Zug zug! Warcraft & Warcraft II deployed to GOG
Stop poking meee!
Warcraft may now be a well-regarded name in cinema, but it actually began life as a video game. Cinephiles can explore these origins today in re-releases of Warcraft: Orcs & Humans and Warcraft II, two games seminal within the genre we ludophiles call 'click on men to tell them to go fight the other men right now'. Welcome to the world of video games, filmfaces, you're in for a wild ride.
Warcraft: Orcs & Humans is ye olde game coming set up to simply run in DOSBox, which is fair enough. GOG's release of Warcraft II is a little fancier, coming with the Beyond The Dark Portal expansion and in two versions. One is ye olde game running in ye olde ways, while the GOG and Blizzard have fancied the other up to include "out-of-the-box Windows 10 compatibility, LAN multiplayer, and high-resolution support via aspect ratio-correct upscaling." That sounds nice.
These are, unusually, exclusive to GOG. Blizzard don't even sell them on their Battle.net store. With Epic erecting a new exclusivity wall around their store, it's good to see some old ones coming down. Even Microsoft won't mandate using their own rubbo Store for those Halo re-releases.
Warcraft: Orcs & Humans is £4.59/$5.99, Warcraft II is £7.59/$9.99, and the two bundled together are £11.29/$14.99. That's easier than trying to chase down old physical copies somewhere, which until this was for years the only legit way to acquire either.
Blizzard are themselves currently working on Warcraft III: Reforged, a remastering of the third game with fancied-up art.
I was more into the wacky near-future sci-fi antics of Command & Conquer than groaning fantasy back in the day so I never played more than the demo of either. You like 'em, yeah?
To help ease popcorneers into this alien medium, here's the first Warcraft's intro movie setting up the epic conflict:
I don't know if I've ever heard someone so relish saying "dominance," and I saw Fifty Shades Of Grey at the cinema (don't ask).