History of Starcraft

Early Starcraft Development

Hot off the heels of Warcraft II, the people at Blizzard were brainstorming their next game. Blizzard had been working on a post-apocalyptic strategy game set on earth, while Warcraft II was still under development. By the time Warcraft II had shipped, his original project was cancelled, and a new game would be created.

The game would feature three totally different races, as opposed to the similar twin races of Warcraft II, as a core feature. Using the Warcraft II engine code as a base, Blizzard assembled a primitive build of StarCraft for E3 1996.

The early alpha had the Nightmarish Invaders. Later the Nightmarish Invaders were renamed to the Zurg and then renamed once more to Zerg, to avoid trademark disputes with Pixar's Toy Story, which featured a Villain called "Zurg."

Looking through the images, its clear to see some easily recognized Units, as well as two of those unidentified units that are in several Early Alpha screenshots. The interface is very Warcraft-like. Everything from the unit shapes, color schemes and styles are very different. At the very least we see blizzard might have had the idea of Zerg Creep very early on.

The game made a weak first impression at E3, and it received much criticism for looking too much like "Orcs in space." When Blizzard came back from E3 that year, they promptly scrapped everything.

Alpha Reboot
As a result, they started on the StarCraft we know and love. The basics of the Warcraft II engine were still used, but the design and art were given a total reboot. Finally in 1997, a brand new version of starcraft was unveiled to the public for the first time. The interface had totally changed, and early Terran and protoss had been added.

A lot of things never made it into the live game. For example, Goliaths had a machine gun, a flame-thrower, and rockets to unleash on ground targets. Transport units had to land to load units. Despite coming so far from the earliest version, the game was still very much in the alpha phase.