StarCraft, quite possibly my favorite RTS ever, came out in 1998. At this time I was still too young, 13 years old, to understand the true greatness of such a game. The only other RTS games that I had played up to this point were Warcraft I and II and the new “3Dish” look captivated my attention. Three races to play this time! Terran, Protoss, and Zerg. Ohh how I loved playing the Zerg! Zerglings were a favorite of mine and I would mass them as fast as possible and listen to the gurgling sounds they would make as they scampered around the map and ate marines.
Something about StarCraft kept me playing for quite a long time. I picked up the expansion and continued to enjoy what was now one of the more popular games in the entire industry. The late 90’s were an awesome time for gamers and the majority of the credit goes to Blizzard Entertainment. They gave us the Warcraft series, Diablo, and now another amazing story driven RTS game.
Another major aspect of StarCraft’s success was Battle.Net or Bnet for short. I will go on record for saying that Bnet was and still is the greatest implimentation of an online gaming lobby ever created. The ability to chat in channels and start a game with others all from one interface was groundbreaking. You could create a game and others would join and there would be little to no conflicts like there are with other matching services. But what gave SC its true lasting appeal was something we called UMS’s. Use Map Settings games were games created in the map editor and they were completely player made using the game’s engine. “Blood bath” maps were created where you were given masses units and had to annihilate the enemy’s single spawner. Hero arena, defense maps, and all sorts of extremely addicting games surfaced.
I can’t wait for Day 4!
Funny… The only Blizzard game I ever played (before WoW) was Starcraft.
The RTS Warcrafts? Saw them from afar as friends played them. Diablo? Tried it and really seriously disliked it.
But Starcraft? Starcraft was good 🙂