Starcraft remains one of the best games ever made.  The quality of gameplay, the low system requirements and most especially the hackability of the maps.

Mind you, I have serious issues with their online game mechanics, because of abusive players.  But when you have a regular group or you play my sort of Use Map Settings (UMS) games, it’s not as big a deal.  Well, usually.  Ok, it still is because idiots join and then leave and ruin the game.

Here are some fun screenshots.  First the most feared Protoss rush in a UMS map, and then a pair of Test of Survival (TOS) screenshots that summarizes what that map is like.  No, in the first screenshots those are not my units.  That’s me getting trounced.  Hard.  By the computer.

That last map shows 23 seconds left before another rush.  Hah.  =/

This game still has a lot of room for improvement, and if I were Blizzard I would have spent some time fixing the remaining issues so that this game would be replayable forever.  I feel like this about most oldschool games and software.  That’s one of the things that attracted me to open source.  And yes I’ve paid people to update open source software that’s been abandoned.  I cannot describe the feeling of accomplishment that brings.  But Starcraft isn’t open source.  Sigh.

Oh, and as far as I know, Starcraft still can’t be properly played online through Wine.  Sigh.  These guys need to get their priorities straight.  ;)