No, we aren’t talking about an epic snowstorm that buries the area it strikes and leaves people awestruck…but pretty close. Blizzard Entertainment has been an epic provider of PC games for twenty years, with humble beginnings in February of 1991. Prior to its evolution to Blizzard, it operated as Silicone & Synapse and primarily concentrated on creating ports of existing games for other formats, such as Battle Chess and Castles.

When the three UCLA grads who founded Blizzard began formulating original software, who would have known what influence Blizzard Entertainment would have. With early, classic releases such as Rock N’ Roll Racing and the Lost Vikings, the way was paved. The pioneers of enormous smash hit franchises WarCraft, Diablo and StarCraft soon followed in 1994, 1997, and 1998 respectively.

Many other titles are under the Blizzard name, including the Lost Vikings sequel and Blackthorne, but Blizzard’s influence reaches much farther than games it has officially released…or even mods of games it has released. Former Blizzard employees have launched new software development firms and have also had their fingers in tons of classic games, gaming franchises, and modern goodies.

Some titles that indirectly fall into the Blizzard stable include Arcanum, The Bard’s Tale, the Age of Empires franchise, and Sacrifice, as well as many more modern titles such as the God of War series, Lego Universe and Rift.

Check out the entire Blizzard flow chart here.

The effects of the Blizzard, 5.0 out of 5 based on 1 rating

Tags: Blizzard, MS-DOS Games, Sega Genesis Games

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 24th, 2011 at 08:00 and is filed under Classic Game Remakes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.