Day[9]'s Nostalgia RTS Gaming - KKND Xtreme

I've abruptly decided that, instead of playing Project Zomboid today (we're 100% playing tomorrow), we are going on a nostalgia trip and playing the old school RTS KKND XTREME! This game rules!!!!
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[@VodShod]

"His location is vague. We couldn't able to triangulate, but we quadrilateralized pentagonally"

[@Sanadis]

I would love to see Day9 play Total Annihilation. That game was so far ahead in graphics and gameplay considering it also came out in 1997, even without mods.

[@althaz]

I don't know about graphics. There were two shades of grey and three of brown. It looks awful. What was revolutionary about TA was the game design. Sure, the fact that it used polygons definitely enabled a lot of that, but the graphics themselves are pretty bad by any standards.

[@smobro]

TA Pro mod is out now and they have a matchmaker lobby now too, it's awesome!

[@FizzyWM]

@@althaz the graphics were incredible back then! It was one of the first RTS games to ever use 3D models, and I distinctly remember how highly praised it was for being visually stunning because that’s why my dad was willing to buy it.

[@MrBenderNr15]

I heared RTS from 1997 and immediately went to the comments to praise TA too. It was the first video game I ever saw and I still love it today.

[@MythrilZenith]

Love TA. Its resource and physics systems were amazing.

[@emanluca3753]

Day9’s boyish love for nostalgia, never ceases to make me happy.

[@althaz]

The single best thing about KKnD was the manual. An absolute masterpiece of comedy (intentional).

[@Laura-qo9cc]

One of my childhood memories is being at Walmart with my mom to get KKND when it came out. My mom told me to ask the cashier if they had the game I wanted, so I asked her if they had KKND. My mom was like She's not going to know what that means, whats it really called? and little 7 year old me then asks this older lady for Krush, Kill, and Destroy. Oh, what an embarrassing memory. Thanks mom.

[@phychmasher]

That's so awesome. Mine is a lot like yours but my game was "Toe Jam & Earl Panic on Funkatron" hahaha

[@trezenx]

KKND truly is one of the weirdest and greatest RTS' games.

[@samuelstyles5031]

@Axel Ave starcraft was in inspired by warcraft, weirdo nothing to do with kknd

[@bartz0rt928]

the "mission complete" sound is the exact same effect that Jazz Jackrabbit 2 uses for menu selection!

[@hablahei1]

"This is the music that plays when you are about to give a speech that's at least 20 minutes long and you really have to take a shit" - rofl this had me in stitches

[@lMarcusl]

When I was a kid my brother got a CD from a friend that was packed full off all sorts of cracked games, a lot of those were RTS. There was Dark Reign, Dark Colony and KKND, among other things. For some reason KKND was the only game on the CD that didn't run so I never got to experience this madness.

[@Tr0tim]

I finished all 3... man, what a childhood haha Dark Reign actually still holds up and has an active online fan community updating the game

[@DissonusWren]

Dark Colony was my fav of the three

[@phychmasher]

WOW I somehow JUST FOUND THIS! I'm 41 and a big Day9 fan so you can imagine my levels of excitement right now!

[@EsmereldaDelgada]

The diarrhea bit at 20:00 - 21:03 is hilarious. A perfect example of the comedy technique of making something funnier by being very specific.

[@BlockheadJiujitsu]

I was crying, my god

[@svovy5358]

You: Mom, can we get Starcraft? Mom: We have *Starcraft at home* Starcraft at Home: Building ReAdY!!!

[@xnopyt-aaajjj]

That shriek in the music sounds like a unit death sound effect. It's like the video game equivalent of hearing a car horn in a radio ad while driving.

[@mitchimusmaximus1]

I loved this series! I played KKND 2 when I was a kid. Loved playing the 3rd race... the farming robots! I still remember picking the best place for my mobile oil derricks!

[@vladkostin7557]

Seeing this is like discovering memories from a past life. I feel like there is a total of two neurons retaining some faint memories of playing this XD

[@LordChaos36]

Thank you Day9! I already gave up years ago to remember what game I played 20 years ago. Thank you so much! Nostalgia!

[@Nakkarusu]

I’m looking forward to it if he plays Total Annihilation. Just such a good game for its time. The soundtrack was something else!

[@MythrilZenith]

Heck yeah it was. First game I ever played to use full orchestra music, with adaptive music for in-combat and out-of-combat that actually worked (most of the time). One of Jeremy Soule's early great works.

[@phychmasher]

I remember trying to play KKND with my friend Mike in 1997. Everything was dial-up and I kept trying to connect to him and suddenly my computer modem would have the sound of his voice picking up his phone saying "hello? hello?" Man we will never have times like that again!

[@LifelineSoF]

This is pure nostalgia. Loved this game and its sequel.

[@jplayer073]

This was awesome. Now I need more nostalgia RTS videos asap. Also, the point about atmospheric vs 90s game music is something I've thought about a lot. Most of my favorite game music is from that time and it's rare that I'll find a modern game where I think the music is noteworthy.

[@HaploidCell]

Shawn, I need you to understand that I will absolutely watch all of this video, but also my siblings and me were ADDICTED to KKND 2 Krossfire. Like, seriously, we played that game for so long. I think it might have been our first RTS, but I'm not sure how Settlers II plays into this? We played that game until we couldn't any more because like the disk broke and compatibility issues with the new hardwares cropt up ...... I dunno any more. See you in the vid! Would love to see a second part to this, is all im saying. so if you're ever wondering what retro game to play ...... get into that krossest of krossfires. XD

[@Phagocytosis]

Used to love this game as a kid, still think about it occasionally. I always just set all my military units to produce infinitely, and then be surprised at what new units popped out whenever I got new resources coming in. Possibly not strategically optimal, but it sure was fun.

[@xiricada7121]

Oh boy! I used to play this game a lot. Thanks for showing it to us, Sean!

[@NotTheWheel]

Day9 has entered the "Dad showing you what they thought was cool" phase

[@orrije]

Thank you for playing one of the best RTS's of the 90's!

[@whatdothlife4660]

Have you played War Wind?

[@HaploidCell]

Made it through, only took me a week in portions. Can't wait for more, this was pure nostalgia *thumbs all the way up*

[@mcmarkmarkson7115]

One of the best RTS ever made

[@OksanaSean]

Sean revisits old RTS games!! This was amazing. I hope he plays Krossfire. I absolutely loved this!!!

[@ioannidistheofilos9745]

KKND Krossfire which is the sequel to this was actually a great RTS!!! had so much fun playing it back in the day!

[@jericohellsangel594]

Half way through the video it occured to me that the elephants with cannons are supposed to be... mammoth tanks.... If thats the joke that they were going for.

[@onkelpappkov2666]

Oh snap!

[@empty5013]

i work with some of the devs of this game, they talk about it often, seems like they had a lot of fun making it

[@Tr0tim]

What are they doing nowadays? Great to hear

[@empty5013]

@@Tr0tim we most recently have been working on age of empires remakes and assisting aoe4

[@Gunbudder]

Dark Colony is the best RTS ever made! It was developed by Rockstar lol

[@HaploidCell]

Oh man, I love this cheating AI thing so much. I believe it was in a Day9 video that I learned something about 90s-era games: Back then, each gaming company had to write their own graphics engine? Like, it came across as an explanation why these games had no staying power: at some point, they simply stopped functioning with more modern graphics drivers, DirectX and the like? IIRC that is one of the reasons we had to stop playin this game. That or my mom had the game disc "disappeared" because she thought this was game was a bit too "Xtreme" for us. But that brings me to the cheating AI: if game devs had to first code a graphics engine to work with - because they couldn't license one (because that simply wasnt a thing yet / profitable yet) - they probably had to cut some corners elsewhere. And that's why the AI cheats. It's hard to make a good AI, the balancing issues that crop up, etc. So an easy way to raise the difficulty is probably to just give the AI additional resources of a specific value, like "spawn units at time index 20:00 minutes for resource value 2000" or something. Or just do that math on your calculator and then programm waves of certain units spawning in, like "5 gunners, 2 tanks and 3 motorbikes at minute 4 in this mission". You could let the AI figure this stuff out on its own, but lets be real, this one is rebuilding its base right where the old one was *while you're still wrecking it*. So clearly they didn't put too much emphasis on the I and AI.

[@gdziejestmojpies]

Few days ago I've completed kknd campaign with both races. Snipers and Wild Harry's ftw! Now I Play kknd2 campaign :)

[@FriscoFX]

Honestly thought I was the only one hahah KKND was my introduction to RTS games and then SC1 claimed my life

[@SenseiTumbleweed]

OOHHH MYYY GOOSSSHHH! I USED TO PLAY THIS ALL THE TIME AS A KID! Such a great game with developers with a sense of humor.

[@dfg12382]

RTS-Sean will forever be the best Sean

[@XaKeR167]

Kknd was really cool and unique game.

[@Bragdras]

I really hope he tries KKND II at some point, the sequel is so good

[@Tol1as]

As I told D9 this content is leagues ahead of AoE4. We need Nostalgia RTS day EVERY WEEK!

[@chrishaselden]

I loved KKND

[@ollllj]

KKND was pretty good and novel for its time. it had vastly superior visuals do RTS of its time (even compared to CnC), its style hit a unique nice, but personally, it was by far not as polished as DarkReign (very balanced and tricky). (all are 1997 games, replaced by starCraft in 1998) kknd is the betamax underdog when compared to CnC, both games where equally flawed, cnc just had a much higher budget.

[@onkelpappkov2666]

I just wanted to tune in for some nostalgia, then Sean starts talking about game development and does jokes, now I've watched the whole thing. It's a trap!

[@fakename9500]

This game has great potential. I wish there was a version with better controls. Loved playing this when I was a kid.

[@OpinionatedSkink]

WOW I completely forgot about this game! Please do "Z" next!

[@Alex-fn2hl]

This game is actually quite funny! Nothing too complex but it's silly. You should consider playing Supreme Commander for RTS nostalgia trip!

[@lpil]

The music for this game is so damn good

[@lpil]

could do with a few more tracks

[@diraska]

:D :D :D :D Krush Kill n Destroy!!! Giant Crab tanks!! yesssss. Great game, many happy memories from this ridiculous game.

[@Buffgamer89]

I remember playing a DOS demo version of this as a kid and it blew my fucking mind

[@ExoduS_AU]

In the intro at the end the narrator says "and it is... for keeps"

[@vans2548]

So this is where day9 got his music taste...

[@88Lee]

I played KKND2:Krossfire so much with my cousin.

[@Morvagor82]

KKND, loved it. Played lots of it on private LAN parties.

[@antifusion]

I had a previous video at 1.5 speed and this came on and I thought it was "normal" :)

[@PaulKellyy]

Omg I remember this game. So good

[@samuelprescott7426]

The woman was 100% a Kiwi, you could hear her accent

[@Dodgethis1337]

i remember KKND cross fire, holy shit man that was insanely good.

[@ollllj]

8:00 1997 we may still have believed that even in a post apocalypse, there are still oil wells that easily reach the surface. 9:15 yes, one of the few 97 RTS with control groups. 23:00 hotkey control group on enemy buildings yay 26:10 + 27:15 + 32: 20 "building ready" 28:25 all computer AI opponents cheat, but this may slowly change with Nvidia-RTX-like-GPUS, that use AI to pre-calculate large matrices (not on the GPU, but on server farms), and then use dedicated tensor-core-hardware to quickly compute compressed-AI-trained-matrices back into smart trained behavior. This is currently only used to upscale+sharpen images, but tensor cores are just very specialized linear-algebra-cores (optimized for (compressed) sparse-matrices), and this has more general AI applications (though the training-phase is still very inefficient) 39:30 this is literally a lot like the math finals paper of Sean S. Plot (you can read the pdf online), and apparently it was good enough for USC. 53:00 the insane difficulty of this game (and its insufficien ui even for its time, in its free demo) made me lose all interest in this game forever. 59:00 crushed by agility

[@epmtotalwar]

Flamio Hotmen doing work

[@Gajaczek93]

this is literally the game of my childhood

[@Malfashoud]

OH GOD MY NOSTALGIA. THE HYPE IS REAL.

[@gfdgdfgdfgdfggfdgdfgdfgdfg9709]

I hope you play Krossfire next. I played that recently and it is fun. With all it'S flaws this Xtreme is still so much better than Command and Conquer. I just like KKNDs units so much better than the c&c units... if Babylon5 would be a video game, KKND would be it... As the best game designer in the world I gotta say, the pathfinding in SC2 is unironically abysmal. It's super effective and super fast in processing power, because it's using the method used on flying units where units with the same movementcommand target do not collide with each other, but only push each other away with increasing force the closer they get in case they intersect. This is extremly cheap in calculation and makes pathfinding very simple and bug free. BUT this is absolute trash design any good game dev would avoid, because it makes the units feel vaporous, amorphous, not real. In Broodwar the units feel absolutely solid, real like you can feel them, if you would touch the screen. This is one of the many design flaws in SC2.

[@onkelpappkov2666]

A memory of a fleet of battlecruisers condensed into one has been awoken.

[@dahelme]

I hope you continue this. There are so many interesting old rts games, but not a lot of content for them on youtube. If you want to see something really unique but still good check out Leviathan/ the tone rebellion.

[@grae7229]

Why this vod wasn’t title The Heart of Darkness, I’ll forever wonder. But, the extended character study of one man’s descent into madness belongs in a museum.

[@FightingForceSoulless]

You know, KKnD 2 had some great humor, but, the first game had better jokes, the actors, the lines, this was a classic. That being said, KKnD 2 is the better game, better looking, much better soundtrack, it's harder, challenging, really, tough as old boots, more interesting, three factions, more upgrades. Constructibles, more missions, more challenges, you should play it even if you don't like this one, because it's better.

[@smobro]

I think Day 9 would really like Beyond All Reason it's my favorite RTS at the moment.

[@FightingForceSoulless]

6:14 that's incorrect, right? You do get a minimap, after you upgrade the main building, the Clanhall or whatever it's called? The building where infantry is also made? 33:27 You can put your Saboteurs in to bolster that level, or, if the enemy puts three Saboteurs in this building, it goes down, you can upgrade the buildings to level 5 in later missions

[@SingleMaltSmash]

I just realized what they did with the elephant... MAMMOTH TANK lmao

[@escanor3394]

Please play Total annihilation or TA kingdoms sometime for awesome 90s RTS

[@whatdothlife4660]

Did you ever play War Wind? I dumped a lot of hours into that RTS.

[@hyperteleXii]

I'd love to see you play Z. There are videos of that game on youtube but no commentary.

[@HaploidCell]

"Alrighty then" XD XD XD

[@TimeSpaceCondominium]

Damn Day9 should play Battle Realms

[@sopppa]

oh man... as a boomer brazilian gamer i played the shit out of kknd demo/freeware (or that game with the missile crabs) that came in a old cdrom game magazine

[@danielfeenandes]

OMG i love this game, what a nostaaalgia

[@jimmyring8543]

I would like to see him play the RTS game Z from 1996.

[@lordlavapop42]

god i love kknd2

[@AlphaSquadZero]

Is there a reason not to build the refineries next to the derricks?

[@gianpierobrisigotti9491]

with the alchemy hall you can upgrade your buldings to make new things x.x

[@vernaute2803]

Why does the military superior in this game look like what you'd imagine to be sean's dad.

[@siljeaase4423]

Does anyone know of another game that used the scream of 8:11? There was a medieval RTS that used it!

[@Piqcked]

Man I don't remember Command and Conquer to have giant scorpions.

[@colonelstabby]

Where can I get the song with the screaming woman? I can't find it in the ost.

[@Nights57]

This game had completely vacated my memory

[@Phagocytosis]

Did Day[9] ever end up playing Z? I couldn't find it, but with a name like that, that game is really hard to search for. Keep finding StarCraft games where at least one of the players is playing Zerg…

[@andreisircuta5651]

I just finish it again 1 month ago.... again :D btw, I think it is better then KKND 2

[@ArgonautJasonLoL]

The text communication is absurd. And it just keeps being absurd

[@olqu1352]

hahaha no fucking way, i loved that game!

[@acetylcholine3]

BUILDING READY!!!!!!!!!!!!1

[@radscorpion8]

i hope he plays ZZT next for some ultra nostalgia

[@HaploidCell]

Maybe the game doesnt cheat in the campaign, and it's different for multiplayer with AIs ?

[@pearl2590]

2:38:23 is too good man

[@nunyabizz3357]

they quadrilateralized pentagonally. genius.

[@Tr0tim]

oh hell yeah

[@andreisircuta5651]

Btw, I'm a game developer and I want re make a remake after KKND Xtreme, but I need to team up with an artist. So if any of can create the art, please ping me ;)

[@KawaiiKate88]

I love this game i played it when it came out and still play it to this day, the only issue is the game is horribly unbalanced. the evolved faction is far more powerful than the survivors, and playing the campaign on evolved might aswell be easy mode. also each faction most powerful unit is their final troop choice the giys with antimaterial rifles you mass a few of those and literally no other unit stands a chance it's rediculous that the most powerful unit is just a troop unit not any of the giant tanks, or giant monster with guns on their back just a guy. still i love this game it has an awesome soundtrack.

[@mangrey2361]

If you want to go TotalA ... then you might as well play Supreme commander forged allaince. and then take a look at FAF :)

[@MeakerSE]

Building now smarter

[@philippbeckonert1678]

: Where did you get the game?

[@Strauss-]

it's not even KKND 2 Krossfire lmao