157 And if you've played all the 4 of them, you can clearly see the progress in terms of usability, graphics and scale !

I installed TA just yesterday on Win10. No issues whatsoever. Freaking amazing game. A mix of it and Supreme Commander would be my bestest game evar

I loved building an artillery platform of Big berthas, then turning them lose on an AI's who was starting to dominate the map. So much fun lol

Ahhhhh... Memory overload! I was feeling a bit melancholy for my fave classic games & searched YT. And there you were! 😎👍 Subbed. Curious to see where you go. I do have Supreme Commander, but haven't p[ayed that in awhile. I have played TA since it's original release, though not as often in recent years than when it was launched.😏 I got the GOG Total Annihilation: Commander Pack some years ago. It's pretty easy to get up & running on Win10. You need the "Unofficial Beta Patch v3.9.01" & " Unofficial Beta Patch v3.9.02 DropIn Install" update from Total Annihilation Universe (TA Universe) - home of TA Escalation. It also fixes many things with the old TA. Increasing the unit limit from 250 to 1,500, cleaned up sound, music & graphics. Widescreen support. Beyond All Reason (BAR) looks very interesting! It's still Alpha, but looks good so far. The factions are Armada & Cortex. I'm waiting for it to be beta. TA, C&C, DOOM, Diablo, Warcraft... they were my main games back in the day! I did get Command & Conquer Remastered Collection when launched & it's good, with some issues. But updates have been coming regularly and it get's better every Month. Now... I have to go dig through my archives for all the Unit's & maps I created or modded for TADD, MODbd & others back in the day. I'll need the tools too... HPIview & others from memory! 🤔

Can't wait to join ya for beyond all reason and planetary annhilation!

Best game ever! The soundtrack is still unmatched :)

Had this bad boy running on my Pentium 133mhz, 16mb of Ram and 850mb HDD. The good ole days. Back then it seemed like most games were very well optimised for your system. I rem never having much of a problem playing anything. Now i'm sat at my 32gb, 12core processor, machine with a 3080 gpu. With every word I type I'm reminded of how old I am now xD

thanks man I just found out about BAR this is madness that it's free game - best RTS ever!

In the 90s I absolutely loved TA. At the time I had gaming hub with 8 computers in a garage. I could not understand how and why this game got so little interest from people. Myself and a coleague of mine had a little obsession with this game and thought it was an absolute blast. Thanks for the video! Cheers

Remember spamming a whole bunch of pee wees ? I felt so powerful as the screen filled with plasma balls... But felt so sad after they got wiped out, and realized for the umpteenth time they are too fragile to be cost effective

Guys can you help me? Btw. I'm 40 now and loved this game back in the days here in Switzerland! :) There was also a strategy game from that era where you could build normal battle tanks, marine units and other armored vehicle. But the core units of the game where giant robots (like in pacific rim), with katana swords or other weapons. If you engaged another robot they could lose their arms, legs and upgrades. You could then send some ground vehicle and recover those, research them and unlock those for your robots. I never could remember the name of that game or find it anywhere since sadly. Does anyone remember what the name of that game was? Cheers

BAR = Balanced Annihilation Reloaded

One thing Total Annihilation is still superior to both the spiritual successors that have been released so far is it's visual aesthetic, music. sound and story. I still play it every so often, even been playing today because SupCom despite all the awesome improvements they made with that still falls short of TA in those areas. I really need to check out whether they every finally got that TA inside SupCom mod/game thingy done but looking at Beyond All Reason... I'm not a fan. The graphical level and UI look much better but I think the art style is still quite inferior. No offense to the people who made it though

As a fan of the OG TA, I was never able to get into SC.

U know about ZERO-K??? 🤔🤔

Total Annihilation reworked for modern is available on on Steam for very cheap. The game is owned by Wargaming who make World of Tanks.

This is my first game i played online, on a 56k modem back in 1999 (please do not pick up the phone!) There was a 'big' community there with lots of clans, I was part of a group called 'Goodfellas' and remember a friend called SoD [keeping it private] And there was a ranking system for team battle, free for all and 2 more ranking systems. Also a chat channel and a online profile page I remember the ARM having lvl 1 units that fires a yellow 'circle'. That circle was displayed as a bitmap which required a lot of bandwidth. So it was excluded by the players themselves not to be used ingame (online). And so also the Core equivalent of those units. The 'Gods of war' map was a popular 5 player map. Do you guys remember the Krogoth? Also a very cool map editor came out which allowed for many new and cool maps to be made. I still have the original installation CD's of TA and TA:CC To follow your planes, just assign them to a group. You could then select the group and press T to follow them on screen

I've played a couple bar pvp and it's very fun

There's actually a hotkey you can use to track units. I used to set up my squadrons where several planes would be commanded to 'guard' or follow around a sort of lead pilot, and I would then track that plane. So the other planes would be flying close to the one that you're tracking

This game was so good, considering the hardware and the minimum requirements this is the pound for pound b st RTS ever.

I remember that my friend and I played this in turns (skirmish) like we did with all games before the internet was common. A "fun fact" is that the first PC we had at home could not run the game on the 7 metal islands map. It required 64mb ram (recommended ram amount was specified on each map :D) and that map was to big and there was to many units. Hehe

this game was the best still in my opinion. introduced 3d explosions and 3d air sea land.also first downloadable content. they let you download new units and easily put that file into a folder and its a new unit.or a building

I recommend you check out Zero-K, it's kinda a sister game to BAR, and also free and runs on Spring. It's also inspired by total annihilation but with a much different take, and the game is very fast paced, but you can still feel the influence of Original Total Annihilation.

Beyond All Reason feels like a true modern remake of TA, when I play it it looks and feels like TA, which is an incredible feeling to be able to recreate.

I'm 48 now and used to play the living shit out of this game. So good.

I love how fluid the units movement are. It was more realistic with just that fluidity than most of game today

I was a boneyards core commander, and I was a very proud tester for the development of Supreme commander. I remember seeing anti aliasing in the graphics options way back then and thinking, "whats that?" lol. Ahead of its time.

10:10 ha ha... (engineer got stuck in the factory)

I literally played total annihilation last night. Ive been playing since the early 2000s when i was about 8yrs old. Still play to this day, The game never gets old, it truly is a masterpiece of its time and has aged well for a very fun RTS game.

I use to play so much TA, it's an awesome game

OMFG!!! The greatest game!!!!

sb tell me that BAR has kept these features! 1. solar units fold their panels when attacked, or hit by debris. 2. Sentinel tower. 3. Big Bertha. 4. those assault aircrafts firing multiple rounds while hovering randomly in circles! 5. those bee-like construction aircrafts (such a beautiful hovering simulation...). 6. dragon's teeth (funny yet handy). 7. commander and every other construction unit may assist in every vehicle or building development. 8. commander may capture an enemy building. 9. units and buildings may get hit by friendly fire and various explosions. 10. units grouped using Ctrl+num. 11. various unit order assignments (patrol, stand your ground, go from A to B non-stop). 12. enemy units visible according to radar range. 13. original ambient soundtrack. 14. soundtrack changes mood/track according to gameplay. 15. option to end the game when the commanders are killed.

So, around the 12 min mark you start talking about flying engineers, geothermal energy, and tidal energy. I think that those were originally introduced in The Core Contingency. They might have been base game, but I can't remember at this point.

Windows 10 RTS game ?

Ok... Warcraft 1 came out in 1994 before Command and conquer 1 1995(the difference being that westwood studio made Dune 2 even before warcraft 1 ) and age 1997 total annhilation 97. In most RTS you get an advantage by spending your ressources instantly or as fast as posssible be it to increase eco, army or whatever the plan is. The difference being you basicly lose ressources in total annhilation by not spending in contrast to age or warcraft / starcraft.

Playec it on my P166 compaq presiaro- once windows 98 came out direct x issues were better, even with an onboard soundcard. This and Close Combat were the games of the late 90s.

Loved that game.. Usually sent one of my "builders" to the enemy and started to suck on his things, removing it.. Hilarious.

At 4:56, you mention the 3 processor manufacturers at the time. Cyrix technically didn't just die out, they were bought out by Via which they unfortunately ran into the ground. The Cyrix 6x86 showed a lot of promise at the time as the only competitor to challenge Intel & AMD CPU's. Unfortunately there was a lot of turmoil during this time as IBM was their foundry partner releasing these chips under their own brand. This pissed off Intel which in turn ended up in a lawsuit as they claimed they were an Intel "Clone" and acted as a direct drop in for Intel socket motherboards. The 6x86 series came out with their own model naming scheme such as "PR166+" which was marketing terms for "it was as good or better than an Intel Pentium 166MHz". Again, pissing off Intel and sparked more lawsuits. I personally had a PR150+ back then, and honestly compared to my friends Pentium 133/150/166Mhz machines, I always had lower framerates in games then they did. It really only matched Intel & AMD chips with Windows performance unfortunately, gaming it was always lacking.

I remember getting this game, our computer at the time ran it pretty well, but we often didn't always have enough hard drive space for it (so something always got deleted). My brothers thought it wasn't going to be as good, since we already had Starcraft at the time, but TA just kinda spoke to me. Got it, and my brothers and I played the hell out of it. Krogoth was my favorite unit when Core Contingency came out.

Question dose i only know BAR and Supreme Commander but dose the build power balance in total annihilation is the same as in BAR, cuz BAR you really pay a lot for a factory and you don't get that much build power out of it so it really encourages you to have a single factory with a lot of support while in supreme commander its still more effective to assist a factory but at least for t1 factories its pretty negligible so you don't feel bad for building 12, 16 20 factories. I ask because i really like BAR system in team games but i prefer Sup Com system for when i am solo.

I know TA is probably a great rts for more serious competitive play but for me if reimaginings of TA don't have the explosion effects, the look of the debris, and the soundtrack that responds to game state? It's just not TA for me. Along the same lines, I get why zooming out is a desirable feature but being locked in with all of those previously mentioned features...the screen shaking with explosions etc, it adds to the tense chaotic war experience of TA

I remember creating new units for this game 20 years ago

Without the soundtrack it just dosen't feel the same. TA soundtrack was the only one that has stuck in my mind ever since i played it. Many MANY years ago.

Supreme commander 2 stripped so much from the game :(

as a huge fan of this game and may have the old cd....try and contact if more curious. glad you said something. under the radar and way ahead of everything. caved was fighting westwood and blizzard plus ea and computers weren't popular. systems were and cheaper. our day was original playstation nobody was like this

Ive been waiting for someone to make this video made the year i was born i saw it always at my dads LAN parties im so glad i got to play this amazing game that changed rts

This video makes me feel so old. "The grandfather of RTS" a game that was groundbreaking and new to you when it came out.....

I’m 37 and still play this game, I just played yesterday on steam.

Warcraft 1 and 2 released long before Age of Empires. Warcraft 2, which released in 1995, was huge.

Why put so much effort in getting the game running. Its available on Steam and runs perfectly on Win10 and Win11

I found TA in the discount bin in the local computer store. And got the RTS bug. I bought SC and I love it.

Lord I miss the Blood and Bone Dragoons (a wave of air dropped Mavericks followed by a wave of Necros) God bless the Peewees!

still a damn good game.

I played this well into the 2000's and thought the graphics were super good, but maybe that's my console pleb bias.

It's on steam. And I still LOVE the sound track.

i remember playing this game as a kid, my favourite weapon was that huge cannon or silo rocket, both were consuming a lot of energy and I really mean A LOT, even when you had maxed out energy bar...

Most of the cool stuff has been mentioned, but in addition to all that good stuff, the voiceover narrator was GREAT!

that map in BAR, imo, reminds me of brood war or SC2 i actually think that's pretty cool

This game and kknd 2 are my childhood Favorit rts games, love it

Total Annihilation was the 'Optimus Prime' of RTS Games. Worthy of a remake.

I just reinstalled TA a week ago to get some nostalgic rts action. Now I find out this exists and it's free and its the best!

After I started playing it via modem I starting downloading custom maps I remember it took an hour to download a 5 meg map lol

Played this game a lot on win95. I was 12-13 ish. Such a great game!

Nice video. Horrible music though. Could have used some of the game music, which is awesome!

Warcraft 1 was released in 1994, predating both AoE and C&C

You think if I buy the original TA via Steam it would run on a modern PC?

Oh man!!! I was a huge TA fan back in the day... supcom was awesome also

Vulcan. Rapid Fire Plasma Cannon. I miss it :(

unfortunately not same soundtrack quality.. thank anyway😊

Yooo and its platform independent. Even has Linux support!

I played Total Annihilation on a 100MHz AMD cpu back in the day. Not recommended. But I did anyways because I was poor and this game is awesome.