Retro Gaming Australia

An upcoming book entitled Stay A While and Listen by David Craddock is a history of Blizzard Entertainment concocted from interviews with nearly 80 former employees of the company. The book is due for release on October 29, but the author has revealed to Shacknews one of the cancelled Blizzard projects that came up in his research – the Game Boy Color version of Diablo the company dubbed “Diablo Junior”.

After Diablo II, the team split into several groups – one worked on the Lord of Destruction expansion, while the others were to throw ideas around for new IP and new games. One of these projects was a portable prequel to Diablo, intended for either the Game Boy Color or Game Boy Advance:

“Diablo Junior was intended as a single-player-only prequel to the original game. Taking a page from Pokémon’s book, the team wanted to release three cartridges, each packing a different hero in the warrior-rogue-sorcerer vein as well as items that players would have to trade for in order to collect. Heroes started in a unique town before heading into dungeons and wilderness zones. Diablo Junior was ultimately put out to pasture (absent of cow levels, I’m sure) because of the steep production costs associated with developing handheld games.”

A second expansion, following from Lord of Destruction, was also planned, with the focus to be shifted onto the game’s multiplayer features such as a guild hall. The second expansion was quickly scrapped to start work on Diablo III, as the team had felt Diablo II had run its course.

Source: Shacknews

Before they became masters of the real-time strategy and MMO, Blizzard had a history of developing a wider variety of games. One such title was Blackthorne (or Blackhawk for its PAL release), a platformer arguably inspired by Flashback involving a merc named Kyle who travels to the planet Tuul to save his ancestors. The game has two releases – the 1994 SNES and DOS release, and the 1995 32X and Mac release. The key difference is that the latter uses pre-rendered 3D models as sprites.

Blizzard didn’t always have the Midas touch.

The Death and Return of Superman follows the major comic book arc of the early 1990s where Superman dies after a brutal fight with Doomsday. Players get to control Superman and his four imposters – The Cyborg, Superboy, Steel and The Eradicator. The PAL Mega Drive version is worth quite a bit of scratch, so keep your eyes peeled for it.