I just wanted to take a minute to share a short story of my experience with Diablo. Perhaps it can provide some insight into the younger folks about how important this game was to people like me when it first came out. It was genre-changing, to say the least. Few games before or since impacted me as much as this game did.

I first heard about Diablo from the ad on the back of the Warcraft II Jewel case when I was 15 years old. The fact that it was a real time dungeon crawler that you could play with your friends in a randomized dungeon was very revolutionary for the time. I remember spending months looking for preview articles in gaming magazines and any other scrap of information on the game. This is one of the few games I can think of that surpassed the hype it generated when it was first announced. Unless you were a computer science nerd, the concept of the "roguelike" was foreign to the average gamer. At this point in time, I had no idea that this game had been conceptualized from other ascii-based games. Even still, the new features this game boasted were unheard of at this time. A cross-internet, drop-in/drop-out action RPG like this had never been done before. This was before Ultima Online and Everquest.

The graphics were also very good for its time with 3d-modeled sprites and locations, real-time lighting, and super cool spell effects. The wall of fire spell was always an awesome sight to see, when you could light up an entire room and watch everything burn.

I pre-ordered the game and read about it for 6 months before it finally showed up to my doorstep. For this time period, you have to realize, that a game titled, "Diablo" was extremely edgy. I had to try to hide it from my parents because they had forbade me from playing Dungeons and Dragons for the supposed "demonic" influence. Here was a game that had Satan's name on the front of the box. I don't think my parents even realized the translation for Diablo, which I thought perhaps Blizzard had done deliberately to obscure it. That fact just made it more enticing for me.

I remember playing it late at night with headphones while my parents were asleep. My best friend ended up buying the game too so we could play together over our modems. For several months it became an addiction for me. That freaked me out so much because I started to think that maybe my parents were right, perhaps there was some kind of "evil" in this game that was influencing me. The dark atmosphere, the corpses, the nudity, the blood and gore, and the unforgiving game-play took a toll on my sanity. Not to mention that it was very common back then for another member of your household to pick up the telephone and break your modem connection. I can't tell you how many times my sister did this on accident (or on purpose?) just after losing my corpse and all of my equipment. It drove me mad!

After I saw what the game was doing to me, I packed the game up and gave it to my mother. I told her to hide it so that I wouldn't be able to find it again. I told her that no matter how much I begged, to not give it back to me. After a couple weeks I couldn't take it anymore. I HAD to get Diablo back, it was like that scene out of "Young Frankenstein". I got my little brother's to help me scour the house one day while my mom was out shopping. We eventually found it and I kept that fact a secret from her for the next year and a half.

With the possible exception of Baldur's Gate, no other game had the impact on me during my teenage years. I never had as much interest in Diablo 2 (and even less for Diablo 3). I just want to say, thank you, to the guys at Blizzard who built this, and to the guys at GOG for bringing back this gem. This game will always hold a special (dark) place in my heart. ;)