Remembering Diablo

My favorite RPG will forever be Diablo. Back in the late 90s when the PC game was released, I spent countless hours--even into the wee hours--working on the brain-draining quests. Naturally, I would frequently doze off in class, but that's another story.

There were three character classes to choose from: warrior, rogue and sorcerer. I chose the warrior because I found his preset attributes to my liking. Plus, he donned a sword and a shield. He reminded me of the heroes in action-fantasy movies I watched. Also, I kinda liked the action involved in meleé fighting.

The player has to go through 16 levels of increasing difficulty to defeat the villain of the game--Diablo himself. For its generation, Diablo was a pioneer; way ahead of its time. Unlike most RPGs available then, Diablo was not turn-based. It was a real-time game with realistic graphics. And, for a PC running Pentium 100, Diablo would run like a race car. For me, it was a break from other games I used to play at that time--Heroes of Might and Magic, Sim City and even Age of Empires.

Diablo received the most coveted Game of the Year award from GameSpot, also awarding the game an astounding 9.6 rating (out of 10), the highest ever to be given for a game, to date.