Total Annihilation is a real-time strategy game developed by Cavedog Entertainment, designed by Chris Taylor and produced by Ron Gilbert. It was released for Windows in September 1997. Jeremy Soule wrote its orchestral soundtrack, performed by the 95-piece Northwest Sinfonia.
The game was one of the first RTS titles whose radar showed enemy units on the minimap, and one of the first to aim at battles with hundreds or thousands of units. Two expansions followed in 1998, The Core Contingency and Battle Tactics, and the medieval spin-off Total Annihilation: Kingdoms came out in June 1999.
Chris Taylor later founded Gas Powered Games, whose Supreme Commander (2007) is a spiritual successor. After Cavedog closed, the rights passed to Infogrames (later Atari), and Wargaming bought the franchise in July 2013. The open-source Spring engine was built for games based on Total Annihilation.1
Names and releases
| Region | Title on the box | Platform | Date | Publisher | Src |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NA | Total AnnihilationSteam and GOG descriptions give 30 September 1997. | Windows | Sep 27, 1997 | Cavedog Entertainment | 1 |
| EU | Total AnnihilationUK. | Windows | Sep 25, 1997 | GT Interactive | 1 |
| WW | Total Annihilation: The Core ContingencyExpansion. | Windows | Apr 29, 1998 | — | 1 |
| WW | Total Annihilation: Battle TacticsExpansion. | Windows | Jul 20, 1998 | — | 1 |
| WW | Total AnnihilationSteam release. | Windows | Dec 18, 2015 | Wargaming.net | 2 |
Also known as: Total Annihilation: Commander Pack WW3
Box art by region
EU Total Annihilation
Box art © its publishers, shown to identify each release. Scans: Wikipedia.
Version differences
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GameplayPatch
The original allowed 250 units per side; a patch raised the cap to 500, and a third-party patch allows up to 5,000.1
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ContentCommander Pack (GOG)
The GOG Commander Pack bundles both expansions, The Core Contingency and Battle Tactics, with the final 3.1c patch and a map editor.3
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GameplayMac
The Mac version is 32-bit and does not run on macOS 10.15 Catalina or later.4
Where to play legally today
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GOG Purchase
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Steam Purchase
How to run it today
The GOG and Steam editions run on Windows 10. PCGamingWiki lists the unofficial TA Patch (3.9.02 beta) for modern systems, warning that it can crash at startup, and the open-source Spring engine runs games based on Total Annihilation.
- Total Annihilation on PCGamingWiki pcgamingwiki.com
Best version
The GOG Commander Pack includes the original game, both expansions and the final 3.1c patch, plus the manual, map editor and soundtrack.3
Reception
Metacritic 86/100. It shipped 250,000 units by the end of October 1997, sold over 1.5 million copies by 2002 and won GameSpot's 1997 Game of the Year Award.1
Sources
Checked: 2026-10-13Text reviewed: 2026-10-13
Spotted a mistake? Write to atlas@old-games.net.