The beginning of Blizzard
The new issue of the Escapist has a piece up about how Blizzard began-- no, they didn't start out with World of Warcraft, or even Warcraft, or even Diablo. Blizzard started way back as a (somewhat failed-- ha!) offshoot of Sierra games, which you old timers (like myself) might remember used to make those terrible DOS games* that came on 5 1/4 inch floppies in big boxes.
The article goes through a lot of the changes over the years-- the development of Blizzard's first console games and Diablo, and how they came to make the RTS Warcraft games, all the way up to Battle.net and our little game. About World of Warcraft, Mark Kern has a nice quote: "We had to build an entire company around [World of Warcraft]." There's no question that as big as Blizzard was after making classic, lasting games like Diablo II and Warcraft III, WoW has turned them into the 800lb gorilla of MMORPGs, if not the industry at large. The article is an interesting read, especially if you want to know more about where this company we all pay money to came from.
But I do have one bone to pick with you, Escapist. In this article, there is not one mention of one of Blizzard's best games ever. It was a console game, and it came out and amazed me before anyone had ever heard of Diablo or Warcraft. In fact, I still have the original cart sitting around my house, in the same box as my old Sega Nomad. Anyone guessed it? Of course I'm taking about The Lost Vikings. And not only did the Vikings find their way into Azeroth (you can meet them in Uldaman), but Blizzard now has a playable demo of this little pre-Blizzard gem on their website. Where were you on that one, Escapist?
*Ok, Sierra did make a lot ofgood DOS games, I'll admit. But no one remembers allthe terrible ones-- that's what I'm here for.
