Command & Conquer hid a secret many players never discovered. The “Funpark” and “It Came from Red Alert” campaigns let players abandon conventional warfare to face dinosaurs and mutant ants.

When people talk about legendary video game easter eggs, Diablo II’s cow level usually comes up first. Far fewer players know that one of the defining real-time strategy franchises, Westwood’s Command & Conquer, also hid bizarre surprises beneath its serious geopolitical conflicts.

On the surface, this might not sound shocking for a science fiction game. However, the early Command & Conquer titles took themselves quite seriously, which made these hidden campaigns stand out sharply from the tone of the main experience.

The original Command & Conquer, released in 1995, is set in the near future after a meteor introduces a mysterious substance known as Tiberium to Earth. Two factions clash over it: the UN-backed Global Defense Initiative seeks to eliminate it, while Kane’s Brotherhood of Nod aims to control it.

The sequel, Command & Conquer: Red Alert, tells a wildly different story. In an alternate version of World War II, Albert Einstein travels back in time to assassinate Hitler, reshaping history so that the Soviets and the Allied forces battle for control of Europe. This entry embraced a far more playful, sometimes comedic tone.

C&C’s Secret Campaigns

The hidden missions were tucked away in the games’ main menus, styled after the military-machine aesthetics of the 1990s. Accessing them required a specific trick, which varied slightly between titles.

In the original Command & Conquer, players had to hold the Shift key and click the four bolts surrounding the menu options. This unlocked “Funpark,” a campaign centered entirely on dinosaurs. In Red Alert, performing a similar action on the speaker icon revealed the “It Came from Red Alert” missions.

“Funpark” introduced triceratops, velociraptors, and tyrannosaurus rexes that could tear through GDI and Nod units with ease, forcing players to lure and eliminate them one by one. “It Came from Red Alert,” meanwhile, spoofed 1950s and 1960s B-movies, pitting players against massive, fire-breathing ants.

That latter campaign was especially memorable because the game’s manual hinted at its existence through Morse code and cryptic reports. It opened with an iconic scene in which Carville answers a phone call: “Ants? If you’ve got ants in your pants, call an exterminator… How big? What do you mean the southern perimeter has been breached?”

The franchise has continued well beyond Westwood’s era, most notably with the 2020 remastered collection and spiritual successors like Tempest Rising.

Source: 3djuegos