Did anyone else play Machines back in the day. Now there's an RTS that belongs on this site, a truely unappreciated RTS with exceptional gameplay and a damn fine control system. The ability to jump into one of your units and join the attack, whilst intially hard to get used to, was a real treat in a game of the time. Who's with me?

I've never tried it, but I've looked at it on MobyGames, and it does look fantastic. It looks like much the same concept as Hostile Waters: Antaeus Rising (which is sadly no longer here on GOG), and I loved that game, so I'm sure I would love Machines too.

The plot seems to have been directly lifted from Total Annihilation. I suppose the fact that they were inspired by TA is a positive enough sign for me to be interested in this.

It's a bit different - in TA.. well, it's best summed up by the intro:

"What began as a conflict over the transfer of consciousness from flesh to machines escalated into a war which has decimated a million worlds. The Core and the Arm have all but exhausted the resources of a galaxy in their struggle for domination."
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Machines takes place some time after humanity tried to expand out into the galaxy, sending numerous "seeder ships" equipped with AI supercomputers and various equipment and resources. The machines went out and seeded a number of planets, but mankind never arrived. A few hundred years later, a pair of the AIs encounter each other in an unseeded system. Each AI demands that the other cede control to them. When this doesn't occur, they both infer that the other AI controller is malfunctioning and has to be deactivated. This sparks the greatest war the galaxy has ever seen...
^paraphrased from the intro in the manual.

It's quite a good game - graphics were good for the time (it was one of the first fully 3D RTS games, if not THE first), first person view in a RTS was quite innovative.
The only downsides are the somewhat wonky pathfinding and there only being one playable faction. That said, there's a fair amount of unit variety on offer.

I own a retail version of the game from when it was originally released, but I'd happily buy it again from GOG.

Sounds pretty good. If it came to GOG then I'd be interested.

Yeah i played it! Great great game for it's time, sure buy for me if it ever gets on GoG. Fingers crossed ! xD

I'm glad I'm not the only one who remembers this game. I mentioned it to a few of my friends the other day who are pretty hardcore RTS players and I figured one of them might have it but they all looked blankly at me as if I was talking some sort of crazy language, then they laughed and went back to talking about Starcraft 2.

I bought a copy from Ross for $5 about a decade ago, but could never get it to run. In fact, the last time somebody mentioned this game here, I went to searching for it again, and still couldn't play it.

Regardless of how good or bad this game is, the moment GOG gets it I'm buying it. I've been waiting ten years to give it a try. :P

To those who have the game, it might be worth searching through the forums on WiredForWar.org - it's a mostly-dead fan site for Machines with a few mods and patches for the game available.