Best way to get into Classic Starcraft??

[Manny]

Today is the 24th anniversary of the original Starcraft launch (March 31, 1998)

Does anyone know a good way to get the classic game & Brood War installed on modern Windows? Do the CD's still work if I pick up a battle chest off eBay? I just want to play vs some CPUs or do a bit of the campaign offline for a bit of reminiscing.

I logged into my old Blizzard account and saw they are offering it for "FREE" but it's probably tied to the new Battle.net launcher or some other BS which I don't want on my PC. After the abomination called Warcraft III: Reforged, yeah no.

[hedgesparrow]

I'm trying out PCem for Diablo II right now. I mentioned the other day that I felt the peak of Windows was Windows 2000 before a Service Pack removed custom installation options. It made me think, why not run D2 on Win2k?

I tried Win2k on QEMU but the graphics card that I had to use didn't seem to be capable of running D2 at all. I found a post where someone mentioned trying PCem for Win2k instead.

I did manage to get the D2 graphics running quite well with an emulated Voodoo 2 but sound was glitchy and out of sync. The problem with using Win2k is that the ISA Sound Blasters don't have Win2k drivers and the Sound Blaster PCI128 is basic.

It's really slow to test out as the slow installation of Windows 2000 is also emulated . My dream is to have an emulated Voodoo with Sound Blaster so I can enjoy the game as it was with Glide and EAX. I may have to bump down to Windows 98SE to get sound working.

TL;DR: Perhaps PCem would be an option for Starcraft but it'll be difficult to configure unless someone has already provided a guide. You also need a beefy CPU for emulating anything but the most basic systems.

[Manny]

@hedgesparrow Wow I had never heard of PCem. That's amazing I'm going to look into this for sure. So what version/service pack of Win2K do you recommend?

[hedgesparrow]

I gave up on Win2k because of the sound issues. I'm trying Windows 98 now but D2 won't detect glide when I have a Voodoo attached.

Edit: apart from the sound Windows 2000 SP4 was working fine.

[fearedbliss]

You all and your fancy 2000 UI. Everyone knows the peak was Windows 3.1. It's _all_ about the cabinet files and the cabinet explorer. Minesweeper on deck. Minesweeper is the Diablo II of Windows.

[hedgesparrow]

I'm still getting sound stuttering in Win98 with D2. I think my system is struggling with the emulation. It seems to be close to playable but not quite. Also EAX doesn't work with Sound Blaster 16, not sure which Creative Labs cards support it . My CPU is an Intel i5-4690K over clocked to 4GHz.

BTW I didn't use Win 3.1 much as games were still in DOS! I resisted the move to Windows 95 for a while. I remember my 486DX 100 playing Dungeon Keeper.

[hedgesparrow]

I've managed to get Diablo II running in PCem so I thought I'd make a mini-guide, the same idea could be applied to Starcraft or other Blizzard classics!