Back in the summer of 1997, a friend of mine installed the demo version of Diablo on my computer one night. Like several demos he had brought over previously, I didn't have high expectations for this one. I'd never even heard of it at that point. But, within a few minutes of him showing me the game, I knew we had something special here. The idea of an action RPG was mind-blowing to me at the time. I replayed the demo many times over that first night until 3AM. Then I woke up about six hours later and promptly went out to buy the full game when the store opened that morning. The next few weeks or so afterwards were a complete blur. When I was away from the game, I was thinking about it constantly and how I would develop my character. I replayed this game and the Hellfire expansion pack several times over before Diablo 2 came out. While I still have my original discs for the games, I was beyond pleased that GOG was able to re-release these classics so that I now have a digital copy that is all patched and works without any sort of trickery to get either game to run correctly. This was an instant buy the moment GOG released it. And maybe it's the nostalgia in me, but I still have a blast replaying these classics and have to say that Diablo and Hellfire both remain my all-time favorite games on the PC all these years later. The pacing, graphics, setting, sound, and music are all in harmony here.
