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Z was such an odd one compared to everything else at the time. No harvesting, no base building, just territory flags and factories that build faster the more sectors you hold. Every match turned into a mad scramble where losing one flag could flip the whole map.
And the robots had real personality, with the cigar chomping commander and Allan and Brad slacking off in the cutscenes.
Steel Soldiers went much more traditional later, and I always felt the original's idea never really got a proper successor. Did anyone here play it back then? What did you think of the time-as-resource design?
For anyone curious, there's a free open-source 3D fan remake of it now, OpenZ: https://github.com/playopenz/OpenZ
I remember it fondly for the funny cutscenes and the game's difficulty. Even though I always liked RTS games, I was never good at them. I never passed Z's damn 16th level.
level 16 is featured in Openz.. the trick is to win the early heavy tank vs heavy tank duel on the road between two forts