StarCraft Remastered plays exactly the same as the original, but at a resolution that won’t make your eyes bleed

By Brenna Hillier

StarCraft, now in shiny HD to match your rose-tinted memories.

StarCraft Remastered has been announced after months of speculation and years of noisy fan demand.

Due sometime in the second quarter, StarCraft Remastered includes the Brood War expansion and boasts updated visuals on units, buildings, and environments, as well as better audio and broader resolution support to suit modern screens. Blizzard boasts that the new HD version of StarCraft allows you to rapidly zoom in and out between a view of the entire battlefield and “the veins on a mutalisk’s wings”.

Speaking to Team Liquid, Blizzard said it had two goals with the new visuals: to maintain the distinctive unit silhouettes and animations, so old school players won’t have trouble recognising what’s going on, and to fill int the detail only hinted at by the limited pixel count of the original sprites.

You can compare the old and new graphics – in motion! – with a slider viewer on the StarCraft Remastered site.

Apart from the visual upgrade, there are a few other changes. New comic book style briefings link the missions, and all dialogue has been re-recorded, but Blizzard says it’s the same StarCraft story, just with a “fresh coat of paint”.

But that’s pretty much it; Blizzard’s clearly trying to avoid affecting gameplay. StarCraft Remastered uses the same engine as the original, everything’s still 2D, and the screen ratio is the same as it was as of Brood Wars. No changes have been made to balance, controls or features – at all.