I missed out on the original StarCraft as well as Warcraft III and Diablo II. I noticed all three Battlechest editions can now be had for a total of 60 dollars with free shipping from Amazon.com. The only thing is, I really don't like discs anymore and prefer digital distribution for all my games. So that lead me to see if prices had dropped on Blizzard's own store for digital versions of the games. It turns out they have for two out of three of them. Warcraft III is still going for $40. with it's expansion but on the other hand StarCraft and its expansion are $15. So ultimately, it's $75. to get the same set of games as digital versions directly from Blizzard. To me that is probably worth it where i prefer that. I give up the strategy guides the Battlechests would include but that's probably not a great loss really.

So the next thing is, will they all run on Windows 7 64 bit? I tried the Warcraft III demo and it ran flawlessly. There is no demo for Diablo II that I am aware of but I've read that it works fine with Windows 7 although confirmation here from anyone playing it would be nice to see. Lastly, it seems that StarCraft has issues in Win7 with screwed up colors from what I've read. I tried an ancient demo of that game too and sure enough, the colors were all messed up. I tried some weird fix involving opening a control panel window, etc. that has been posted and is said to work for some people but it did not work for me with the demo at least. Then I read on the StarCraft forums a post about running a batch file to kill explorer, run StarCraft then start explorer again upon terminating it as a solution. Apparently that works at least for some people to solve the issue.

Does anyone here have experience running these three games in Windows 7, especially the original StarCraft? Does it work alright? On the Blizzard pages the system specs for all three state they work with Vista but they don't mention Windows 7. And for any Mac users out there, they all are said to work with OSX 10.3.9 thru 10.6.8. Does that mean the most current OSX is supported? I wonder about that because it is my hope to get an iMac by this year's end and use bootcamp to run windows games as needed. So even if these didn't work in Win7 it would be very cool if they did work in OSX as eventually I hope to be using that mostly other than windows required gaming.

All that said, sometimes I wonder if I am nuts wanting to make sure I play all the games i missed over the years gone by now. I already have a very big backlog. I wonder if I shouldn't just spend the sixty bucks on StarCraft 2 and let the past go? What do you think? I'm interested in people's opinions there.

Thanks for reading my lengthy post and for any feedback. It's much appreciated.

You can register the CD-keys included in the battlechests on battle.net to a get a digital copy of the games. I don't have any problems running Starcraft on Win7 64-bit. The color problem can be fixed with a quick registry fix

Edit: Looks like that link is dead. Here's a [url=http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:CTuKZ8FzxkkJ:go.hopx.net/2010/05/256-color-issues-with-directdraw-and.html+starcraft+directdraw&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us]cached version[/url]

The original StarCraft and Brood War, Diablo/Diablo II, and their expansions are currently only available for Macs with PPC processors, which means that they will only work on Intel Macs running up to OS X 10.6.x (Snow Leopard), because Apple dropped Rosetta support in 10.7 (Lion). There was a similar issue with screwed up colours when running StarCraft on 10.5.x because (IIRC) Apple dropped 256 color support in its drivers; Apple later issued a fix, and I think Microsoft did the same for Win 7.

To fix StarCraft, apply this to your StarCraft executable: http://cy-fox.com/ddrawfix.zip

What kind of DRM is on the Anthology? I don't really need the book from the battlechest and I don't have time to wait for shipping if I get it.

In 2002 I bought the Warcraft Battle Chest for 10 USD and the Starcraft Battlechest for 0 USD (yes 0, as in zero).

Blizzard keeps raising their prices on those old games.

Thanks for the great info and solutions. I'm glad to know they are all workable with Windows 7 at least. It's disappointing the most current Mac OSX isn't supported though. Oh well, you can't have everything and I'd be running with bootcamp often for gaming anyway.

I'm also really glad to know I could go with Amazon and register the keys for the best of both worlds. That's great news!

That reminds me, I really should try Starcraft one of these days.

I can +1 the batch file method in Win7 for Starcraft. I tried the other fixes on my Win7 x64 laptop, and they unfortunately did not work.

Looked in to picking up D2 a while back and you can't find the pack (it and the expansion) anywhere for under $30. It's crazy.

I bought that from a fellow forum goer awhile back. Or at least the serials for them, which I then registered with b.net. If you can find somebody that frequents fleamarkets you can probably pick up a used copy and do the same.

*whistles* That'd likely be me. ;)

If anyone wants me to look for stuff just let me know. I find these ALL THE TIME.

1. Get them from Amazon, because the serial numbers can be registered on Battle.net and you'll have the digitally distributed 'versions' too.

2. Yes, they all run just fine on Windows 7 64bit, if you run them this way.

2.1. Warcraft 3: Install outside Program Files.

2.2. Starcraft: Install outside Program Files. Run the game as an administrator, and with 98/ME compatibility mode enabled. Also make sure that, the Screen Resolution window is open before launching the game. No need to kill processes and stuff.

2.3. Diablo 2: Either like Warcraft 3 or Starcraft (if you have any problems).

3. About DRM, the games don't check for discs and stuff (that was removed a long time ago (when the new battle.net website launched), just require the offline serial number 'activation'.

4. Play these games, and afterwards, play Starcraft 2. :) They are all worth the money (by this point someone is sure to attack me of being a fanboy or whatever for which I /care).

Yes, I do believe it was, I couldn't quite recall who it was, but now that you mention it, I'm pretty sure it was you.

I'm GOG's very own Blizzard crack dealer. ;)

And my prices are fair. I now sell these for a half-price GOG game ($3) from whenever a sale's going on. Hee. ^^;