StarCraft

by Blizzard Entertainment

Product Features

• INCLUDES Starcraft and Starcraft Expansion Set: Brood War
• Starcraft Expansion Set: Brood War The battle rages on with StarCraft: Expansion Set
• Starcraft The full version of the legendary hit game.

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00001IVLY
• Media: CD-ROM
• Release Date: January 28, 1998
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (268 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #18,490 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
  • #63 in Video Games > Mac Games > Strategy
  • #79 in Video Games > Mac Games > Action
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com Review

Blizzard's release of StarCraft was eagerly anticipated by Real Time Strategy fans, and with good reason. Instead of two similarly powered enemies facing off, the three distinct races in StarCraft have unique capabilities and strategies. Everyone still competes in the RTS genre's typical race for resources, but that's the only shared trait. Terrans can move their bulky mechanized bases as necessary, while the reptilian Zerg grow their colonies and warriors from mutating larvae. Meanwhile, the noble Protoss warp in equipment from their home world using psionic powers.

Not only does Blizzard juggle the races' playability and match it with superb art and sound effects, it also weaves together an engrossing three-act plot. Early on, as a Terran Magistrate, you spend a breathtaking 30 minutes defending against a Zerg onslaught. As the story unfolds around you, you'll experience the Zerg's hive mentality, and decipher the mysterious Protoss by the game's dramatic conclusion.

Missions vary in scope and are effectively framed with dialogue, chapter screens, and in-mission exposition. Multiplayer is also very well represented by Blizzard's own free battle.net service. If you'd rather play over a local-area network, StarCraft will generously "spawn" up to seven copies so your friends can join in. --Jack Gardiner

Product Description

The ultimate collection of the best-selling strategy games. Enter the universe of Starcraft and experience the future of strategic combat. This exlusive set includes the full version of Blizzard's blockbuster hit StarCraft and the critically-acclaimed Starcraft Expansion Set: Brood War.

See all Product Description

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Greatest game I have ever played... (or will ever play!!!), February 2, 2002

By 

Cilla (CA, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: StarCraft (CD-ROM)

This game is awsome. It's an RTS (Real Time Strategy), meaning that you gather resources, build a base, and raise an ever more powerfull army to destroy your opponent. It's a fast-paced, action-filled, stategic and fun game. The premise is that a group of humans have been stranded in some far corner of the galaxy already inhabited by the mighty Protoss, with the Zerg, classic science fiction hive-bugs, about to attack both. The story is superb, told in three chronological chapters depicting the war from the view of each race. It's full of twists and turns, and the missions scale up in difficulty very nicely.

The best part about Starcraft are the three races. Blizzard has achieved a perfect balnce between them but managed to also keep them utterly different. The Terrans are humans, with tanks, heavy machine guns, nukes and lumbering battlecruisers. The Zerg are a rampaging scourge of giant insects who can be produced quikly and in vast numbers to overwhelm opponents. The Protoss (my personal favorites) are mysterious psychics who use ultra-high tecnology as well as their awsome psionic abilities. Every unit is unique with strengths and weaknesses. For instance, take the first soldier available for each race. The Terran Marine can attack from a distance and stronger than the Zerg's counterpart, the Zergling, but the Zergling is faster and can be produced much faster than the Marine. The Protoss' Zealot is strong, fast, and packs a massive melee punch, but costs twice as much as a Marine and four times that of a Zealot. Every unit has a role throghout the game. Marines constitute a large part of my forces in a game from start to finish. Each race requires individual stratagies that take years (if ever!) to master. This is what makes Starcraft such a tremendous game, and while it will outlast 99% of other games.

The sound is excellent, and the dialogue varies between intreging (sp) and hilarious. The graphics, when they first were released, were the best I had ever seen. I've played this game for yearm and only now are they starting to look outdated, but they're four years old. Besides, if you have time to look at an RTS' graphics, then you're not playing the game! They function and arn't a distraction, which is all that matters in a stratagy game, IMHO.

The coup de gras is the entire interface, which has been plolished to perfection. The curser looks like something space-age, and the moving portraits of units and wire-frame images displaying area damage and hitpoints are just flat-out cool. So is the options menu, with an animated space battle for the single player icon... To select a campaighn you click on a moving avatar of the species in question, which displayes vital statistics of that said species... Little things like this are awsome. I could go on forever.

Multiplayer rules, and has been going strong for years now with no sighns of stopping. Unfortunatly, most of the people are playing maps with limitless resourses and where single-unit attacks actually work, but that's not the game's fault. If you can find a game where people arn't doing either of these, it's a blast. The campaighn editor is also very good, once you learn to use the triggers, which can take time. The cinematics are superb, some seeming as if they belong in a movie like Aliens and not a computer game. If you buy Starcraft, get it's expansion set, Brood War, aswell. It adds alot.

This game's woth it's weight in gold-plated latinum.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Still playing it after all these months, December 28, 1999

By 

Ted Wallace (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: StarCraft (CD-ROM)

StarCraft is a true Blizzard game. From a company known to produce an excellent product, they didn't let the consumer down despite delaying the product repeatedly.

StarCraft has three separate races that you can play -- each with its own flavor (and set of 10 missions in the campaign) that makes the game a different experience and forces you to adopt different strategies based upon what you're playing and what your playing against. The single-player game has a great storyline that feels important and enjoyable all at once. Campaign missions aren't just for training you in how to use units anymore.

When you've completed the campaign, hop online with Battle.net and let the carnage begin! StarCraft lets you play with up to 8 human/computer players via the Internet. Cooperative play with humans is an adventure if you give the computer AI the benefit of numbers (i.e. 5 on 3).

This is a well-balanced real time strategy title with a great story and enough replayability that it remains installed on my computer nearly a year later.

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Blizzard does it again., November 30, 1999

By 

Tim Williams - See all my reviews

This review is from: StarCraft (CD-ROM)

After the success of Warcraft II, blizzard chose to take it's next Real-Time Strategy (RTS) game into the realm of science fiction. Like all good science fiction the plot around which the different campaigns take place allow you to emerse yourself in the Starcraft Universe. The characters and events add imensely to the pleasure of playing the three campaigns. Also, each of the three races (Terran, Zerg, and Protoss) have very different units and tactics. Not just different graphics with essentially the same unit types but completly different limitations and strengths. For example, the Zerg are all biological and will come at you in hordes while the technologically superior Protoss will attack with fewer (albeit stronger) units. So, what is a winning strategy for one species will lead to utter failure with another. So, you will have to adapt your strategies to each species (both attacking with and defending against). Once you have mastered each of the three species against the computer's adroit AI, you have the next level of challenge, playing against other humans using Blizzard's battle.net servers. Beware however, playing against the computer will never completely prepare you for an war with an adaptable and intelligent player, so you will have to re-learn your tactics once more to survive in this and exicting realm of on-line gaming.