This is exactly what it looks like.
It’s always great to be an entrepreneur. It’s also great to have a crap-load of time on your hands. For most, these two items are mutually exclusive, but the world of Starcraft II enthusiasts features not only those with the creative juice to make maps, mods, and other manufactured monstrosities take shape, but with the time on their hands to do it well.
We decided that it was worth another look through the Mod community after the release of SCII, and here are a few of the best gems we’ve found so far.
Most of these were actually created before the game dropped and just after the Galaxy map editor was released, mostly because once the game was released the creative energy of our mad mod makers was channeled into both victory in multiplayer scenarios and helping Jim Raynor save the whole damn universe.
To the mods!
First up is Tetris.
Yup.
Tetris.
Not just Tetris either – Supply Depot Tetris. That’s right, the creator has strung together Supply Depots to emulate the familiar blocks, lines and “OMG WHY WON’T THAT FIT HERE” pieces of the classic puzzler. Not only that, but the game can be played in multiplayer, with the objective being to cram so many “trash” pieces into the other guy’s board that they can’t make a line to save their life.
Next is the Starcraft 2 Shooter. That’s right, a little version of what should have been Starcraft: Ghost comes to town. Though Ghost was put on a backburner somewhere in the frozen wilds of Alaska – about as far from Blizzard HQ as possible, fans are still desperate to see a FPS version of the Starcraft universe, and this little demo delivers. Not only does it include smooth mouselooking and standard WASD controls, but it allows you to shoot Zerg in their big dumb face.
And really, what could be better than that?
Not much, except for our last entry – Wacky Race.
Think Mario Kart but with SCII vehicles and you’re in the right area. We’re not going to lie – we loved Mario Kart and we’re experts – experts – at the super-hard rainbow level with no walls at the end of the game. We were savants of the Mario Kart world.
The popularity of Mario Kart continues even now, with a new iteration being released every year or so for progressively more advanced systems, but with the same core mechanic – drive fast and shoot shells at people.
The SCII version is basically a way to find out which unit is the fastest, and while the map is a bit rough around the edges, the proof of concept is really cool. Also, it turns out that Thors were not hiding a pair of sprinting legs under all that metal – they really are just slow as hell – kind of like Bowser in the original game but without the ability to blow up the competition.
We’re at once proud of, shocked by, and in love with the modding community, a fact that Blizzard counted on with Starcraft II. We expect in the coming months to see everything from Farmville clones to re-working of a classic Final Fantasy using nothing but Starcraft II units.
Ooh! Ooh!
Legend of Zergda. “Slink” would be an excellent name for a sword-wielding, triforce-loving Zerg protagonist.
