Brood War
The version that would not die. What the 1998 expansion changed, and the mechanics that turned into a culture of their own, the twelve-unit selection limit, the dragoon pathing everyone learned to work around, muta stacking, and an APM arms race. Plus Remastered, the iconic maps, and the modern scene on Afreeca.
Part of StarCraft
45 moments in this segment.
- - Batoo OnGameNet Starleague finals. The 2008-09 Batoo OnGameNet Starleague StarCraft: Brood War finals in South Korea, featuring Jaedong and Fantasy. Accepted at 656px as scarce Brood War-era primary material.
- - Brood War medallists, WCG 2009. The StarCraft: Brood War medallists, including Jaedong, Bisu and Stork, at the World Cyber Games 2009 Grand Final.
- - StarCraft at WCG Grand Finals 2010. StarCraft competition at the World Cyber Games Grand Finals 2010, with Jaedong among those photographed.
- - KT GiGA Legends Match, 2016. The KT-hosted GiGA Legends Match esports event in 2016, reuniting Brood War veterans BoxeR, NaDa, Yellow and Guillaume Patry. Accepted at 490px as scarce material on this reunion event.
- - Blizzard producer Pete Stilwell on making StarCraft Remastered. Travis Gafford interviews Blizzard's senior producer of classic games about why and how Remastered was built and what it meant for esports.
- - StarCraft Remastered announcement trailer. Blizzard's official announcement trailer presenting a modern take on the original StarCraft experience.
- - The full StarCraft Remastered announcement in Seoul. Complete announcement of StarCraft Remastered at the 'I Love StarCraft' event in Korea, including the news that the original Brood War would become free to play.
- - Breaking down the Remastered reveal: graphics, gameplay and esports. Same-day analysis of Blizzard's Remastered reveal, covering modern hardware support, HD and 4K visuals, updated sound and new matchmaking.
- - Blizzard Korea unveils StarCraft: Remastered. Blizzard Korea's official Remastered reveal, describing StarCraft's asymmetric factions, careful balance and accessibility as the innovations that defined the RTS genre.
- - Reconciling Brood War Remastered with StarCraft II. Video essay for StarCraft II players uncertain how to approach Brood War Remastered, covering transfer of rank and of skill between the two games.
- - Day[9] on what Brood War really is. Day[9] argues that Brood War embodies the fantasy of being a commander because it is primarily a real-time game and only secondarily a strategy game, introducing his Remastered instructional series.
- - IGN News: StarCraft and Brood War become free. News report that Blizzard made the original StarCraft and Brood War completely free to download, a decisive moment for the game's second life.
- - Ars Technica interviews Blizzard about remastering StarCraft. Sam Machkovech talks with Blizzard lead 3D artist Brian Sousa about the technical work of rebuilding StarCraft's art for HD and 4K.
- - StarCraft: Remastered launch, Gwangalli. The GG Together launch event for StarCraft: Remastered held at Gwangalli Beach in Busan, South Korea, in July 2017.
- - Queuing for Remastered, Gwangan. People queuing for the limited edition of StarCraft: Remastered at the Gwangan launch event in Busan, 2017.
- - Remastered store booth, Gwangan. The StarCraft: Remastered store booth at Gwangan, Busan, during the 2017 launch event.
- - Digital Foundry: StarCraft Remastered versus the 1998 original. Technical comparison showing the remaster's upgraded textures, lighting and shadows at 4K while confirming the gameplay is untouched.
- - StarCraft Remastered developer update. Blizzard senior software engineer Grant Davies gives an official development update on Remastered after launch.
- - Level design in Brood War. Mapmaker Pr0nogo walks through his level-design thinking for Brood War, from terrain to trigger work, in the game's long-running custom-content scene.
- - The Brood War Protoss units that never made it into StarCraft II. Survey of the Protoss units cut between Brood War and its sequel, illustrated with footage from Brood War casts.
- - StarCraft II is dying but Brood War lives forever. Community commentary on Blizzard cutting StarCraft II tournament funding and ending development, and why the older game outlasted it.
- - The truth about StarCraft's pathfinding. Technical examination of how Brood War's much-mythologised pathfinding actually works in the engine, correcting widely repeated claims.
- - Tasteless on the maps that are the pinnacle of StarCraft design. Nick 'Tasteless' Plott discusses the Brood War maps he considers the high point of competitive map design.
- - How good are the StarCraft AIs?. Top North American Zerg player Jimin plays three Brood War AI bots, surveying the state of the game's long-running AI-development community.
- - Day[9] on why Brood War is so addictive. Sean Plott's rant about what makes Brood War compulsive to play, delivered as an argument against and then for taking it up.
- - StarCraft Brood War retrospective. Retrospective on Brood War as a classic of the RTS genre and a catalyst for online competitive play.
- - Warcraft III legend Grubby plays StarCraft ladder. Artosis casts Grubby, one of Warcraft III's greatest players, taking on the Brood War ladder, illustrating how the modern ladder draws players from outside the game.
- - Day9 replays the StarCraft campaign 25 years later. Sean Plott returns to the original StarCraft single-player campaign after 25 years, reacting to how the 1998 design holds up.
- - The hidden mechanics that make Brood War hard to understand. Breakdown of Brood War's unit types, damage types and missed-shot mechanics, the invisible systems governing every engagement.
- - The SCV: the most important unit in Brood War. Deep-dive on why the Terran worker unit carries far more of Brood War's play than its status as a worker suggests.
- - The original StarCraft and Brood War: a full retrospective. Feature-length retrospective covering the 1998 original and its expansion, their design and their universe.
- - The best Brood War players by Elo, 2021 to 2025. Statistical survey of the top-ranked Brood War players across five recent years, a snapshot of the modern competitive population.
- - The true strategy behind Brood War. Argues that Brood War is a game of invisible if-then decisions locked inside the Korean professional scene, dispelling common myths about how it is played.
- - How pro gamers come back from lost positions in Brood War. Argues that Brood War's jankiness produces an effectively infinite skill ceiling that lets professionals overturn hopeless positions.
- - Why Brood War bonjwas struggled in StarCraft II. Analysis of why the dominant Brood War champions could not repeat their success after the sequel changed the economy and interface.
- - Playing Brood War with only the 1998 strategy guide. Experiment attempting Brood War using nothing but the original printed 1998 strategy guide, testing how the game's understanding has changed in three decades.
- - Brood War: the expansion that did the impossible. Feature-length review of how the 1998 expansion improved on an already exceptional game, covering its new units, campaigns and balance changes.
- - Professionals play Big Game Hunters two-versus-two. Artosis casts Korean professionals on Big Game Hunters, the famously casual custom map, an unusual crossover between the pro scene and UMS culture.
- - StarCraft: Insurrection, the forgotten 1998 third-party expansion. History of the licensed third-party StarCraft expansion released in 1998, how it came about and why it vanished from the record.
- - The best foreign Protoss against a Korean champion. Artosis casts RoyaL against Dewalt on Polestar, a marker of where the international Brood War scene stands relative to Korea in 2026.
- - Every Brood War unit explained. Unit-by-unit walkthrough of what the expansion added, covering the Medic, Valkyrie, Lurker, Devourer, Dark Templar and Dropship.
- - Is Brood War really as hard as everyone thinks?. StarCraft II professional uThermal examines the difficulty of Brood War's interface and mechanics against its reputation.
- - A 2026 quality-of-life leap for StarCraft Remastered players. Community news on new desktop tooling and replay analysis for Remastered, showing the game's infrastructure still developing nearly thirty years on.
- - StarCraft Remastered in 2026: a player's view of the game's future. Personal reflection from a community member on where Brood War and Remastered stand in 2026 and how the scene sustains itself.
- - Is Brood War still worth playing in 2026?. Review revisiting the expansion's three campaigns, new units for every faction and its continuation of the original story, judged from the present day.
