Good Game: Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness (DOS)

Another Good Game

Today its Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness a 1995 fantasy real-time strategy game developed by Blizzard Entertainment and published by Davidson & Associates for the MS-DOS (DOS).

The game was met with positive reviews and won most of the major PC gaming awards in 1996. In 1996, Blizzard released an expansion pack, Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal, for DOS and Mac OS, and a compilation, Warcraft II: The Dark Saga, for the PlayStation and Sega Saturn. The Battle.net edition, released in 1999, provided Blizzard’s online gaming service, and replaced the MS-DOS version with a Windows one.

In Warcraft II, as in many real-time strategy (RTS) games, players collect resources to produce buildings and units in order to defeat an opponent in combat. Players gain access to more advanced units upon construction of tech buildings and research. The majority of the display screen shows the part of the territory on which the player is currently operating, and, using the small minimap, the player can select another location to view and operate on. The fog of war completely hides all territory which the player has not explored: terrain that has been explored is always visible, but enemy units remain visible only so long as they stay within a friendly unit’s visual radius.

Warcraft II was a commercial hit, with global sales above 3 million units by 2001; roughly two-thirds were sold in the United States. The game influenced strongly the company’s next successful RTS, the futuristic StarCraft (1998) in gameplay, and in attention to personality and storyline. In 1996, Blizzard announced Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans, an adventure game in the Warcraft universe, but cancelled the project in 1998. Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, released in 2002, used parts of Warcraft Adventures’ characters and storyline, but extended the gameplay used in Warcraft II.

In 1996 Blizzard published Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal, an expansion pack developed by Cyberlore Studios, with new Human and Orc campaigns, using new and much more powerful heroes. Later that year the company released Warcraft II: Battle Chest, a compilation of Tides of Darkness and Beyond the Dark Portal, for DOS and Windows 3.

Watch the video I made below showing about the first 48 minutes of the game.

Video:

Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness Gameplay.

Developer: Blizzard Entertainment.
Publisher: Davidson & Associates.
Platform: MS-DOS.
Release: 9th December 1995 (NA), 1996 (EU).
Genre: Real-time strategy.