I'm glad you brought up the $70 pricing (~£45 here in the UK), it's something I remember distinctly about buying games back then. It's true of course that packaging and distribution obviously affected the price of physical games, but even despite that, with inflation, a $70 game from 1994 would cost ~$145 today.
8:56 the unit on the tower looks like a blue Brigand, which share some graphics with archers Maybe there's a tie in there Also the goblin unit looks vaguely like a troll too
@@matthewsteele99 yes the forest troll would be awesome to recreate! It is only ever depicted in its "downward" sprite so it will take quite the artistic talent.
@@matthewsteele99 I found them while searching for the game files for the October 4, 1994 demo. They were labeled as "Interactive Entertainment Preview, September 1994"
@@mickcraftgaming are you planning to do one for Warcraft 2? I remember the screenshot on the back of the box had a foundry on land, rather than the coast
The concept art at minute 12 is really good, and the screenshot at 8:56 led my innocent child self to believe that there were multiple different versions of Warcraft 1 floating around out there!
It's like finding the holy grail Also, I wish StarCraft 1 (on PC) kept the "auto demo when you step out of the room to piss" thing that Warcraft and other games of it's era used to have. StarCraft 64 still has auto-demos but the PC one never did for some reason.
Yes I like those demos! I played StarCraft 64 earlier this year and I was surprised to see them included. When I was young and first playing these games the auto-demos really got my mind thinking about the different battle possibilities.
do you know if there's some way to access those files like the Walls from 9:29 Mick? It's a shame i never saw something like that in action. It would fit better off those cinematics for war1 & war2 to defend a town.
I wonder if that long nosed green thing with the orcs is that female creature in the manual, maybe it was meant to be some sort of "Hag" species? Also ogres have a more humani-ish face with what appears to be a mustache.
That could be! And yes the ogre is definitely a bit different looking. I found in the game files that the Ogre's death and decay sprites are still there, the game just skips them for some reason.
Oh hey, it's my magazine scans! ^_^ Sorry for the garbage quality - they were friggin tiny screenshots and I think I scanned this something like 20 years ago so you can guess how crappy my scanner was at the time :3 Don't think I ever did find the high quality screenshots though - someone must have stumbled on a press CD or something sometime after I stopped actively searching for this stuff :3 But yeah, it's still nuts to me how different the game was originally. I'm not sure why they dropped the trolls and ogres but maybe it didn't make sense without equivalent races on the human side? It was "Orcs" and Humans after all (and then in WarCraft 2 they put them back in while giving humans Elves and Dwarves to balance it out). I also always wondered if maybe there was some worry about copyright stuff with potentially being too similar to Warhammer since I know a lot of the franchise was inspired by it (but I know nothing about Warhammer so that might just be completely wrong). But who knows what the actual reason was. Still, surprised they didn't use the troll sprite for an enemy like they did with ogres. Maybe it looked like garbage in motion or was incomplete so they cut it? *shrug* My guess on the ogre death graphic honestly might just be that there isn't a "large skeleton" so it looked bad once it transitioned off that first frame. Since everything else in the mine levels basically explodes anyways it probably made more sense to just go with that.
Oh that's cool! Yeah, scanners weren't great typically back then haha. It would be cool if we could get the answers from Bill Roper or something. He seems to still interact with the community and may be able to remember. Not sure if it would have been one of his decisions though. True, a lot of removals may have just been for storage and to rush things along to meet a timeline.
70 fking dollars, can u imagine ine 1994, i remember it (at least in my country) cheap games were like 25 dollars and usually cost around 70-80, and some of those expensive games could be completed in 1-2 hours (point and click logic games), compared to what u get today for like 5-10 dollars its absolutely insane
@@mickcraftgaming in my country it was much more, average brutto salary was 6760 Kc which would be around 310 dollars and that was average BRUTTO and 2/3 of the population didnt even have this average amount, so imagine how expensive it was so if i compare it to todays salary ratio and average brutto salary 44 000kc for 2024, that would be 9 900kc or 450 dollars for a game!
Demos were issued on both floppy disk and CD and primarily with computer magazines as far as I can tell. I found a picture of one that I wish I had for this video.
Demos were usually included with computer magazines back in the day, yes. Depending on the magazine, you would have a disk with several demos on it and sometimes a full version of an older game.
Man I love concept of building walls or trenches and putting units there, there were towers in alpha of warcraft all the way back? Why rts games hated that? Warcraft, C&C even first Age if empires has useless walls but no gates. Thinking about it now, they probably never implemented it because AI and pathfinding issues that were generaly bad in these early rts games.
Agreed, building fortifications is a ton of fun! I spent many hours building intense fortifications in Age of Empires 2 and StarCraft back in the day. I think there is technically a bit of a glitch in Warcraft 1 where you can still put an archer on a wall if you do it while the wall is initially building. I'll have to put it to the test.
Heh! I've seen those walls and towers before, but I don't recall ever seeing the goblin dudes (though they actually look more like forest trolls to me personally). Very nice look into the past!
I sometimes wish the older versions of games were playable. Id software has been releasing some awesome content for their older games, I wish Blizzard would do the same. 30 years of Warcraft... crazy!
How large is the demo? I remember downloading the demo from AOL which had a gaming section. Got the game from kmart for $10 clearance, late in 1995 i think. WC2 was there for $40.
The thumbnail image is the screenshot shown at 8:41 This was a screenshot released to a gaming magazine in 1994, it depicts the Brigand sprite fighting as a unit for the Humans and the Ogre sprite fighting as a unit for the Orcs. There is also a unique troll/goblin looking Orc unit that never made it in the game and a different sprite for the catapult projectile. The buildings are all completely different and there appears to be towers and a gate as options for the walls (which are also very different looking) Not much is known about this build of Warcraft 1.
@@samowarow this was an alpha release of the game, what is seen may not have even ever been playable. There also used to be a third resource for Stone that was eventually cut.
This is amaizing! I'm so glad I've found your channel!
I'm glad you did too! Thanks for being here!
Great work Mick, thanks for sharing this with us. Garrison tower and gate door in war1, that's really cool
Thank you! You're welcome. I agree, incredibly cool!
I'm glad you brought up the $70 pricing (~£45 here in the UK), it's something I remember distinctly about buying games back then. It's true of course that packaging and distribution obviously affected the price of physical games, but even despite that, with inflation, a $70 game from 1994 would cost ~$145 today.
Absolutely! Accounting for inflation, it would have been quite the commitment to purchase a game like this.
Love your work mick.
Thank you! I'm glad you appreciate it 🙌🏻
8:56 the unit on the tower looks like a blue Brigand, which share some graphics with archers
Maybe there's a tie in there
Also the goblin unit looks vaguely like a troll too
True! It is a similar look to the archer as well. And you are right, it could be an early implementation of a troll!
@@mickcraftgaming why I love war1gus, now you can have Brigands and Ogres in your army
I hope someone will be able to recreate the forest troll
@@matthewsteele99 yes the forest troll would be awesome to recreate! It is only ever depicted in its "downward" sprite so it will take quite the artistic talent.
@@mickcraftgaming where did you find such HQ screenshots?
@@matthewsteele99 I found them while searching for the game files for the October 4, 1994 demo. They were labeled as "Interactive Entertainment Preview, September 1994"
Great video. Never seen those screenshots before, very interesting!
Thank you! Yes a lot of interesting assets that never were used.
@@mickcraftgaming are you planning to do one for Warcraft 2? I remember the screenshot on the back of the box had a foundry on land, rather than the coast
@@elliotthrynacz7777 yes I will be! I'll probably be tackling that once I complete the Beyond the Dark Portal campaign!
I remember playing that third demo level and being annoyed, but it was all so long ago. Never seen those screenshots though, they're neat.
Yes I thought it was cool to see! I may do a run-through of the whole human and Orc campaigns from the demo soon.
Back when demo’s were a thing! Miss the old days lol
Absolutely! My dad used to get copies of PC Gamer magazine and I was always excited about what demos would be on the demo disc.
Well...there are still game demos these days, so... 🤷🏻♂😜
This is super epic! I like those old screenshots a lot. The walls are cool. I've also head that stone was a resource early in the game.
I actually have a screenshot showing the Stone resource at the top, I forgot to include it! I'm not sure how stone was harvested.
Man I loved watching those demo battles back in a day
Same here! Seeing the battle lines forming up had my imagination running wild back in the 90s.
Whoa I thought you were just narrating all the episodes. It came with voice acting?
Haha! Perhaps they should have me voice act Warcraft 4 😎😎
The concept art at minute 12 is really good, and the screenshot at 8:56 led my innocent child self to believe that there were multiple different versions of Warcraft 1 floating around out there!
Agreed! It would be cool if they could dig up one of these earlier versions of the game.
It's like finding the holy grail
Also, I wish StarCraft 1 (on PC) kept the "auto demo when you step out of the room to piss" thing that Warcraft and other games of it's era used to have.
StarCraft 64 still has auto-demos but the PC one never did for some reason.
Yes I like those demos! I played StarCraft 64 earlier this year and I was surprised to see them included. When I was young and first playing these games the auto-demos really got my mind thinking about the different battle possibilities.
What a throwback. I miss demos 😢
For sure - same here!
do you know if there's some way to access those files like the Walls from 9:29 Mick? It's a shame i never saw something like that in action. It would fit better off those cinematics for war1 & war2 to defend a town.
I don't, that picture is high quality enough to make a sprite from though. I'd just only have it in that direction
came back to say that the vaguely troll looking unit looks like it would befit the Griselda icon
Yeah I can see that, I wonder if there is a relation
You could have wait a year for 30 yeara anniversary at this point but I love me some childhood nostalgia.
True, but I had to tackle it now! Haha - maybe I'll do a full play through on the 30 year anniversary itself as a livestream event.
I wonder if that long nosed green thing with the orcs is that female creature in the manual, maybe it was meant to be some sort of "Hag" species?
Also ogres have a more humani-ish face with what appears to be a mustache.
That could be! And yes the ogre is definitely a bit different looking. I found in the game files that the Ogre's death and decay sprites are still there, the game just skips them for some reason.
Oh hey, it's my magazine scans! ^_^ Sorry for the garbage quality - they were friggin tiny screenshots and I think I scanned this something like 20 years ago so you can guess how crappy my scanner was at the time :3
Don't think I ever did find the high quality screenshots though - someone must have stumbled on a press CD or something sometime after I stopped actively searching for this stuff :3
But yeah, it's still nuts to me how different the game was originally. I'm not sure why they dropped the trolls and ogres but maybe it didn't make sense without equivalent races on the human side? It was "Orcs" and Humans after all (and then in WarCraft 2 they put them back in while giving humans Elves and Dwarves to balance it out). I also always wondered if maybe there was some worry about copyright stuff with potentially being too similar to Warhammer since I know a lot of the franchise was inspired by it (but I know nothing about Warhammer so that might just be completely wrong). But who knows what the actual reason was. Still, surprised they didn't use the troll sprite for an enemy like they did with ogres. Maybe it looked like garbage in motion or was incomplete so they cut it? *shrug*
My guess on the ogre death graphic honestly might just be that there isn't a "large skeleton" so it looked bad once it transitioned off that first frame. Since everything else in the mine levels basically explodes anyways it probably made more sense to just go with that.
Oh that's cool! Yeah, scanners weren't great typically back then haha.
It would be cool if we could get the answers from Bill Roper or something. He seems to still interact with the community and may be able to remember. Not sure if it would have been one of his decisions though.
True, a lot of removals may have just been for storage and to rush things along to meet a timeline.
70 fking dollars, can u imagine ine 1994, i remember it (at least in my country) cheap games were like 25 dollars and usually cost around 70-80, and some of those expensive games could be completed in 1-2 hours (point and click logic games), compared to what u get today for like 5-10 dollars its absolutely insane
We've definitely come a long way! Those $70 games of 1994 would be $148 today adjusted for inflation 🤯
@@mickcraftgaming in my country it was much more, average brutto salary was 6760 Kc which would be around 310 dollars and that was average BRUTTO and 2/3 of the population didnt even have this average amount, so imagine how expensive it was
so if i compare it to todays salary ratio and average brutto salary 44 000kc for 2024, that would be 9 900kc or 450 dollars for a game!
@@Quitarstudent that's crazy! Would have been impossible to afford at the time
You will be court-martialed for killing your own men.
I did it for the greater good, but I understand... 😂😂
That will be a life trerm in the Stormwind Stockade for you. 😁@@mickcraftgaming
@The_Taiwan_Embassy I'll make a run for it, only to be stopped by a 5 man group of low level adventurers... 😆
How was this demo distributed to the general public in 1994? Preview discs included with computer magazines?
Demos were issued on both floppy disk and CD and primarily with computer magazines as far as I can tell. I found a picture of one that I wish I had for this video.
Demos were usually included with computer magazines back in the day, yes. Depending on the magazine, you would have a disk with several demos on it and sometimes a full version of an older game.
@@krinkrin5982 I got a lot of PC Gamer magazine demos with my dad back in the day!
Maybe Brigands used to be Footmen and Footmen used to be Knights...
(if that makes sense)
Yeah I could see that! Like a light infantry vs heavy infantry differentiator
I have noticed the alpha doesn’t have town hall or even Castle/Black Fortress. Which the latter is only mission specific.
Yeah a lot of differences!
Man I love concept of building walls or trenches and putting units there, there were towers in alpha of warcraft all the way back? Why rts games hated that? Warcraft, C&C even first Age if empires has useless walls but no gates. Thinking about it now, they probably never implemented it because AI and pathfinding issues that were generaly bad in these early rts games.
Agreed, building fortifications is a ton of fun! I spent many hours building intense fortifications in Age of Empires 2 and StarCraft back in the day.
I think there is technically a bit of a glitch in Warcraft 1 where you can still put an archer on a wall if you do it while the wall is initially building. I'll have to put it to the test.
AoE 1 walls were basically only useful for confusing the pathfinding, and blocking off approaches.
@@krinkrin5982 Yeah like in all those old games.
@krinkrin5982 while practicing SC Brood War this year I gained a greater appreciation for confusing the pathfinding in these older RTS games
Heh! I've seen those walls and towers before, but I don't recall ever seeing the goblin dudes (though they actually look more like forest trolls to me personally). Very nice look into the past!
Yeah I can see them as forest trolls too! Thanks for watching!
I saw this at electronics boutique when I was 12. it blew my mind.
Very cool!
Oh man i would of loved to see those walls in the working game.
@@EB-cz4te agreed! They are so cool. Looks like they had some ambitious plans that had to be cut back to get the game out and focus on Warcraft 2.
I sometimes wish the older versions of games were playable. Id software has been releasing some awesome content for their older games, I wish Blizzard would do the same. 30 years of Warcraft... crazy!
Yeah a lot of great content for Quake, Quake 2, and even Doom 64 out on PC now! Hopeful for the future of Blizzard!
My brother and I wasted SO much time on trying to figure out how to win the last mission.
Haha, good times!
How large is the demo? I remember downloading the demo from AOL which had a gaming section. Got the game from kmart for $10 clearance, late in 1995 i think. WC2 was there for $40.
21.3MB is the file size of the copy that I have
Roughly $150 today.
Pretty crazy! 💰💲💲💲
Thos is cool
Yeah I was excited to find a copy of this demo!
What's exactly on the thumbnail image?
The thumbnail image is the screenshot shown at 8:41
This was a screenshot released to a gaming magazine in 1994, it depicts the Brigand sprite fighting as a unit for the Humans and the Ogre sprite fighting as a unit for the Orcs. There is also a unique troll/goblin looking Orc unit that never made it in the game and a different sprite for the catapult projectile. The buildings are all completely different and there appears to be towers and a gate as options for the walls (which are also very different looking)
Not much is known about this build of Warcraft 1.
@@mickcraftgaming Not much but still?
@@samowarow this was an alpha release of the game, what is seen may not have even ever been playable. There also used to be a third resource for Stone that was eventually cut.