RGB Classic Games - Warcraft: Orcs & Humans

Warcraft: Orcs & Humans 1994

DOS Shareware (partial game)
Developed by Blizzard Entertainment
Published by Blizzard Entertainment, Interplay Productions
Genre: RTS
User rating: 9.0 (1 vote)

System Requirements

DOS 5.0 or better
100% IBM PC compatible with a 386 microprocessor or better and a VGA monitor
At least 4 megabytes of total memory

The first game in the Warcraft franchise, Warcraft: Orcs & Humans is a medieval fantasy real-time strategy game. Most of the familar elements of an RTS are present: players start with a small number of units and a base. Workers can gather wood and gold, and build structures such as mills and barracks. Some buildings can research better weapons or train better warriors. Players can only have as many units as they can feed with the number of farms they have. The units and buildings in each class are different for the humans and orcs. While humans can develop churches and train clerics with healing powers, orcs can create temples and train necrolytes who can reanimate dead warriors from either side into an army of skeletons. There are a few notable limitations of this first Warcraft game: only groups of four can be given orders at a time, workers can't work cooperatively to speed up construction, and the 320×200 VGA graphics allow very little of the map to fit on the screen, making the "mini map" more important. Once a portion of the map has been revealed, you can continue to see that part of the map for the rest of the scenario, even if there isn't a unit within sight of that area any more. There are over two dozen scenarios for both humans and orcs in this game, with only three scenarios for each species playable in the shareware demo.