Blizzard Power Mac 8600/300 w/32mb RAM Starcraft Reviewed by Jonathan Dreyer All images in this review can be enlarged by clicking on them   The Mac version of Starcraft suffered a great many set-backs during it's port from the PC. It is a full year late from it's originally scheduled release. Starcraft was plagued with bad luck and just as it looked like it was going to make the 98 holiday season, it was delayed again, bringing it to it's March 99 final release. Starcraft, like it's predecessors Warcraft, features stunning between level film sequences and challenging 2D gameplay. Starcraft allows you to choose from three races, Human, Zerg, and Protoss. Each race has it's own set of units and abilities. Starcraft utilizes the same gameplay style that Blizzard defined years earlier with the original Warcraft, you control everything. You have to tell the barracks to train more troops, and then you have to give those troops their orders. Like all strategy games of this type, it becomes difficulty to keep track of all your units when you have a particularly large base. Starcraft also sports a more complete and complex storyline than the Warcraft series. It is set as a series of campaigns where you start as Human and end up as Protoss. You can't move on to the Zerg campaign until you have completed the Human one. The Starcraft campaigns feature challenging missions too, not the usual "build up your base and annihilate the enemy" type mission common to most strategy games. There are complex missions when certain individual units must survive or you must steal computer files by sneaking in an enemy's base. Those type of missions are certainly the most enjoyable. Of course, the best part of Starcraft is the multiplayer system over Blizzard's free Battle.Net servers. There are numerous Blizzard made and third-party maps available. Some maps are complex games within a game involving scoring points over a limited time period. Beating our PC brethren who have been playing for more than a year now is fun too. The Battle.net servers keep track of your wins and loses and there are also ladder events and tournaments in which you can win real prizes. Graphics is an area where Starcraft suffers greatly. Sadly, in the time that it took them to port Starcraft, the 2D graphics have become almost antiquated in a market where most new strategy games are using 3D. Still, Starcraft's graphics are for the most part bright well done. Had it been released on time last year, Starcraft would have scored 4 apples. Starcraft's interface is not lacking. It uses Apple's inputsprockets to control two-button mice and gamepads, allowing iMac users to use their fancy USB muli-button mice. SC features all the important options boxes allowing the user to adjust things like sound effects volume, brightness, and even network options to prevent lag and slowdowns in muliplayer games. You would expect from all the delays that when Starcraft finally did ship that it would be absolutly bug-free, and you would be right. Starcraft is, as far as I can tell, completly bug-free. I did not run across any problems over the many hours of reviewing. In conclusion, Starcraft is an excellent strategy games that suffers unfairly because of it's long delayed release. While no longer on the cutting edge, Starcraft is still a strong recommendation to buy. It offers great replayability throught the multiplayer aspect, and has challenging single-player campaigns to work your way through. For even more screenshots, visit our earlier Starcraft Preview