Diablo
What is it?
Diablo was released on 1997-01-06 admidst a tremendous hype. Of course it should have come out for Christmas 1996, but, well, it wasn't quite finished in time. Still in the same year there was an expansion pack, Hellfire, three years later there was Diablo II, and another year later an expansion pack for Diablo II, Lord of Destruction. Diablo can be played alone or by up to four players via direct connection, LAN, modem or Battle Net, for which you can sign up for free.
Ten days after the release, alt.games.diablo was created. The first long thread was about maximum stats and elixirs. Six years later it was still a very active group, but discussion were practically only about Diablo II (or the middle east crisis).
Though the game is now more than five years old and Diablo II has been out for quite some times, there are still so many fan pages of the original game that I have given them a page of their own. A google search for Diablo Hellfire returned more than 38,000 results!
Official system requirements are a Pentium computer (any Pentium computer) with 8MB of RAM, 16MB for multiplayer. I never played it on anything less than a 333MHz PII with 32MB, so I do not know how well it performs on a minimum requirement machine.
Diablo was one of the first, if not the first major game that requires Windows 95 (or NT 4.0). There is no DOS version.
There is only one install version which requires less than 2MB disk space, plus about 500kB per savegame. You can only have one savegame per character, unless you back them up manually. Of course, the CD must always be in the drive when you play.
Graphics are 640×480, 256 colors. They were pretty spectacular at the time. The game uses 2D sprites, but a 3D rendered scenery which allows for good lighting effects. Apart from the lava caves, most maps are pretty dark. Playing it in a well-lit room is sometimes a bit difficult.
Official requirements are just any PowerMac and 16MB RAM, more is better, since with only 16MB you have to enable Virtual Memory. Playing it on my Performa 6400/180 (48MB), animations were occasionally a bit jerky, so maybe these requirements should not be taken too litteral.
Diablo runs on system 7.5 or higher, 7.5.5 is strongly recommended and system updates are included on the CD. I could not find out whether and how well it will run on OS X.
In general the port is well done. It may be confusing that right-click actions are performed by command-click, not the more common ctrl-click. Patch 1.0.8 added multibutton mouse support.
One annoying detail was that I could not adjust the brightness and contrast of my monitor while playing. But this may be a peculiarity of the monitor I was using (an AppleVision 1710 Display).
While Diablo has not found the same place in the Macintosh culture as Wolfenstein 3D or Warcraft and Warcraft II, there are some third party add-ons available, which is rather a rare thing.
Quite a number of players consider the Rogue character class the most interesting in the game. When I first wrote this page, there were quite a number of rogue-related pages; the only one that still remains is Through a Rogue's Eyes - The Definitive Diablo Site. It contains lots of information about the game in general, so it might be useful to check out even if you are not bent on playing a rogue. The site uses JavaScript, but is fully navigable without.
Who is the Rogue? A politically correct character thrown in by Blizzard to offset the testosterone filled genre? A wimpy female character that is there only for the sake of eye candy? No. If you have ever played the rogue you realize very quickly how hard it is to survive as her in the beginning. Unlike the warrior and sorcerer, the rogue is at the disadvantage to begin with when confronted with close quarter fighting and that is what Diablo is about. Fighting to survive on your way down to Hell.
When I played Diablo for the very first time, I chose the Rogue as a character class, and it was a good choice. Later on I played and finished it with the other classes too, of course, but the Rogue has remained my favorite. She is so versatile. She has a ranged attack from the very beginning. She can use some magic, but does not depend on it. She can wear good armor, but will in most cases simply evade attacks. And no monster is ever immune against the arrows she shoots from her bow.
Variants means you play the original, unaltered Diablo, but according to some special rules. The first variant was the Beyond Naked Mage, a sorceror who may only wear and use cursed items (and must use any he finds). The sites below are not necessarily devoted entirely to variants.
I've never played actual variants. But I have sometimes set myself a "theme" or played in a certain style. Here are some ideas:
The nice thing about this game is that when it gets old, you can always do something new.
There are lots of dedicated Diablo humor pages, or at least there used to be. Every now and then a page vanishes, among them my favorite: Thecla's Diablo Photo Album.
"This page probably won't make any sense if you've never played Diablo," the author warns us. "Come to that, it may not make any sense even if you have played Diablo." I, personally, disagree with both statements. If you've never played Diablo, I guess it might make a good and funny introduction to the game, and if you have played it…let me just say it is my favorite Diablo humor page.
Well, it is gone now, and unfortunately I never saved it, though I must have the screenshots somewhere. It is archived on the Wayback Machine, but without the pictures, and that's only half the fun.
A good deal of Diablo humor circles around the mythical cow level.
There are three cows on the village map. If you click on them, they'll moo; if you click on them repeatedly, you'll get some funny quotes from your hero. But rumor soon spread that you would be taken to this cow level if you clicked on them often enough. As time went by, people thought of more and more absurd ways that would allegedly take you to the cow level:
For this one, you need a Map of the Stars.
Rumors say that if you clear out ALL monsters (not 1 left!) from level one until the last level, except for Diablo himself. Then one person stays in town and the other kills Diablo. When Diablo is dieing (when he spurts blood out), the player that kills Diablo must push ESC and goto new game, then rejoin the game (do it FAST!). Then go back to Diablo's level. Stand in the pentagram (the one in middle of the Diablo's room) and right click on the map of the stars! Then when you return to the town, between the cows will be a green portal. That will lead you to the 17th level!!
In May 97, there was even a fake screenshot, probably this one (159kB). It's a game even serious sites like to play: see, for example, the cowlevel page of "Through a Rogue's Eyes."
Someone even bought the domain cowlevel.com for a site dedicated to the absurdest ways of getting there - complete with screenshots…The site does not exist any more, the domain is used for redirections to search engines and stuff. It might be for sale. Luckily, this page, too, is archived. It even still has most of its pictures. I have posted the 13 ways to reach the Cow Level here, in a design very similar to the original, yes, I know it's not very easy to read.
The whackiest way was created by Tryon. It was translated into German and Japanese and obviously often believed, at least I found this gem on a forum:
-Did u hear about the Hidden Quest in Multiplayer?I think it's a gossip,'cause--i've got Diablo Archive Viewer and i didn't find anything proving it on the CD,but it may be real!You've gotta have Gnarled Root,Fool's Crest and Elixir of Gullibility(the weird bit).Stand by the fountain in town, put on Fool's Crest,drink the Elixir and go to Gillian(Anderson huhhuhhuh).Tell her (using the icon) "Gillian,I bid you,follow me!"If u did everything right,she'll go with u.Then it gets complicated.I'm tired of writin' this all!
Nor has it been forgotten. A guestbook entry from a German page dating from 2002-04-10 asks: "I would like to do this hidden quest, but don't know where to get that ELIXIR OF GULLIBILITY. Could you help me????"
As a reaction to all this, Blizzard actually put a cow level into Diablo II (after Sierra had already put one in Hellfire). It seems that getting there is almost as difficult as the alleged ways quoted above…but you do not need an Elixir of Gullibility.
Footnote: An Elixir of Gullibility actually figures in GURPS, a rule set for PnP RPGs.
In a way I was astonished how much fan fiction has been created around Diablo. It is, after all, not a story-based game like Fallout and most Japanese RPGs, there are no real characters you might fantasize about. But there is a lot, and there was even more when I started this page.
Afterword 2002-08-02: This list was already down to two sites, now there are six again. And there could be more, if I felt like reading all the search engine pages. For a while I felt like this game would slowly vanish from the web. I do not believe this any more.
