What is StarCraft?

StarCraft is a Real-Time Strategy game set in the year 2499 and Centers around a galactic struggle for dominance among three species The Adaptable Terrans (Humans), The Insectoid Hive-Minded Zerg, and The Powerfully Enigmatic Protoss.

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Fans of Warcraft n have been anxiously awaiting Starcraft, Blizzard’s latest addi- tion to its real-time strategy lineup. And boy, is Starcraft hot. It’s already sold over 1 million copies on the PC and is about to explode onto the Mac. It’s so hot, in fact, that we couldn’t wait for the shrink-wrapped box to start playing it, nor could we wait to tell you about its excellent gameplay, with Terrans, Zerg, and Protoss — oh my! At press time, networking on Battle.net hasn’t been perfected, but as online gamers know, you’re only as good as your connection. In any case, Starcraft is almost here, so get ready.

The three mug shots gracing the box’s cover represent the most obvious innovations. With three species — Terrans, Zerg, and Protoss — Starcraft’s space opera drifts far from the crowd of simple sagas of good versus evil. In both single-player and multiplayer games, these interspecies alliances create an exciting dynamic in constant flux. Three campaigns give you an introduction to each species; the 30 missions, in which the three species battle against each other, offer great variety and teach you different playing styles.

You begin the game as shepherd to a small group of Terran colonists. External forces threaten Earth’s diaspora, while intrigue and civil conflict undermine its chances of survival. Monstrous swarms of the biologically advanced Zerg are overwhelming oudying colonies, and the mysterious Protoss, with their psionic gifts, are destroying Zerg-infested Terran colonies to contain the Zerg.

Starcraft executes the culture, biology, and technology of each species in marvelous detail. As you continue through the campaign’s 30 scenarios, you must learn the peculiar ways in which each species’ society works as a combat unit. The Terrans, adaptable survivors, can repair damaged mechanical units, and have structures that lift off to relocate their base closer to new resources or to avoid attack. Completely dependent on their Hatcheries and biomutation, the Zerg form a wonderfully conceived organic society. They build all of their structures on a living surface eerily called “the Creep,” The favored children of a lost race, the Protoss are as technologically advanced and powerful as they are confident of their civilization’s superiority.

The key to guiding your army to victory is to study the relative strengths and weaknesses of the three species. Terrans, armed with comparatively basic technology, fare the worst on an open battlefield. A Terran player requires good technique and a great deal of cunning to win against the Zerg swarms or the high-tech Protoss. Much more agressive, however, are the swarms of Zerg, which — once loosed en masse — are ferocious and endless. Zerg players must be especially cautious at the start of a game, when numbers aren’t on their side. The Protoss — the most advanced species — have big egos, and their exorbitantly priced technology is really strong late in a game. Don’t get so involved in building advanced Protoss structures and units that you fail to produce lots of those valuable upgraded Zealots — you’ll need them.

Starcraft is more polished than Warcraft II, but remains essentially the same — the interface and gameplay haven’t changed much. Resource gathering, which keeps the efficient factories pumping out units, has been superficially modified: Instead of collecting gold and wood, now everyone collects blue minerals and green Vespene gas (sorry, no yellow diamonds). Hard-core war gamers may object to the unreality of it all, but resource gathering does add longer-term strategy to missions.

A few purely tactical missions have been added for variety, and they can be tricky. Precision tactics, despite some interface improvements, still ride shotgun to resource gathering. At critical moments, with tiny troops all bunched up together, it’s hard to believe that Blizzard designed the interface with precision movement and target selection in mind. The new way-point system can be frustratingly difficult to set up, and the convoy command ought to keep your units in their starting formation. The good news is that Blizzard has improved the interface for unit production, adding queue and rally points so you can set up a list of troops to produce and automatically move them to the front line.

Visually, Starcraft is elegant and functional. It uses “color cycling,” which shifts the palette in predetermined ways to give more delicate shading and vibrancy than is usual for 256 colors. Plus, the images don’t stay still: Many units transform into more-powerful forms, accompanied by fascinating and fluid animations. The in-game graphics are great, but the cinematic cut-scenes are truly awesome — smoother, slicker, and packed with action.

Starcraft may well be the best real-time strategy game of the year — at least until Bungie releases Myth II: Soulblighter (see Fun & Games, Sep/98, p77) sometime before the holiday season. Starcraft offers enduring gameplay plus expandability, with multiplayer competition on Blizzard’s own Battle.net and with new maps (made with the included editor) posted online. Whether you’re a fan of Myth or of Warcraft, this highly polished pearl of strategy will wow you.

Parker, Samuel. (December 1998). Starcraft. MacAddict. (pgs. 76-77).

Download StarCraft for Mac

Architecture

IBM PowerPC

System Requirements

From Mac OS 7.6 up to Mac OS 10.6

Compatibility notes

Architecture: PPC (Carbonized for OSX)

At least 16MB of free RAM

Mac OS 7.6 - Mac OS 9.2.2 (Classic version)

Mac OS X 10.1 - 10.6 (Carbon version)

Mac OS 10.3.9 to Mac OS 10.6 (OS X Installer)

 

Emulating this? It could probably run under: SheepShaver