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Blizzard Marks 20-Year Milestone With New Documentary

Blizzard recently celebrated its 20th anniversary, and the company has commemorated the milestone with a documentary video that chronicles its history from the Silicon & Synapse days to the present. The production is full of stories from co-founders Mike Morhaime, Allan Adham, and Frank Pearce, who recount meeting at UCLA's computer science department.

It's a long video, but well worth watching. Here are just a few of the highlights:

  • The company's SNES game Rock & Roll Racing was the first game on the platform created by western developers, and the team worked on the game using untranslated Japanese technical documentation
  • The Lost Vikings' level design system was an early precursor to the map editors that became a critical part of StarCraft and WarCraft years later
  • The co-founders had to used credit-card advances from a nearby supermarket to make payroll
  • After changing the name from Silicon & Synapse, the company tried names including Chaos Studios and Ogre before settling on Blizzard
  • Diablo was originally conceived as a turn-based, claymation RPG

The documentary ends with a look at the company's future. Taking a cue from Disney, Blizzard says that they're optimistic that their best years are still ahead. As they point out, Disney hadn't released its most famous films or built Disneyland in its first 20 years. Congrats on two decades of great games, Blizzard, and here's to hoping that the best is yet to come.

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Comments
  • I really don't like their games and consider them to be grossly overrated, but even so, they've had a huge impact on PC gaming and deserve credit for that.

  • Turn-based claymation Diablo... is there any footage of this concept x.X?

  • Congrats to Blizzard.

  • R&R Racing was (and still is) one of my favorite SNES games. Great party game. "Kat lights him up!" :3

  • The funny thing is that they have only made like 2 games in there 20 years herp derp.

  • *** I have always wanted to play WOW

  • Speaking of building Disneyland, I heard that they are making a Blizzard theme park in China. Joyland.

  • So, when is Rock & Roll Racing coming to Virtual Console?

  • "As they point out, Disney hadn't released its most famous films or built Disneyland in its first 20 years."

    WOW. Thats an awesome comparisona and a pretty sweet claim to make. If a company like blizzard says that... watch out.

  • I fear being addicted and not having a life to play WoW