With new content and updates still rolling out for Diablo III and Overwatch, and a huge patch for World of Warcraft released this past week, Blizzard fans are certainly well catered for at the moment. In the meantime, those yet to sample StarCraft’s delights can now do so for free thanks to a new 1.18 update. No precise release date has yet been revealed, but Blizzard is aiming for the game to be available this summer. If you remember your first StarCraft LAN party, or screaming at mum to get off the telephone so that you could play online with a decent dial-up connection, tweet using the hashtag #MyStarCraftStory. With online clearly the key component, Blizzard is running a social media campaign to gather people’s memories of competing over the years. It meant anticipation was at fever pitch for the release of the long-awaited first installment of StarCraft II in 2010, but plenty have stayed loyal to the original game to this day. StarCraft was the best selling PC game of 1998 and went on to sell well over 10 million copies over the next decade, becoming an eSports favourite – notably in South Korea – in the process. StarCraft’s bread and butter has always been the multiplayer, though, which is what allowed it to become the global phenomenon it is today. The inclusion of expansion pack StarCraft: Brood War means there will be more than 50 missions to play through, once again across the three classic races of the Terrans, the Protoss, and the Zerg. Graphics will be upscaled to 4K with support for a range of screen resolutions and all of the audio is being completely re-recorded, including the iconic soundtrack. In cases like The Last of Us, there was just over a year between its original PlayStation 3 release and the upgraded PlayStation 4 version, but nobody could accuse Blizzard of rushing out an easy cash-grab with the newly announced StarCraft Remastered.Īlmost 20 years after it took the RTS genre by storm, the first StarCraft game will return with better visuals and sound, new dialogue and illustrated story interludes, and full integration with Blizzard’s modern matchmaking technology for online multiplayer.
Remasters and re-releases have been all the rage in recent years, with popular franchises from the last generation like Assassin’s Creed, BioShock, and Uncharted all receiving the update treatment.