Breakfast Topic: Old school

I’ve been playing Diablo lately. Yes, Diablo. Not D2 or D3, but the original D. I don’t know why I’m playing it, except that it kind of has a purity of design — it’s the foundation that later games were based on, and you can see the good that was preserved and the bad that was abandoned. Plus, it’s kind of fun to run around the original Tristram Cathedral and realize this is the place you’ll explore in later games, it increases the feeling of weight and history you get playing them.

Originally Blizzard North (and they weren’t even called that then, they were called Condor) intended to release Diablo as a turn based game — a lot of the other RPG’s of the time like Baldur’s Gate (published 2 years later) and Fallout (published a year later) were turn-based to some degree. I often wonder if Diablo would have stood out from the pack if it had been a turn based game. I think going real-time with it definitely helped set it apart. Strangely, I prefer Diablo to Diablo II, and I prefer Diablo III to either. I may definitely be in the minority there, but it’s how I feel.

So, I ask you – play any old school Blizzard games? I used to play Warcraft II back when I had a working Playstation as well, just to get my nostalgia on. Maybe you play Blackthorne or Lost Vikings or even The Death and Return of Superman, which was totally a Blizzard game?