On the night of the GSL Season 1 finals, and the week of StarCraft’s 19th birthday, Blizzard made a couple of announcements associated with the game. First, the game will receive a patch (1.18a) with an official observer mode, improved support for Windows 7, 8.1, and 10, support for the UTF-8 character set, and a couple of bug fixes.
It will also be made free. Anyone can download and play it.
But… if you want a graphical upgrade, Blizzard also announced the (not free) StarCraft Remastered edition. This will arrive in the summer, and it will include new audio and artwork, bringing the early-Windows 9x graphics up to 4K (with 1080p cutscenes). The gameplay will be the same, to the point of even being cross-play compatible with the original game’s multiplayer. The addition of Battle.net skill-based matchmaking will apparently be exclusive to owners of the Remastered edition, though.
The 1.18a patch will arrive in a couple of days, making the original (non-Remastered) game free. The Remastered edition will arrive in the summer, but no word on price yet.
I already saw the remaster
I already saw the remaster news. I missed the part where the original is now free. I played it back shortly after Brood Wars was released. I borrowed a friend’s disc. Coincidentally, I have recently been mulling buying my own copy, so this is great news. I’ll play this for a bit, and I may even buy the remaster if the nostalgia holds.
This is the best article on
This is the best article on this remaster I’ve read. Great job Scott!
Funny thing is – they disabled buying original StarCraft in their store couple of days ago with a strange message of digital version being out of stock.
Ha! I noticed that as well.
Ha! I noticed that as well. I guess they ran out of ones and zeros…
OH NOs! Now they have to go
OH NOs! Now they have to go down to the ones and zeros bank and withdraw some more, haven’t they heard of online ones and zeros banking.
I was actually hoping they
I was actually hoping they would do this with the SC2 game engine, but either way still pretty cool.
They start from the
They start from the beginning. You should expect SC2 to follow in a couple of years.