Welcome to today's history corner story-time with Uncle Crushy.
Most modern players on CnCNet are only familiar with the lobby we have today which was designed by FunkyFr3sh, Iran and others. The modern lobby is vastly superior to what we had before and features game room names, friends list etc. The old lobby was very basic, here is a reminder of what it looked like:
Regardless, the old lobby had some very nostalgic times. There were many well documented players playing in those days (late 2000s to 2013) such as Ehy, Robskate and NastyNate. There wasn't really much of a clan element and I would say in general the old lobby had a less toxic atmosphere. People just played games - there were very few players playing in those days and so everyone kind of knew everyone.
Some players who modern pros may not heard of included:
- DizzyMan - An American best known for being a strong tanker and good builder on maps like P4 and HJK6, he was pretty strong player even by today's standards. I believe he retired from the game around 2014. He was a member of MAN clan. There are several videos of his play on YouTube for example:
- Cousinsmash - He was a very strong tanker who was capable of beating anyone in a 1v1 and performed very well in tournaments. He was active in the MPlayer days in early 2000s (forget his old username) and returned to CnCNet, playing from around 2012-2015. He was very influential in my own personal development to becoming "pro" as I sparred with him lots and lots of games on several maps playing 1v1 (mostly P4 and Path Beyond). Playing against smash was how I learned shifting and Q while I was a nubenator.He is best known for winning a strong Union Break 2v2 tournament in 2014 where he partnered Ehy to defeat some very strong teams such as At0m1 & Turret, Nate & Yuzgen:
- NaughtyLove - This guy was really talented. He didn't play for long at all maybe 1-2 years around 2012-2013. He was 2nd ranked place on the very old IGL Red Alert ladder around 2013, behind Ehy. Naughty (aka Matt) was a really nice and helpful guy who was a pleasure to ask questions of when I was starting out. I believe he encountered some real life problems which is why his Red Alert career was short but very successful. He was particularly skilled in Q Master and this first person video shows this: I don't want to flood the page with more videos so I picked these 3 players as the stand outs. If you ever see some random new player come along and feel like their play is very strong, it could be one of these guys hiding! Some other notable names include Danco-Cro (A croatian co-op map fan who had a very distinctive rocketmen defensive build on Ribbon Isle which stumped many a tanker!), Ifuc (A grenadier wizard who was very strong on 4c Niklas and P4 maps) and many many more players. I'll probably do another article with some more videos on this era of CnCNet with some more rare video footage in future! This was a great and happy era of Red Alert history, even if it wasn't the most busy in terms of player footfall.Stay tuned for more Red Alert History Corner with Uncle Crushy! Thanks for reading and don't forget to follow!