History of Starcraft

History of the Game

Starcraft is a science-fiction real-time strategy (RTS) game developed by Blizzard and designed by Chris Metzen and James Phinney on 1998. The game is set on a galactic conflict between 4 species, the first 3 playable: Terran (last humans from Earth), Zerg (insectoid aliens who share a hive mind), Protoss (humanoid religious warriors) and Xel'Naga (a god-like creator race).

The game introduced asymmetrical gameplay on its fundamental core (units and technology), getting away from the criticized equivalent races of Warcraft II. This new direction was inspired by games like War Wind and Magic: The Gathering. On its first release, the game was slightly unbalanced but after some patches and expansions, the three races were hugely balanced and the IA was improved as we all know today.

However, the first steps of the game (alpha version) shows a very different game. With an ortogonal perspective, the game shares a lot of similarities with Warcraft II, including the HUD position, graphics and engine. Blizzard decided to adapt the engine leading to the beta version. The beta version presents a "fake" isometric perspective and a whole renewed design, with new units that would remain in the final version.

Technical Details

When it was released on 1998, Starcraft required a Pentium 90 MHz or higher, only took 80 MB of storage and needed 16 MB RAM memory to properly work on Windows first (95 or NT), and afterwards, on Mac and Nintendo 64. The game had a resolution of 640 x 480 pixels on a 8-bit display and it was controlled by mouse and keyboard. The last version that we can found today is 1.16.1.

Similar games

At the end of the millennium, there were other games on the market that presented similar premises, for instance, Command and Conquer (1995), Dune (1998), Age of Empires (1999), Homeworld (1999) and Total Annihilation (1997)

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