A few days later, and I've been reading various Diablo sites, getting reacquainted with the lore, and the game mechanics. It looks like it will work in Windows 7, with a little effort. In the attic, I find an old backup CD; hopefully it will work. Wow, that start screen, at 640x480 looks like a message window on my screen. I haven't seen the intro movie in a while; I can see echos of Blizzard trailers for years to come in this. Seems to install OK, another curious surprise: there are no in-game setup options. I exit, eject the CD, and restart - unfortunately it wants the CD, so I'll have to make an image before I go much further. Huh, no tweaks at all yet, and it plays fine. I find Farnham, and hear the old refrain, "can't a feller drink in peace". But you know what I really want to hear. "Stay a while and listen"; ah, now its like I never left. And now that other familiar refrain: "I sense a soul in search of answers".
I'm getting used to the tiny UI, and the painfully pixellated graphics, but that constant CD spinning sound has got to go. A few minutes later I have the ISO in my archives mounted, restart Diablo, and it even finds the disc with no prompting from me. Oh, I notice I'm still at version 1.00, I better find the patch. OK, nice of Blizzard to still host it. Looks like my save is gone now, but that's OK. Now I see what they were talking about in the forums, the graphics are messy with oddly colored pixels. Strangely, the fix is to open the control panel to change the resolution - and that's it. You don't have to do anything more, and now you can play it normally. Weird.
It's nice to just walk into the first level and start swinging. I'm rediscovering the old UI as I go: you don't have to continuously click, you can hold in the direction you want to go. You can't jog - that's in the Hellfire expansion, and in Diablo 2, I think, but not here. I can't see much on screen until I turn the gamma up to nearly half. Even with that, its still hard to find all the crap on the ground - my hand keeps reaching for a button to make everything on the ground outlined - but which button? Is that also only in Hellfire / Diablo 2? Yep, oh well, going to have to listen carefully for item drops, and wave the cursor all over the place.
I forgot how wacky and awesome the soundtrack is (and Diablo 2 is even better). Little things bubble up from old memory, like the need to save some bonus skill points for strength, even though I only play mage, so I can wear decent minimal armor. I remember not to unleash too many charged bolts, so as not to awaken too many mobs, and not to miss out on any good loot drops. I find my first shrine, and look up the shrine list. I start acquiring town portal scrolls, to cut down on all this walking. I can't wait to get mana shield and teleport. I'm not looking forward to getting swarmed and stun locked (and then killed), but at least I have a save game to fall back on. And mostly, I learn again how damn addictive this game is. The past two hours went by like half an hour.
