Blizzard's major announcement at the "I love StarCraft" event in South Korea over the weekend has fans excited like never before. StarCraft: Remastered with major developments such as 4K graphics and new audio is coming as a free-to-play game for both single and multiplayer campaigns. Players will get both the original StarCraft and Brood War expansion in the new version of the game, allowing you to replay all campaigns.
StarCraft: Remastered, with major developments such as 4K graphics and new audio is coming as a free-to-play game for both single and multiplayer campaigns. Players will get both the original StarCraft and Brood War expansion in the new version of the game, allowing you to replay all campaigns.
With this great news, which is pumping levels of adrenaline through everyone's veins, players must wait until this summer before getting their hands on the remastered version of the classic real-time strategy game.
Blizzard CEO and co-founder Mike Morhaime said the improvements to the new game will be good enough for players to enjoy StarCraft for another 20 years.
While the next 20 years are looking good for StarCraft, it is only fitting to take a look at how the classic RTS game evolved over the last 20 years.
StarCraft
1998 was a year of great significance. The first ever video game in the StarCraft series was launched on March 31, 1998, for Windows users, marking an important milestone in gaming history.
The game's popularity can be assessed by the fact that it is still one of the few old games played in many e-Sports competitions around the world. If you are willing to ignore the dated graphics and sound, the game's nuanced strategies make it one of its kind.
StarCraft has a loyal fanvase of tens of thousands of online gamers, even today. StarCraft has won many awards and has many milestones that outline its success story.
In the first year, 1.5 million copies of StarCraft were sold worldwide, and over 9.5 million copies were sold in the next decade. South Korea remains its strongest markets. But that was just the beginning of StarCraft's stardom.
Blizzard continued the plotline of the original StarCraft in the expansion pack Brood War, which was well-received by gamers and critics. The game came with suitable enhancements, which helped it earn a positive 95% GameRankings score.
StarCraft has sold about 11 million copies from its release until the launch of its successor StarCraft II in 2010.
StarCraft II
After more than a decade, Blizzard finally came up with the successor for the original StarCraft. In 2010, StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty (WOL) was launched as the official sequel to StarCraft.
The game developer divided the game into three parts, Wings of Liberty, Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void, which were launched in the following years.
StarCraft II: WOL was an instant hit and sold 1.8 million copies in the first 48 hours of release, making it the best-selling strategy game in history.
All three expansion packs of StarCraft II got a positive response from gamers and good reviews from critics. The Heart of the Swarm sold 1.1 million copies in just two days following its release in March 2013, and Legacy of the Void sold more than 1 million copies globally on the first day of release.
StarCraft II is undoubtedly a worthy upgrade to the original StarCraft even though gamers had to wait more than a decade for its release, and few years in between to get the standalone expansion packs for StarCraft II.
StarCraft gaming championships have become a global phenomenon and are kind of a big deal in South Korea.
StarCraft: Remastered
Continuing the legacy of StarCraft and adding some elements to match the current-gen technology, Blizzard's next major release StarCraft: Remastered will make gamers truly experience the galactic real-time strategy.
The biggest highlight of the new edition is the 4K high-res graphics, along with other updates such as premastered sound, new matchmaking capabilities, cloud-saving option, ability to connect to the Blizzard app, or as some may call it Battle.net, and much more.
This summer, you will be treated with the all-new StarCraft: Remastered, so get your Macs and Windows machines ready.
