So it looks like Blizzard has finally gotten to announcing the HD remaster of Starcraft that rumors started floating around as being in development back in like August of last year. The website for the game has one of those cool slider things that a lot of graphic comparison articles have these days.

So far the feature list is

• Remastered Graphics
• Revised Dialogue and Audio
• Blizzard Friends and Matchmaking
• Classic StarCraft Gameplay

https://starcraft.com/en-us/

Early April fools?

Oh cool. Though I'd probably prefer playing with the old sprites in widescreen.

Diablo 2 when.

Can't wait to play this alongside the remastered version of Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped!

It'll be very hard to get all the mechanics right with new/updated graphics (even small things like a bigger playfield view would have a huge impact on balance), but this did lead to Brood War being the biggest game in Korea again; so that's always fun:

Nice! But, considering the current landscape, and how people will lose their shit over the smallest thing...yo, how do they handle the fact that there is a group in the original Starcraft called "The Terran Confederacy" who have a modified confederate flag as their symbol? Think that's getting cut?

@squirrelgod: The word confederacy should be banned from all conversation! Actually every word that could be considered vaguely offensive to anyone anywhere ever. All language must be milquetoast!

On a serious note I'd say 99.9% of the playerbase doesn't know what the Confederacy's flag looks like. I played 10 years of Brood War, probably around 7000 hours or so; I don't know without looking at it beforehand.

@fredchuckdave: I just hope they don't change Edmund Duke much. One of the best characters in the whole series, and with some of the best voice work in video game history!

@fredchuckdave: That's pretty much my thought, much like with fighting game rereleases if it isn't "arcade perfect" people tend to ignore it and continue using older versions. Of course since these days Blizzard tends to control BW's esports they could theoretically force them to use this version. Also even if they do manage to make the game play pretty much the same, widescreen with a wider field of view would change a lot. And if they said "now you can select more than 12 units at a time!" it'd be pretty much an entirely different game.

Personally, I think it looks okay, but I dunno, for me SCBW always had this grungy, dirty look and even being pixelated as hell contributes to that. Maybe because like half of the footage was super zoomed in for some reason, if it was a normal view maybe it'd look more normal but those buildings looked kind of like "StarCraft stickers out of a sticker book" to me.

Good on them though for putting in some work for a great game though.

I want that so bad.

Man I'm seriously looking forward to this. 2017 just keeps getting better.

Artosis said "free Brood War" during the cast, so it might be free? Edit: The base game is free the HD mode that may or may not be good will cost moneys. Seems kind of silly, BW HD Remaster Turbo Remix Edition would unquestionably outsell Legacy of the Void if they just put it out for 20 bucks. (Video is just beautiful old B dubs, complete with lobbies and beep boops and players spamming gogogo/glhf)

Bisu made a scout, I've watched like 250 BW matches in the past 4 weeks; that's a new one. First thing for everything I suppose. Probably just being silly. Interestingly enough Queens and Valkyries have seen a fair amount of use; even DAs show up sometimes.

For people that are way into the competitive RTS leagues - how popular is StarCraft 2 now in comparison to StarCraft 1? I remember the original game being this juggernaut but these days I mostly hear about MOBAs and not so much about classic RTS games. Is it still thriving as it once was or has that scene become muted in light of League and Dota bringing in those huge prize pools?

On one hand, I think this is amazing. On the other, I'm kinda' disappointed this ain't done in the SC2 engine..

@humanity: Brood War still gets 100k+ Viewers in Korea and may or may not have a TV Channel as well (used to just be a Starcraft channel); all the successful Afreeca streamers play BW more or less and have comparable viewer counts to major twitch streamers.

SC2 did well outside of Korea for a long time and is still generally considered a good, if extremely difficult, game, worldwide; but I think right now it's really only popular in Europe. Personally I don't think SC2 is different enough from Brood War for it to be embraced by Korea; it tried to do too many things too similarly but the mechanics don't really work as well when you can just select all your units or barrackses or whatever at once; they should have tried something else at some point (Supreme Commander style probably would work the best). Except the campaigns, those are great; and the LoTV co-op is good too I just never upgraded comps to fully engage in it.

As far as twitch streamers (now retired, but still streaming) Polt gets like 1k-2k and is generally engaging to watch just due to the insanity of high level first person. Day 9 has mostly switched to Hearthstone because the amount of effort required to make HS videos/content and play the game at a semi-competent level is utterly miniscule (he's said as much) in comparison and will tend to get ten times as many views. One need only reference Kripp's descent into casual mode for a like comparison from other Blizzard and Blizzardesque properties.

MOBAs are just an offshoot, it's really depressing that RTS is dead and the custom games from WC3 and UMS's from BW where you control one unit have taken that place. Not to disparage all custom games, a lot of them had a ton more going on than that.

Warcraft 4 will probably be out sometime in the next decade.

@fredchuckdave: Thanks for the write up. I don't know much about this stuff as I was a surface level StarCraft player ages ago, but I was curious what the "state of the union" is on these things. Fascinating that Brood War is still the go-to tournament RTS game.

Anything about this remastered version running out of the client? I'm guessing it is, if only because of the integration with Blizzard friends.

It'll be interesting to see how this effects Starcraft's popularity in Korea.

But when's the Blackthorne remake??

@fredchuckdave said:

Except the Confederacy are 100% portrayed as colonizing villains, so I doubt anyone is getting up in arms about this.

Happy to see they're sticking with sprites. I'm seemingly in the minority, but I thought the camera in their polygonal RTS games was garbage. Shifting to 3D added absolutely nothing other than getting units hidden behind scenery objects.

I'd love to see what they've been doing with the cutscenes too, as I recall there were at least DVD quality versions of them sold on a separate DVD back in the early 00's. I'm sure they still have the original project files to rerender too of course.

I'll say the shading on some of the sprites looks a little off though, and the new Protoss drone explosions are really underwhelming.

I imagine it will get as much recognition as there being Nazi's in the last Wolfenstein game. I.E. no one is going to give a shit about bad guys being bad guys, especially when you get to destroy them.

Now if they could do the same thing for Diablo 1 and 2...

Starcraft's great, and the original saga had such a better story than 2. Seemed like something huge and crazy was happening every other mission. This just looks like they applied a smoothing filter, but with the updated resolutions and online play it could pick up a bit of steam again. Granted, I won't even jump online because my skills are long gone. Would be nice if all those old custom games people made were still viable as I'd get hours and hours revisiting some RPG maps.

I hope they do Warcraft 4 next as far as a whole new RTS, as without Metzen they might be able to put together an interest story for the first time in years.

The new art is very close to the old but it doesn't feel right... it looks kinda mobile gamey, in the comparison clip on the website watch the eggs on the right hatching, in the pixelated look of the old style you can see the nasty gunky fluids and flesh as the horrid creature bursts from the egg and splays its legs out, in the new clear style you don't get that, just looks like a spider unfolding for a few frames.
It doesn't bother me all that much as i never played the original game, but if fans want the original sprites i hope they include the option to revert to the old graphics, while keeping all the modern advancements like widescreen, having the ability to mix and match the graphics, units, terrain, UI, would be brilliant.

It's about damn time.

When's Starcraft Ghost coming out?

@squirrelgod: no, as long as it's not the actual confederate flag no one will give a shit outside of crazy people within the industry, it has no mainstream appeal of shit on it. If they did it would be pretty damn stupid.

Here is my quick perspective as an avid SC2 player and viewer:

This will totally kill StarCraft 2 in Korea. Viewership will switch to this game, and so will most, if not all of the players. Wouldn't be surprised if some of the major leagues (GSL, SSL) eventually transition.

I think this game will not be popular in the Western world, because damn, BroodWar is fucking IMPOSSIBLE to play.

This is cool but they REALLY need to make Warcraft 1 and 2 available digitally. Because they aren't, and that's nuts.

I just can't imagine how this matters anywhere other than Korea? I mean, I liked Starcraft back in the day, but it wasn't anywhere on the list of games I wanted to get an HD remake.

@bisonhero: BW is pretty widely regarded as the best non FPS multiplayer game ever in terms of sort of general and diverse experience (because of used map settings), the most balanced RTS, the most difficult game at the highest level, and top 2 or 3 RTS campaigns in general. As far as RTS's go it's the pretty clear number one, and Starcraft itself is probably top 10 most valuable game IPs in existence still because of that. This game was huge; actually the BW playerbase was larger than D2's from like 2003-2004 onward; it's a pretty easy no brainer to remaster (assuming you want to make moneys; still up in the air whether they can make it work correctly or not).

Tower Defense, DoTA, Isometric Rhythm indies, and basically every other non C&C/TA RTS have some of their roots in Brood War's ridiculously amazing mapmaking scene, which of course will never exist again since you can just be an indie dev and make money off it; but once upon a time there were 10,000 maps that each had the individual value of an indie game more or less; a lot of which just haven't been replicated since.

Occasionally games flare up with really good multiplayer but they die out and fizzle a year or two later almost always; Brood War kept chugging right up until they released SC2; believe there were 50,000 players on at peak hours at the time, about 15,000 on US East. 12-13 years after it came out.

I don't see them specifically mention BW campaign, it would be insane of them not to include it or sell it down the line right? If I remembered jack about the game I would remember which units were introduced in BW and could maybe identify them in the trailer...

This is pretty much why I have such fond memories of this game. No way any of that is coming back but BW was pretty much the only game that I had a multiplayer "crew" I would play with every night, lots of varieties of tower defense and other ridiculous stuff. Pretty much all competitive matches I played were on fastest map, which was basically cheat mode with nearly unlimited resources. It's also why I never got any good at the game.

@effache: Medic, corsair, and scourge were introduced in brood war if I remember right. Either way, they announced the old Brood War will become free with the upcoming patch, and that you can purchase the remaster if you want the remaster update. Both free and remaster players can play together. Old replays also still work in the remaster. So that sounds like Brood War is included.

I don't remember the scene specifically, but they also showed Kerrigan post transformation and I don't remember her showing her zerg form in the base game cinematics. It's been a decade since I last played it though so I could be wrong on that one.

They had job postings a while back for updating their "classic games," so with this announcement, I'm sure Diablo 2 won't be that far behind. My guess would be an announcement at BlizzCon this year or an announcement next spring.

@effache: @mezza: Scourge are in regular. Medics, Lurkers, Dark Archons, Valkyries, Corsairs, and Devourers. I assume all the AA units was because Mutas are really stupid in SC1.

This will be awesome to revisit, but also, Diablo 2?

I'll get this just to watch replays...

Brood War already gets more views on Afreeca.tv than SC2 does anyway, so this will definitely help it reclaim its spot near the top of the eSports pile there. Don't know if it'll be able to overthrow Overwatch or League or whatever is hot right now, though.