WarCraft 1: Orcs and Humans

Warcraft: Orcs & Humans is where one of gaming's biggest franchises began. Released by Blizzard Entertainment in 1994, it was the studio's first real-time strategy game and clearly owed a debt to Dune II, but it refined the formula and wrapped it in a rich high-fantasy setting. Two campaigns let you fight as either the invading Orcish Horde or the defending Kingdom of Azeroth, gathering gold and lumber, raising a base and marching units into battle across the land of Azeroth.

The core loop is familiar to anyone who played later RTS games: harvest resources, build farms and barracks, train footmen or grunts, and add spellcasters like clerics and necromancers whose abilities could swing a fight. What made it stand out at the time was the moody presentation — gravelly voice barks when you clicked units, grim hand-drawn portraits, and a genuine sense of two cultures at war. Multiplayer over modem or network let two players clash directly, a novelty that helped build Blizzard's competitive reputation.

By modern standards the interface shows its age: you could only select a handful of units at once and pathfinding was clumsy. But the seeds of everything that followed — Warcraft II, StarCraft, and eventually World of Warcraft — are all visible here. As the humble first chapter of an enormous saga, it is well worth experiencing.