Chasing Zergs with your stylus

Jan 4, 2008 13:31 GMT  ·  By

It seems that Christmas always comes later for gamers, since good news keep pouring these days, informing us about Diablo 3, Starcraft II and Duke Nukem Forever. Joining the pack of long-awaited games is a fantasy of our (and of those who loves RTS titles): a DS version of StarCraft. While it may seem logical that such an oldie goldie must at some point be made available for handhelds, Nintendo and Blizzard are not so keen on the idea.

So, the task was left (and handled pretty well so far) to two French homebrew developers, who are working on the famous RTS' handheld version. The reborn StarCraft got the name "StarLite", which is a pretty decent choice actually, considering that the developers must have stripped the game of its less important attributes, preserving only the gameplay elements needed on a portable console. There's also a limited demo of the game, in it's 0.1 version out there, available for testing through emulators and flashcarts, but the work is far from being completed.

Anyhow, we've got he admit that the two developers have done a great job, considering the fact that they're JUST two persons and not an entire team, plus the fact that this is StarCraft we're talking about. Will you admire them more if I mentioned that it took them three weeks to reach this development status? Right now, you can select units and direct them with the aid of the touchscreen that the DS incorporates and you can also build the simplest of structures. There's even the opportunity of producing some extra units and some enemies to destroy!

The developers also plan on implementing the rest of the buildings and units and a goodie - a WiFi ad-hoc multiplayer mode, ideal for a 2 player combat. Since the last one involves a lot of hard work, I guess they'll appreciate any other developer's help, specially if he/she is skilled enough. You can admire the progress of the homebrewers, in the screenshots below and be sure that we'll update you on this story.

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