Tough times on the road to Starcraft
I acknowledge Starcraft's dominance, but my personal favorite game of all time was Total Annihilation.  At the time (98/99), it was probably the most advanced game out there.  I played my cousin across the country over 33kps modem, and we each had 500 units moving around at the same time.  With 1000 units total, each 3D rendered, the action slowed down a lot, but it never crashed, and allowed us to play entire games across the country reliably.  It was truly a feat of software engineering.<p>Chris Taylor (the creator of TA) came out with Supreme Commander in 2007, which I bought a new computer for just to play, but I only played it for a few months, more because I got busy rather than not enjoying the game.  But both games never seemed to catch on as much as Starcraft 1 and 2 have.  I'm seriously considering picking up Starcraft 2 but it's already 2 years old, so I think I probably missed the boat.