Favorite non-Nintendo franchise

Overall… its a company that unfortunately no longer exists: Westwood Studios, which became Petroglyph but are also out of business. They are responsible for creating arguably the two best game series I know: Command&Conquer(most notably Tiberian Dawn, Tiberian Sun + Red Alert 1 and 2, after that EA took over if memory serves) and Empire at War(a Star Wars game that isn't in the mold of an RTS with respect to Economy but is just addicting to play). Modders have kept the latter game alive for the past 20 years and if you've ever seen their 4.0 trailer, you literally shed a tear. It's been rumored that they may be remastering this game given they remastered C&C but I won't get my hopes up. If it comes to pass… I might throw down $100 on it if it has Mod support that it presently has right now.

Honorable mention to another "defunct" Gaming Studio in Blizzard. Activision bought them out years ago and Blizzard has never been the same since. Their biggest gaming franchise in Diablo turns 30 this year but Diablo is simply not the same. It got off to a great start with Diablo 1 and then 2 in 2000 but when Diablo 3 came out in 2012, it was pure Activision bleh. Diablo 4 is that much worse. May have sold a ton but it's still putrid. Starcraft and Warcraft were their other notable franchises but were best in the early days with Starcraft 1 and Warcraft 2(one of the best OST for a RTS game outside of Starcraft). Warcraft 3 isn't half bad either but when Starcraft 2 came out in 2010, Activision was slowly taking over. Not to say SC2 is bad but I just didn't think it quite matched the balance and mystique of its predecessor. To this day Starcraft is still king in South Korea. The Carbot Mod for both SC1 and SC2 is pretty good though. Kind of surprised they haven't done a mod for Diablo or Warcraft yet.

Another honorable mention is yet another out of business gaming studio in Ambrosia Software that in collaboration with ATMOS(not sure if they're still kicking either) created one of my favorite 2D Space franchises back in the 90's/early 2000's in Escape Velocity, its sequel Escape Velocity Override(arguably the best one imo) and Escape Velocity Nova(most advanced of the three and permits playing the other two on its engine).

Then there's also Psiscape Software from the 90's that created another 2D Space Game that started my interest in the 4x genre in Starbound and its sequel Starbound II. OLD and I emphasize OLD PowerMac game(pre OS X).

Kind of hard for me to narrow it down isn't it? 🤣