The year was 1998. Bill Clinton was the president of the United States of America. Everyone spent an enormous amount of time and money on watching a movie about a sinking boat. Google is founded. The second Harry Potter book is published. Absolutely no one dances the Charleston. And StarCraft: Brood War is the hip new release by the scrappy underdogs at Blizzard. It also costs money, because every video game costs money at that point. But it doesn’t cost money any more; Blizzard has made the title free as part of its classic games collection.
If you’ve never played the game, you can download it and start playing right now to experience everything therein as it was originally released, minus the CD case (and the remarkably thick instruction book that came with the base game). This comes in advance of the upcoming rerelease and remastering of the classic games, so expect the title to seem just a little bit dated. But it’s also classic StarCraft for free, which means that some people (including this writer) can stop carting around the same game discs from nineteen years ago.
