I felt like leaving my (un)necessary comment about a few things from this thread:
BlizzTracker Bot Uncovers Private PTR Build Version 2.0 Before It’s Pulled Back BlizzTracker, the ever-watchful bot that monitors Blizzard’s updates, has once again caught the community’s attention by spotting a new and mysterious PTR (Public Test Realm) build. However, this wasn’t just any...
www.hiveworkshop.com
The Mac port is actually a lazy job in terms of its "high res" graphics: the few touched-up elements are only
slightly improved, while the most graphic assets remain in their pixelated glory from the days when 320x240 was the most common screen resolution for PC games. Let's use this screenshot from Mobygames as a reference:
An encounter with a human patrol in the swamps.
www.mobygames.com
As you can see, a cheap "smear" filter is used on most "enhanced" assets. The "stop" and "move" buttons look somewhat more detailed and less pixelated than their original counterparts, but the little Peon on the "move" button is definitely not looking great... The same goes for the Orc Grunt icon: the artist added some teeth, but what's up with those canines (fangs) and horns on the helmet?
Let's move on to units on the screen. They look fine, though they're still not as detailed as units in WC2. But something's not right, even out of place. Can you guess what's wrong with this picture? Why, it's the terrain, of course. The land and water tiles were left untouched, and you can still see all the chunky pixels. The higher-resolution sprites stand out too much against this low-res background.
Let's return to interface graphics. The resource icons look okay, I guess, but why is the new font so different? It doesn't even fit the style of the game!
The wooden texture of the UI panel has more details, but there's something wrong with the color palette: certain parts have only one color with no gradients.
I could keep going like this forever, but I just don't see the graphics in the Mac port as "improved".
Since this thread is mainly dedicated to music from/inspired by WC1 & 2, I'll also comment on the Redbook audio of this version. First of all, the CD audio is based on Roland SC-55 recordings. Back in the day, if you had the fancy and expensive hardware, you could enjoy the same quality with the DOS version (both on floppy disk and CD). Nowadays, it's even easier with DOSbox and emulation.
Second, the Mac CD soundtrack is incomplete: it lacks several songs from the DOS original. As I've already mentioned, you can play the DOS release and listen to music of the same quality with either Roland SC-55 module or emulated hardware of your choice (you can even add your own soundfonts if you're using DOSbox).
As for War1Gus, I have my own reasons to frown upon it: while it's great for playing the game in high resolutions with modern controls and new features, some of those features are questionable. The port adds new buildings and units, which were not present in the vanilla version. Those can be fine for a change, but if you want a more faithful experience, there's no way to disable them (either that, or I'm missing something in the options menu).
Currently, there's no perfect recreation of WC1 for modern machines. A friend of mine has reverse-engineered the original game and is working on a port for Windows and Android (that's right!), but he's doing it alone and, given the circumstances, I doubt that this project is his top priority at the moment.
____________________________________________
On a more positive note, I've decided to sneak in this wonderful cover of a tune I'm sure everybody knows and loves (though it's not from Warcraft, it's still early Blizzard):
