Classics made by World of Warcraft creator Blizzard, such as the Lost Vikings or Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, won’t be coming to the Apple App Store or any other app marketplace any time soon, Blizzard Entertainment CEO Mike Morhaime (pictured left) said at the Blizzcon event in Anaheim, Calif. today.
Classic re-releases on the App store have become a bit of a trend lately. Telltale games re-released updated versions of their early 90s classics, Secret of Monkey Island and its sequel. Sega has also re-released its Sonic and Sonic 2 games, as well as Phantasy Star 2. Activision, the other half of Activision-Blizzard, also hasn’t shied away from releasing their games on App stores as well. Morhaime wouldn’t specify as to why the company didn’t have plans to release their classic titles on the App Store — but then again, it could be a bit unwieldy to manage a hundred soldiers on a smaller screen.
Blizzard wasn’t always known for its Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo franchises. One of Blizzard’s early games was a puzzle side-scrolling game called The Lost Vikings. It involved taking control of one of three vikings with unique abilities and moving them through obstacles to advance in a dungeon. Blizzard was also responsible for the Super Nintendo title Rock ‘N Roll Racing — quite a far cry from its current offerings.
Blizzard released the first iteration of its real-time strategy game Warcraft: Orcs and Humans in 1994, a year after releasing Rock ‘N Roll Racing, and launched a franchise that would change the direction of the company almost permanently. Blizzard became synonymous with real-time strategy with the release of Warcraft and, four years later, sci-fi real-time strategy game Starcraft in 1998. Blizzard also released the first version of its dungeon crawling game Diablo in 1997.
Then Blizzard came along and released a little online game called World of Warcraft in 2004 — changing the playing field almost permanently. World of Warcraft has essentially become Blizzard’s cash cow, bringing in $15 per person across 12 million subscribers every month, and that doesn’t even include sales of its new expansions.
Activision merged with Vivendi Games in 2008, bringing about the Activision-Blizzard that is known today. Blizzard was originally known as Silicon and Synapse, before renaming to Blizzard in 1994.
