The C&C Remastered Collection was released on June 5, bringing two great real-time strategy games from the 90s to the modern PC. I attended a virtual demo of the collection last week to see how it's done, and the graphics have all been redrawn for 4K monitors, and the UI includes modern conveniences like build tabs, unit queuing, and custom hotkeys. But after the demo, I'm more excited to dive into the extras packed into this re-release than I am to replay "Command & Conquer" or "Red Alert." The biggest highlight is four hours of behind-the-scenes footage shot during the filming of the famous live-action cutscenes.

EA sent us this example footage of Westwood's Joseph Kukan, best known for his role as Kane, delivering his lines in front of a green screen; C&C fans all know Kane, but you may not know that Kukan actually directed the FMV scenes for the series up until "Red Alert 2." You may not know that Kukan actually directed the FMV scenes for the series up to "Red Alert 2. The video we saw at the presentation showed Kukan directing and running scenes on the FMV set.

Apparently all of this footage was found at EA's LA studios, on tapes that were supposedly lost in the years since the original developer, Westwood, closed down; C&C's cutscenes were cutting edge in the 90's, and the company's newest production, "C&C," was a big hit in the 90's. It's nice to see a small piece of gaming history being made.

These videos aren't the only extras in the remastered collection. The original "C&C" and the otherworldly spin-off "Red Alert" include all the extended content, including some truly obscure stuff like the Nintendo-64 exclusive "C&C" levels and the PlayStation-exclusive "Red Alert" bonuses. All the Easter eggs are included, including fun park missions, dinosaurs, ants, and console cinematics.

All music from both games is included, including unreleased songs discovered by composer Frank Klepacki; Klepacki is a member of the band The Tiberian Sons, which does rock/metal covers of C&C songs, and about 20 of their cover songs are also included in the music options The music options include about 20 of their cover songs. You can create custom playlists with your own songs and mix them however you like. In other words, you could play Red Alert's Hell March while conquering the world as the Nodo Brotherhood. (By the way, if you've ever wondered what the lyrics to the "March of Hell" are, EA producer Jim Vessella actually asked Frank Kerpacchi. ("It's just gibberish," Kelpacki said.)

I asked EA Vessella if the developers had decided to change anything about balance in the remastered version, or tweak things like unit pathfinding, which was not smart in the old RTS games. However, they found that the campaign missions were designed so tightly that even very small changes in balance data could cause a ripple effect of problems. In general, remasters aim to be as close as possible to the original game, and include options to change graphics from original to remaster on the fly, as well as old and new toggles such as left and right clicks to issue commands. The same toggles are present in the classic music and sound effects and in the remastered, re-recorded version.

There are good reasons for the deviations, for example, the different team colors are more visible in the multiplayer, which now runs on a dedicated server. Hopefully the remaster will revitalize the multiplayer community.

From what I've seen, the newly redrawn graphics look great; they are very true to the original art, only much sharper and cleaner than the low-resolution pixel art designed for 640x480 monitors. The only disappointment in this collection is the quality of the upscaled FMVs; EA uses the same AI upscaling technique used in many texture mods for games like "Final Fantasy 7," but with a mix of human actors and 90s CGI. In these videos, where there is a mix of human actors and 90s CGI, the results are not very pretty. Unfortunately, the source footage of these cut scenes was not kept with the behind-the-scenes tapes. Since they are probably lost forever, an upscaled version is the best we can do.

Still, it's much better than trying to watch these videos in their tiny original resolution, which will be available on June 5 for $20.