EAAnyone who remembers the classic PC title Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 will surely remember that game also boasted some incredibly cheesy live-action cutscenes. Those cutscenes have now been remastered in glorious HD, and yes, they’re still as gloriously cringe-inducing as ever.
We’ve got the YouTube channel ClassiCinematics to thanks for this. They just recently finished an amateur remaster of every single cutscene in Westwood Studio’s fondly reminded real-time strategy game, along with its expansion Yuri’s Revenge.
EAFor added fun, the new versions have been uploaded alongside the originals so we can see just how far video game visuals have come. It’s well worth a look, if you’re into that sort of thing. If nothing else, it’s worth reminding yourself of the big names that appeared in the game, including Tim Curry, Jonathan Pryce, Kelly Hu and JK Simmons.
ClassiCinematics has utilised the kind of AI upscaling technology that modders tend to use when overhauling games in order to add an extra level of shine to the classic cutscenes – and it seems that Red Alert 2 is just the start.
The channel is keen to gradually remaster the cutscenes from as many classic games as possible. At the time of writing, Diablo II is the only other game they’ve completely finished work on alongside Red Alert 2. The next game the team plans to tackle is Warcraft 3.
While the results aren’t quite what you’d see from a professional remaster, it’s an incredible effort that boasts up to 4K at 60FPS. Check out one of the videos for yourself below:
ClassiCinematics writes on its Patreon page that “while it will never look as good as rendering natively at a high resolution, there can still be marked improvement in visual fidelity.” I’d have to agree, as even an amateur effort produces an astounding difference, and has me incredibly excited for the planned Red Alert remasters.
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Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.