Viva La Revolucion

Project Revolution, a.k.a. Starcraft 1.5, is a mod for Warcraft III that will basically allow you to play Starcraft on the WC3 engine. And we're not talking about the custom-made maps that use the models that are already included in WC3. No, no, no . . . we're talking about real Starcraft. Everything from the unit models, to the animations, to the sounds, and even the interface has been made to look like Starcraft. Just think of it as Starcraft in 3d.

Keep in mind that this is project is one that was/is undertaken by fans and not by an actual company. It's pretty impressive what can be done when there is a lot of passion for something (oh, and also free time would help too). Project Revolution is also by no means the first mod to come out looking polished enough to be a game developed by an actual company. Perhaps the most famous example of such a game would be Counter-Strike. Originally developed by two fans of Half Life, Counter-Strike became immensely popular--so much so in fact that Valve eventually teamed up with the creators and turned it into a stand alone game.

With so many talented programmers out there that are not officially part of any gaming company, I can't help but wonder how many awesome hardware/software we're missing out on. For instance, there's this one guy who recently wrote some software for the Wii that allowed it to have head-tracking capabilities. He made a video of it demonstrating it and at the end of the video, he says: "So if you're watching this and you're a Nintendo lead game developer . . . I wanna see more games!" What he should've said was "So if you're watching this and you're a Nintendo lead game devloper . . . I want a job!" I think the gaming world would be much better off it the latter was true.