That's right, both StarCraft and StarCraft: Brood War are now completely free to download and play. But hey, I hear you say. What about that fancy new HD shindingle coming out this year? Well the new 1.18 update, which introduces some new features and fixes a number of bugs, also lays the groundwork for StarCraft: Remastered. Meaning that both versions will be compatible, so players will be able to play against or with each other no matter what version they have.

For the full patch notes and links to the new free client for PC and Mac, head here.

Oh, and because we can't get enough of seeing this, here's the StarCraft: Remastered announcement trailer for you to watch again. And again.

qgl tournament
no rush 10mins

wheres the patch ?
it just has a link to dl game ?

do i just log on to bnet like old days ?

My life for Aiur!

ok so i ran the old game and it updated but Windows Firewall wont let it connect to bnet now.
ran as Administrator

Firewall seems to have the right permissions
what gives ?

i selected LAN then went back and selected bnet and it worked.

i turned on Fullscreen mode in Video Options but i dont think it looked better
was widescreen though.
Is there some other setting ?

I havent had the chance to check it out yet, will do later tonight but there's a mention of widescreen in the patch notes so I'm assuming it's there. Has to be with Remastered sporting widnescreen HD visuals compatible with this version

it has the old 4:3 version and a full windowed version and fullscreen.
I couldnt see any other Video options.
I havent played for ages so maybe i am demanding too much.

connected me to EUR-1
had to make new account and give an Email address.

I guess they will close down the older BattleNet ?

No there is no widescreen included yet. I had a game on Battle.net and it worked fine. Some of the new fonts are not very readable at the current resolution of 640x480, but otherwise lots of great new features.

Good on Blizzard for doing this!

ok so this is a general patch with some features
but the bells and whistles are coming later ??

the resolution i was playing at was 720 X 480
old Starcraft was 360 x 240 ?

hmmm, free still seems like more than its worth....

This is one of my favourite games of all time, and for good reason. The mechanics are so fine tuned. It was so far ahead of its time. That Blizzard art, character and story creativity too. They nailed it with this and it is worthy of its popularity and obsessives. It's still great fun, I'm having a ball.