Classic Games Review

Startcraft: Brood War, having been popular over 10 years with its free Battle.net, is a critically developed expansion pack of the military science fiction real-time strategy video game miracle Starcraft released in 1998 and it has been widely regarded as one of the greatest masterpieces of Blizzard Entertainment. And many of its players, especially in Korea, have become really professional gamers for it. Like most of its players, I can’t forget my insanely surprise at my first trial on it. As too many words have been spread around about it by others, here I’m just summarizing what it most impressed me as my earnest memory for this “more than awesome” PC game before greeting the can’t-waited Starcraft 2.

As a frustrating Protoss/Zerg simple rusher just after a Terran Siege-tank beginner fan in the original Starcraft, I felt more than happy in the world to be able to play the much enhanced and balanced expansion pack Brood War for the first time in 1999. Old strategies and tactics had to be changed with the new units, balanced production time and unit attributes in Brood War. Terran turned horrible for medics, no longer a doomed coward loser. Protoss became cool for Dark Templars and Corsairs. And Zerg somewhat fell like Terran for Lurkers… Players Vs Players became more challenging and more complicated with more freedom in planning. Battle.net was crowded in the most popular maps like Hunters and Lost Temple. Losers felt mad because a teammate’s Templar launched a psi-storm on a crowd of their own units in a chaotic battle by mistake. A PvZ 1v1 could last for over 3 hours with some 400-unit ultimate wars until nobody was able to find a mineral any more. A Protoss with 12 Carriers above the base was ever eliminated by too many zerglings. It ever happened that the snail-like Reavers without a transporter successfully “rushed” Terran and Zerg. I liked to play a weird war of 400 miners with one of my friends to take a rest for our brains. Meanwhile, I also liked to play with computer, from a 1v1 loser to 1v7 winner… Games could be recorded in Replay files and shared over the web. And then I knew I was really far from genius on it. But the fun in the Battle.net was still unlimited and unexpected. Now Starcraft 2 is coming in 3D like World Craft 3. Let’s expect it will be released without too much delay.

For big fans, I recommend you also take a look at an introduction to Starcraft Alpha and Beta versions in an very old page of Geocities, which doesn’t seem to have been published in Blizzard’s official website.

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