Sixteen years ago the company Blizzard released a port on the N64. This port was a watered down version of the legendary StarCraft game for PC. Unsuited for a game of this magnitude the N64 port suffered from a lack voice acting, scenes and even diminished the length of the music tracks. This was also the game that caused Blizzard to swear off console released if they had not been up to par for the games.

While all of this might sound terrible, StarCraft 64 did get a lot of things correctly. The N64 was no stranger to Real Time Strategy games having already released Command and Conquer a few years earlier, but never to the magnitude of StarCraft 64. Thus despite the changes they made in order to fit the game in the cartridge StarCraft 64 did include the expansion Brood War and actually had a canon mission only included in this game titled Resurrection IV in which for those familiar with the lore will recognize as the part where Alexei Stukov is revived and cured from the Zerg. This technically means that the port actually influenced the lore of the StarCraft universe. But, again this is not to save the port from being a total disaster because transposing a PC game to the N64 is not a small feat.

The Nintendo 64 controller was not meant to handle the mouse/keyboard combination utilized in PC. StarCraft 64 had to utilize buttons for quick build and other functions. Another downside of the game was the fact that StarCraft 64 required the Expansion Pak utilized by few games on the N64. This meant that you might not even get to fully enjoy the game because you did not own the peripheral. It wasn’t simply a few stages locked out either; the Expansion Pak was required to play the Brood War campaign. In spite of all these short comings SC64 still managed above average reviews with an overall score of 7.7 in Metacritic.

I can’t really recommend StarCraft 64 to anyone except the most diehard fans of the series. The game is a reminder of why most RTS were left to PC players in that time. While RTS have now become mostly MOBAs there is still a market out there for the original Real Time Strategy games of old. If you’re interested in the extra mission available on this version you can always find it in the unofficial mods that exist out there on the internet. Most players are better off playing those rather than StarCraft 64. Still we have to give credit to Blizzard for trying their best to keep the game as faithful to the original as possible, and almost succeeding.

Dash The Bomber

Dash The Bomber is a sailor is his 20's with a penchant for goofy, yet deep thoughts. An avid gamer for generations he has played everything from the Atari 2600 to the PC in which he writes his work on. He currently lives in the middle of the ocean and appreciates donations in order to buy goodies from Amazon while deployed (makes his life slightly better). You can help the guy out by donating here: paypal.me/dashthebomber.