StarCraft was originally released for Microsoft Windows on March 31, 1998. It is a video game under real-time strategy genre, and is an integrated online game that lets players earn achievements and stay connected with single-player and multi-player game modes using Blizzard's Battle.net service. Starcraft has a playable demo for Windows, it runs in Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows NT operating systems and is around 28 MB in size and takes about to hours to download using a 28.8k modem. The demo version contains three missions that preempts the upcoming galactic war, with an optional tutorial mission that introduces new players to the ways of the game. It features a head-tohead play through serial link, modem, Ipx network, and through Battle.Net over the Internet. The system requirements for installing the game is a PC OS that runs on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 with the latest Service Packs and DirectX 9.0c, processor of 2.6 GHz PEntion IV or equivalent AMD Athlon, 128 MB PCIe NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT or ATI Radeon 9800 PRO video card, 12 GB available HD space, 1 GB of RAM, 1.5 GB of RAM for Windows Vista and Windows 7 users, DVD-ROM drive, and a minimum of 1024x720 display resolution. Windows users may experience problems that have been commonly reported such as reboot during the game, the game is not starting or graphics are distorted, users are advised to contact their manufacturer for the latest drivers available.
Blizzard StarCraft version for Mac OS was first released in 1999 and was released for Mac OS 8/9 but is no longer supported in this platform. It is a real-time strategy genre using military science fiction. Its timeline is set on the 26th century, where three species are fighting in a distant part of the Milky Way galaxy. These three species are fighting for dominance, the Terrans are humans who were exiled from earth and can adapt to any situation and environment, the Zerg are insectoid aliens pursuing genetic perfection and the Protos which are humanoid species with psionic abilities and which carries advanced weapons to protect their civilization. A demo of the game was released for Mac at Blizzard's BattleNet page, which consists of three missions of the campaign and a solo skirmish play as Terran versus Terran. It has no time restrictions but multiplayer gaming is not supported. For game installation in Mac OS X, the installer for Mac should be downloaded and run it with the StarCraft original disk in the optical drive of Mac. Issues have already been fixed for the Blizzard StarCraft version for Mac. The bug fixes included fixing the issue of the reply feature wherein any letter preceded by "r" was treated as a reply, lessening the imposed delay in the Throttling feature of the CPU and removing unnecessary delay in processing updates of palette cycling.