Party like it's 1998! StarCraft: Remastered out today
A new look for a classic RTS
We've trapped in two main cycles of revamps, revivals, remakes, and rethings. One is giving us revivals and remakes of games from 20 years ago, while the other goes revamping games released during the previous generation of consoles. StarCraft: Remastered [official site] is from the former camp, a remake of Blizzard's wonderful sci-fi real-time strategy game from 1998, now fancied up with new art and better support for modern systems and all that. And it's out today.
If you had expected it to be out by now, hold on. Blizzard say that "our deployment is taking longer than initially expected" so the launch is due around 9pm (1pm PDT).
StarCraft: Remastered is the same old StarCraft (and its expansion, Brood War) with some new clothes and a few new tricks. It boasts new art and "higher fidelity" music and sound, plus the ability to switch all that off and go back to old StarCraft with the press of a button. It also packs support for modern screen resolutions and aspect ratios, cloud saves, and multiplayer matchmaking with leaderboards.
Even if you prefer the old look (I might?) the backend stuff is nifty.
StarCraft: Remastered will cost £12.99/$14.99 from Blizzard when it comes out in, er, maybe two hours?
Blizzard are hosting a two-day launch stream with a load of old StarCraft players including White-Ra and Ret, plus of course the casting Archon of Dan 'Artosis' Stemkoski and Nick 'Tasteless' Plott. That's due to start at 8pm (noon PDT) on the Twitch channel of Day[9], the other Plott lad.
Do remember that old StarCraft is free these days, bundled with Brood War as the 'StarCraft Anthology'. Blizzard had once planned for the Anthology to get Remastered's matchmaking too, but changed their minds and said it would be too likely to be abused by griefers.