Millions of sellers: Blizzard brings Diablo II, Apple the iPhone (PCGH-Retro, June 29)

…1994: In an archived via Google Groups news James Hall announces that, based on the positive feedback on his previous requests, he will start programming Free DOS (PD-DOS), a DOS clone that can be offered free of copyright claims in the public domain.

…2000: Blizzard’s masterpiece Diablo was not only a gaming milestone in 1997, it is also considered to be one of those games that revived the once-dead role-playing genre with its tremendous success. Even more: Diablo shaped its own subgenre, that of action role-playing games, which combine typical role-playing game elements such as character classes and a fantasy world with quick fights against large masses of enemies. On June 29, 2000, Blizzard brings the sequel to this classic onto the market: In Diablo II, the player fights the demon Diablo again, but this time in a much larger game world and with slightly improved graphics, which are still two-dimensional and limited to low resolutions is. Diablo II will also be a huge success for Blizzard – mainly because of its multiplayer mode, which also includes the free online platform Battle.net. Exactly one year later, the Lord of Destruction expansion follows, and in June 2008 Blizzard finally announces part 3 of the series.

…2002: ZD-Net reports on July 1 that market researchers at Gartner had announced two days earlier that more than 1 billion PCs had been sold since the 1970s.

…2007: After pulling yourself out of the swamp with your iPod and tunes, as Munchausen used to do, from June 2, 2007 Apple transformed what had previously been a rather utilitarian phone into a lifestyle and, thanks to grandiose marketing, into an object of mass desire. It was not until 2010 that the competition in the form of Samsung, LG, Nokia and others, after many failed attempts, were able to offer their own products that were praised as being particularly intuitive and easy to use – until then, Apple was still the sole pioneer of the hype wave surrounding the small “i”.

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