The Original Terrans. Yeehaw.
Space Trailer Trash.
That’s how the Terran forces, led by Jim Raynor, were described in an April 1998 review of the defining RTS game of the decade, Starcraft.
Now, just past the 12 year mark since the original game was released, we thought we’d take a look back in time, and see just how Starcraft was received when it was first debuted.
If possible, please pretend that everything is getting hazy and that the world is beginning to shift into a watery form of its typical self. In the background, undulating waves of music carry you backward on the winds of time, a la “Wayne’s World”. Granted, their method was mostly used for scene changes, but it had applications in time travel, for sure.
For those of you who don’t know the time travel method we’re describing or didn’t see Wayne’s World – shame, shame.
The year is 1998. Pakistan is detonating nuclear devices, communications satellites are failing, leaving the hot, new technology of paging a barren wasteland. Drug dealers everywhere are weeping.
In other news, the Nagano winter Olympics were getting underway, and Marijuana-smoking Canadians are busy winning in the official debut of snowboarding. Closer to home, the California state government chooses to ban smoking in all restaurants and bars.
Also in California, a little company called Blizzard debuts their chain smoking anti-hero, Jim Raynor. Loud, aggressive, and likely carrying around at least one lung tumor, Jim Raynor was the answer to a decade in which political correctness and non-offensiveness came to the forefront of the American consciousness.
Saddened and ashamed by the 1980s, for the fashion alone if nothing else, the world turned to a kinder, gentler, less “me-centric” path in the 1990s. Jim Raynor wanted whatever the world would give him because dammit, he earned it. And don’t even get us started on Sarah Kerrigan. Nobody was going to mess with her.
So it was that with high hopes, the flagship Starcraft was launched into the high-class world of 1998, which featured high-waisted jeans, oversized shirts, and the sexy Chrysler Prizm, which bore only scant resemblance to a Prizm, and none at all to sexy.
And how was it received? According to GameSpot, Starcraft, while not stepping too far off of the path set out by other RTS games, is the best game ever to walk it. Have you seen it walk? It’s sexy and sophisticated all in one. Those hips – whoosh!
Ok, everything except the first and second sentences of that paragraph is serious artistic license, but GameSpot really did like the game. The same goes for IGN, which despite not existing on the web until 2000, two years after the game’s release, did a review of Stracraft anyway, in which they called it “the consummate real time strategy game.”
IGN felt that they were obligated to produce a review of the game, based both on its inherent awesomeness and the fact that they received substantial amounts of letters demanding they do so and asking why they hadn’t, clearly ignoring the fact that they lacked the ability to travel back in time.
Which is easy, by the way – as you’ve seen.
The bulk of the praise for Starcraft was for the diversity found in the units, the balance of the races, and the fact that the graphics looked so damn good. It’s laughable, now, but in twelve years we’re sure that Starcraft II will look about as great as a Chrysler Prizm does today.
There were a few negative comments, mostly for the trickiness involved in controlling units, and the fact that there was a selection limit of 12 units. This was supposed to prevent the “rushing” problem, which is amusing now since rushing is one of the hallmark tactics of the Starcraft franchise.
From day one, this game drew praise, and drew a lot of it. Blizzard has big shoes to fill, and they’ve just got to hope that their feet haven’t shrunk, and that the shoes aren’t actually made of cement.
If they were ordered from “Big Tony’s House of Legitimate Shoes” and made by men in dark suits, there may be a problem.
At the end of the day, Starcraft II has a great deal to live up to, and Blizzard has a lot to get right, but they seem to thrive under pressure.
Plus, they seem really dedicated to the idea of Terrans as living in a trailer park. We hadn’t noticed it until we read these reviews, but Terran buildings can just get up and move whenever the action gets too hot. The barracks, especially, has the look of a technologically superior Winnebago, and we find this endlessly amusing.
Slap a few “Wide Load” and “Don’t Crowd Me” bumper stickers on that thing, and you’re ready for an interstellar vacation. Plus it even comes with an add-on bay for whatever you need – tech lab, reactor, vintage Orange Dodge Charger. All it takes is a little work.
In the immortal words of the Terran SCV – “In the rear, with the gear.”
Seriously?
Pass the red plastic cups and pour another glass of that cardboard chardonnay.
