Just yesterday, information was revealed about a port of the original Diablo onto the internet. The project was developed by Rivsoft, and has made the game even more accessible to a new generation of gamers. Diablo was a hack-and-slash roleplaying game developed by Blizzard North and released by Blizzard Entertainment on December 31st, 1996. The game featured numerous dungeons, weapons and character classes, as well as numerous quests that help the player level up. The original game had three character classes, the Warrior, the Rogue, and the Sorcerer. Each class held their own specialty as well as a unique skill that helped them navigate the randomly generated dungeons.
The team that developed the port, Rivsoft worked alongside GalaXyHaXz and the Devilution team to reverse-engineer the original source code in 2018 along with all the bugs and coding mistakes. After that, the game became available on their site. Unfortunately it isn’t the full game, it is a shareware version of the game which limits the player to only a single class, and two dungeon areas. However, if you have the original game, or want to purchase the game on GoG.com, one can drop the game file into the browser and play the full game online.
Diablo had several unique features, such as an expansion, which allowed players to play the monk class, that focused on staff based martial arts, and is different from the monk class of Diablo III. The game also had a multiplayer mode that allowed up to 4 people to play together, and this mechanic is still available on the digital release, however, it is currently unknown if this mechanic will work on the online port of Diablo. The digital version is available here for $9.99.
While this game has been around for over 10 years, it is still considered a classic game by many and the free online version is a great way to enjoy elements of the original game while not having to spend any money.