The reason the Ratte never came to fruition was because of the project’s size – this would make it a prime target for anything and everything the enemy had. The UFOs are not just for effect, either – they too were a Nazi design borne from the desperation to produce a super-weapon to turn the tide of the war.

It has three battleship-sized guns and an estimated weight of around 1,000 tonnes. The Ratte is not just a tank, it is a building sized weapon of mass-destruction. I think the model kit box art from Takom does an excellent job at depicting its scale. This is a concept that truly gives the first ever tank deployed in history, dubbed the landship, a run for its money. Its full name is Landkreuzer P1000 Ratte, essentially meaning land-battleship. It was an outrageous design, one that made all others (including the E-100 and Maus) look like achievable and reasonable concepts. When I first saw the tank, I immediately thought of a design conceived by the Germans towards the end of World War II. Would it be similarly powerful and feared in reality, however? Given previous failures in gigantic tanks in real life, how would the Mammoth square up? The tank itself is positively massive, and in-game, is a very powerful unit. I am aware of more advanced versions of the tank (including one where two 120mms are literally mounted on the back of an actual mammoth). For this post, I will focus on the first version that appeared in the earliest game. The Mammoth tank was a Soviet invention, created on orders from Joseph Stalin in order to combat a similarly fearsome Allied invention. But the basic gist is there – big war, big superpowers, and no nuclear weapons. I am sure this is a very rudimentary way of viewing the series, and I may well be wrong about some things. It is basically the Third World War, and there are multiple in-game universes after time-travel shenanigans from the Soviets (including one where Albert Einstein is assassinated). From what I understand, the series depicts a series of fictional wars taking place immediately after World War Two between the Soviet Union, the Allies, and eventually the Japanese Empire (The War of the Three Powers). Now, having not played or experienced any Command & Conquer, I have limited knowledge of the setting. This vehicle was recently suggested to me, and after I took a quick look at it, I knew I wanted to discuss it on this page. The next tank in my little series comes from that revered set of RTS games. So, I thought it would be worthwhile to explore it.

Much like Pokemon or Zelda, it seems that Red Alert in many ways defined the RTS genre. Red Alert is another one of those cult game series that I have never played or experienced.

Mammoth tank command and conquer