exQUIZitely 🕹️

Diablo II is considered by a large portion of longtime Diablo fans to be the best game in the franchise.

It was developed by what was then arguably the very best game developer of its time: Blizzard North.

Obviously, I can't speak for all fans. So, what do you think - is Diablo II the one that you look back on as the best?

Thanos snaps his fingers and deletes ALL but three MicroProse games from history.

Which three should be spared?

I'd go with:
1⃣ Railroad Tycoon
2⃣ Civilization
3⃣ Master of Orion II

Much, much harder than I thought. Leaving out Colonization was very painful.

40 years ago today, on 11 Nov 1986, Compile's Zanac (not Zanax!) launched on the Famicom Disk System in Japan. It had debuted on the MSX earlier that year, and the NES got it a little later in 1987.

Its novelty was an "AI" that analyzed how you played. Play well and the enemies got tougher, struggle and it got easier. It also had a gigantica amount of sprites with no slowdown, which was impressive for 1986 making it feel quite ahead of its time.

For those who played it, how would you rate it within the shoot 'em up genre from 1 to 10?

"So, Blizzard got started with juggling credit cards at supermarkets?"

"Petty much. We started with 20k and our computers, that was it. That was our starting capital."

An absolutely fascinating interview with Mike Morhaime @mikemorhaime (former CEO and co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment) about the history of the company, early struggles, maxing out credit cards, and borrowing money from his parents to stay afloat.

Many, many more insights about their journey from startup to iconic game studio in the full video over at Jesse's Twitter @JessePetrilla.

Can't recommend this enough, go check it out. Here's a little glimpse...

As an old school Dungeons & Dragons pen and paper nerd since the mid-80s, I played pretty much every RPG computer game out there. When Dark Sun was released by SSI in 1993, I was hooked instantly.

It even got an MMORPG version in 1996, one of the very first, but sadly shut down again in 1999.

For a game that's well over three decades old, the graphics still blow me away. There's something about that style that simply doesn't age.