Was this really as groundbreaking in 1998 as all of the reviews make it out to be? Like this shit was so acclaimed it spawned the e-sports scene, which would only exist if the game was really fun to play.
Was this really as groundbreaking in 1998 as all of the reviews make it out to be?
Starcraft's "groundbreaking" quality was that it was easy to pirate and run on shit PCs. The game was outdated when it came out.
This is what critics said for it at the time
>StarCraft is hands down one of the best, if not the best real-time strategy game ever created. With three distinct races, both in terms of gameplay and style, Blizzard's masterpiece contains some of the most balanced and yet widely varied units to be seen in the genre. Add in amazing production value that still looks good and a brilliant story progression and you've got yourself one incredibly addictive and fulfilling strategy title
what
>spawned like 10 different game genres, most notably the AoS which your unwrinkled mind would know as the MOBA
>online with use map settings for crazy modding that is easily shared
>units are incredibly complex, to the point where the unique movement patterns of certain units became (in)famous
>despite the outdated 256 color graphics, made immense use of it with tons of palette shifting to produce fancy effects like cloaking and hallucinations without taking up a bunch of resources
>god tier voice acting and music and everything sound related
>cinematics were really impressive for the time, it was insane compared to the live action funnies/primitive 5 FPS CGI most games were putting out
>well optimized, could run on toasters no problem
>so popular that even basketball players were excited to finish their matches so they could go back to playing some starcraft with their bros
Starcraft was fricking insane, easily one of the most influential games of all time.
contrarian total annihilation homosexual detected. literally every game of the day was trivial to pirate.
starcraft had 3 completely distinct races which were so balanced the game is still played at the highest level today, and the unit design is unique enough that subtle new strategies are being developed still today.
it had a campaign with voice acting, unique scenarios, and an interconnected story between each race.
it had an in depth map editor allowing for unique use maps, the lineage of which eventually spawned entire genres.
battlenet put every other online service to shame. gamespy get ye gone.
and the art/sound design put every other rts to shame.
Except Age of Empires. That game has amazing artwork to this day.
C&C had a fricking baller soundtrack. Do not even try to deny.
ahhh that's the stuff, I came here for armchair zoomorian hot broccoli takes and Ganker always delivers
this guy had a 4000$ pc to play total anhillation. boomer king, i kneel.
I like how you tell an anon is a zoomergay just by how these illiterate monkeys do not know to put the dollar sign before the number. The same way you always see these morons spelling "lose" as "loose".
That's a Euro thing moron, not a zoomer thing
Euros make up like 1% of this board. That anon is just a mentally handicapped american zoomer.
Ok moron
And euros are moronic, the $ sign gives context for the number that follows being currency.
Are you confused with every single other unit that comes after the number?
>34 miles
>5 oz
>6,000,000 israelites
No, I'm talking about symbols.
>oz = ounces
>mi = miles
If you weren't around to experience it, you don't belong here. Lower your fricking eyes when I walk past you zoomer crotchstain.
>Was this really as groundbreaking in 1998
yes, Nintendo hasn't made anything 1/2 as sophisticated or technical as SC.
based
Yes, it was. You are speaking of a time period where there are only 3 other good RTS. C&C, TA, and WC2. It stood head and shoulders over it's competition.
>only 3 other good RTS
Age of Empires was also out.
Then there were things like Dark Reign and KKND which were mediocre slops that made SC look very good by comparison.
What kids these days don't understand was how many elements just weren't ordinary back then:
>great music
>voice acted dramatic campaigns with characters you could care for
>character heads on selections with speech quips
>complex multiple unit selection
>asymmetric races with completely different playstyles and abilities
>powerful units with aoe or buffs
>asymmetric races with completely different playstyles and abilities
other rts still don't have this, even sc2 is completely neutered on this aspect
age of empires 2 didn't come out until 1999 and age of empires 1 was pretty jank. the only real competitors for starcraft in 1998 were c&c which had even worse controls and ui than starcraft and total annihilation which was a completely different style of game. another important thing to remember is that battle.net was leagues ahead of the garbage multiplayer services for basically any game in the same era, and you could install multiple lan copies of the game with a single disc.
Ground breaking? No, it got kicked as "Orcs in space" while it was still in development. But hailed as the best in its genre? Absolutely.
*mocked, not kicked
To be fair the "Orcs in space" shit was pretty accurate early in the development. It was only after they got their shit slapped by Ion Storm's fraud game that they went from using traditional sprites to pre-rendered sprites.
I'm still curious if any build of Alpha Starcraft survives today, even if it's just gathering dust in the bottom of a filing cabinet in a Blizzard office.
Me too. Looks comfy af.
I will never not be mad. Humanity will perish and my hatred will persist.
Isn't that the source code for the retail version? Or do you think that earlier version exists in the code?
even if an alpha exists somewhere, it will never be released to the public. Even if someone finds it, it'll just be exchanged for a bunch of mugs and keychains and a 30-day wow pass.
Oh, yeah, true.
that looks like absolute dogshit
space islands and space ships
>Easy on your machine so everyone had a pirated copy
>low skill floor, high ceiling
>amazing single player with memorable characters
>UMS
>grimdark which was the name of the game back then
>Soul
Yeah. I still watch some pro games from time to time.
This is it right here. Just follow this formula again for guaranteed success. 3rd worlders can be a good thing.
>Was this really as groundbreaking in 1998
no, warcraft 2 existed
this wasnt new ground it was refined ground. it was a good game but it didnt invent or define the rts genre.
New ground isn't broken. Just pierced.
Groundbreaking is earthshattering, like hitting a wall with a great sledgehammer and watching the bricks fly. That's what Starcraft did, especially once the SK scene took off and bonjwas were a thing. Even then, the only comparable game was Half-Life: Starcraft 1 did to RTS what Half-Life did to FPS.
It was space scifi kino, like Battlezone(1998)
>dat background music
It truly was a different time
Dunno if it was groundbreaking but it was very well done.
Is Ganker big brained enough to enjoy TvT?
I like watching it, but playing it is the worst thing ever unless it involves BCs
>multiplayer asiatic click
They're just old boomers win trading at this point to support their dying hobby because they didn't respec and found a new job or a new esport to play.
Same thing with SC2, their prize pool is getting smaller and smaller.
the tank lines and war of attrition is the closest thing resembling real life pre-drone warfare
I don't think he is
I loved ums
Game is actually phenomenal, i grew up on WC3 and never played SC until recently and the game just feels absolutely amazing.
hydra rancher, atomic madness, the rpgs like back to school, ff7, elements, a call for help. marine special forces. I think test of survival was my favorite
>Was this really as groundbreaking in 1998 as all of the reviews make it out to be?
homie you just had to be living outside your dad's balls in 1998 to know the feeling on getting on the home computer and playing some custom maps or comp stomp, maybe play the campaign, average player didnt give a frick about apm until around starcraft 2
>average player
They still don't. APM is for nerds.
>They still don't. APM is for nerds.
Based, I just started playing original and brood war again here recently, hope you are right though it is disheartening to see APM measure after matches. I am sure there is a way to turn it off, but having it on by default is gay
>average player didnt give a frick about apm until around starcraft 2
I did and I barely knew english
Go catch Malaria or something ranjeesh
whiter than you, mutt
Raynor here.
It got derided as Orcs in space if I recall when in development. Everyone shut the frick up when it came out and was phenomenal
The orcs in space thing started from teaser screenshots in magazines from an early alpha build that did look a lot like a reworked WC2 engine with new graphics.
the alpha looked literally like a reskinned warcraft 2, they got their shit together and released the best RTS of all time. It's astounding how impactful and innovative a couple white males can be.
have a nice day zoom zoom.
It's good but it's not perfectly balanced
It pretty much is. Different strategies favoring different factions come and go, but all three races are still viable and used frequently in current-day Brood War games, 25 years after the release of the original game.
at the lower levels it's not perfect because using defilers and high templar is too hard for noobs so they have to do cheesier strategies, but there still many viable builds
Why did asiatics latched on to this game unlike any other?
They knew they were terrans preparing against the swarm.
unlimited skill ceiling and a scifi aesthetic that really activated a lot of almonds among asian internet cafes
it was at the right time for the internet gaming boom in korea
it helped that it had actually interesting competitive matches compared to other rts games at the time which were basically just naked rush builds only(aoe and wc2 being the worst offenders in the entire genre)
>which were basically just naked rush builds
Zerg rush was literally a thing, also that motorbike rush thingy that lays mines.
it wasn't "just" zerg rush or vulture rush though. Vultures weren't figured out for a long fricking time, that was only when asiatics figured out basics of micro
I remember reading a guide on gamegays or something a long time ago saying that vultures were a bad unit
vultures really are shit until you reach a certain level of competence. they arent the kind of unit you can just spam and clobber your enemies with (unless the enemy is so trivial that basically anything can beat them). noobs will mass up vultures and then watch as they all explode in two seconds to a handful of siege tanks and go "wooooooooooooooooooow nothing i could do, shit unit"
zergling rush was ridiculous with the old spawning pool build time and cost but it got nerfed pretty much immediately, long before any real competitive scene
aoe had only 2 viable strats really... worker rush or chariots, all low tech rush builds
wc2 had even less variety, literally only barrack first, though you could fix it by using a custom start
When is ASL starting again? Is Flash finally coming back?
considering that before starcraft and even for a little after starcraft most RTS had at most 1 or 2 marquee mechanics differentiating factions (see C&C where Nod has stanks while GDI has mammoths), while today having only a handful of factional differences is a laughable notion, I'd say the buzz is at least somewhat warranted.
Remember what they took from you.
This was a marketing stunt to promote SC:remastered
Starcraft and BW were the first true RTS
No one cared about Dune, C&C, Red Alert 1 and Total Annihilation
It exploded when Warcraft 3, Red Alert 2, Yuri's Revenge, Generals, W40k Dawn of War came to the scene and then died in the early 2010s with Starcraft 2 unironically
It's not often that you can pinpoint the absolute pinnacle of an entire genre the way you can with Brood War and the RTS genre. And it's even more rare for a game to hold that title for 20+ years. Like a few anons have pointed out, the game was initially mocked as "Warcraft in Space" in 98 when it first came out, but it didn't take long for people to appreciate it as the masterpiece that it was.
why do normalgays think SC2 is better than BW
muh 12 unit selection
ohh the clunkiness I cant stand the clunkiness
Smartcast and easy keyboard shortcuts
Mostly better graphics, that's simply it
coop, higher budget campaigns
Less moronic bullshit getting in the way.
its easier to macro... like a lot easier
but it's kind of a curse because micro is way more important, if you miss a battle you just lose your entire army for free and the game is over
It's better if you're obsessed with twitch and e-sports meta. It's much worse if you want to chill and play vidya against some randos online or enjoy a campaign with a story.
I never had fun playing it. Wrong type of RTS.
Blizzard doesn't do "groundbreaking" stuff, they take existing stuff and do a great job
warcraft 1 was the first rts with multiplayer
Pathfinding is fricking terrible
>the size of a dragoon changes as it walks
>isometric graphics but the grid still runs north/south and east/west instead of at diagonals
WHAT WERE THEY THINKING
who cares about that shit... the real bad stuff is the wall offs
like how the frick are you supposed to know which sized units can pass through which terrain? walling off in sc is really fricking arcane shit
dragoon size changing is a myth, their pathfinding is actually shit because they're fat fricks and way they walk has them rapidly accelerating and decelerating which fricks with pathfinding.
Good to know. The grid thing is true though, right?
I doubt they thought that hard about it. Running a marine back and forth between the barracks and a supply depot to avoid a zealot isn't a game design choice
nah they definitely had wall ins in mind when developing and balancing the game
but frick them for not adding a visual indicator. you have to memorize how all buildings fit together, since not all buildings the same grid size are actually the same size for collision, but also how they fit to every map terrain.
there is literally no way to know without game experience or experimentation... on every single individual map
>on every single individual map
it's not that bad... you just have to learn it with doodads in all possible directions. Vespene geysers change size once an assimilator/refinery starts construction
>nah they definitely had wall ins in mind when developing and balancing the game
They planned for you to have tight walls on this map?
>the size of a dragoon changes as it walks
this is a myth. Of course now I can't watch the video where a guy breaks it down
>groundbreaking
No c**t, it was perfection of the genre
the custom map community was amazing. brood war and wc3 battle net was peak pc gaming. you zoomies pay like $20 on steam for games, people were making the same game sfor free in map editors. you could say what ever you wanted in the chats, there were porn gamrs like undressing hermoine.
the actual game as an rts is unironically fun too. it just feels good collecting resoruce and making units and fighting with them. and in starcraft both sides were overpowered so you had to be quick and careful.
it's a shame how shit the sc2 custom maps were
le soul meme
that's literally soul. It's much better than "how can we put a black guy in here? How can we fit homosexuality into the plotline?"
lan parties were the shit but this thread reminds me of how insufferable autismos and asian insects made this game completely unfun to play online
Most RTS' at the time had either completely interchangable factions like Warcraft 2 where the only difference was cosmetic. Really only Command & Conquer introduced the concept of differently playing factions/armies. Age of Empires had only 1 unique unit for each faction so barely counts.
Starcraft however had 3 factions that all compliment and counter one another and it allows for near-infinite gaming possibilities. Also, Battlenet and Map Editor did a lot for it on top of a good story and cool unit aesthetics.
Will Starcraft join pic related in the next decades? Zoomies seem to hate everything from the better times.
it was a different time