Today in “news you’ve already read somewhere else”. The Warcraft series has reached its 30th Anniversary and as part of the celebrations, Blizzard have released remastered versions of the first two games.

You get the option of either original graphics, or ” lovingly updated hand-painted artwork”. You might recall the first game was pixelly VGA, the second moved to higher-res SVGA and established the series bold and colourful look. Now they share a similar style, more or less what I’d expect if you took the second game and re-drew it today.

So they look great… although it’s disappointing that the animation isn’t any smoother. This seems to be an occasional issue with remastering old-school 2D games. Just in my opinion, if you create hidef graphics but only have three frames for an “attack” motion, it gives the impression of a cheap mobile game.

Anyway we also get “UI and UX” improvements which I expect will, again, have more of an impact on the first game. For example, you can now move a unit by selecting and clicking instead of select, hotkey (or menu option), then clicking. Also you can select a larger number of units simultaneously. These details matter when you’re in a rush; I always found the clunky interface in WC1 to be a little offputting.

Oh and also, the remastered WC2 will still connect to Battle.net for multiplayer, as it has since 1999. Which is kind of astonishing.

I’d say both games are worth owning, being fine examples of early realtime strategy. Build up forces, fend off enemy attacks, try and co-ordinate your own successful strike on the enemy. Chaotic disaster when you get it wrong, immensely satisfying when you’re victorious. They’re also of interest to World of Warcraft fans, since they show events about 20 years before the point where WoW begins. If you’ve ever walked around the ruins of Alterac, here’s your chance to go and see the battle where it was destroyed.

The first game is going on Battle.net for £8.99 while Warcraft 2 will set you back £12.59. Alternatively you can get them both in the Battle Chest bundle with the remastered version of Warcraft 3 from a years back.

The changes haven’t (yet) reached GoG, who are still selling the versions of WC1 and 2 released about four years ago. (they don’t have WC3). These are more or less in their original state, with a few small tweaks to WC2 like widescreen support. They’re also a few quid cheaper, if you really don’t care about the upgrades or want a DRM-free version. Since I already own the gog versions I’m not in a hurry here, but will probably wait and see if the Battle Chest ever goes on sale. Then maybe one day I’ll finally give WC1 a proper try.

[update]  – sadly WC1 and 2 will be leaving the gog store on December the 13th. If you’ve already bought the games there, gog will at least keep them available and updated for modern windows according to their new Gog Preservation Program.