Warcraft II: The Dark Saga

Warcraft II: The Dark Saga is a console version of Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, with the expansion Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal included. It was released in North America on January 6, 1997 for the Sony and August 31, 1997 for the . It is essentially the same as Tides of Darkness and the expansion Beyond the Dark Portal, but it has some upgrades and slight differences.
==Upgrades==
In addition to interface changes necessary to play the game with a control pad instead of a keyboard and mouse, several improvements/changes were made for the console version that would not appear in the later Warcraft II: Battle.net Edition version:
*Added an auto-build feature, which could program buildings to continuously train a specified number of units (cycling from one to the next if multiple unit types are specified), pausing or temporarily skipping a unit if resources were not available when that unit's time came up in the queue (unlike Warcraft III where the resources to train and upgrade were spent as soon as they were added to the queue). The auto-build could also be set to "infinite" to continuously build units as resources provided.
*Added an auto-upgrade feature, which would research all the upgrades available in a building as resources provided.
*Flying units were given specific shadows as seen in promotional screenshots for the computer version, instead of the generic circular ones.
*A quick-play mode was added to randomly select a custom scenario map and start it without the user needing to select any options.
*A color map of the world was added at the start of each mission, including a dotted line and X to indicate direction of travel, similar to the one used in loading screens in Warcraft III.
*A new intro movie.
*A new splash screen and new art for the main menu.
*New cinematics between acts of the Beyond the Dark Portal campaigns.
*Opening cinematic for Tides of Darkness sped up slightly and the text at the beginning (referencing Warcraft: Orcs & Humans) was removed.
*The finale cinematic for the human Beyond the Dark Portal campaign now lingers longer on the Skull of Gul'dan, its eyes glowing as the screen fades to black.
*New music during the credits.
*New Password system to jump directly to a campaign mission (using a password instead of a saved game would reset your score to 0; however, saved game files were quite large, and couldn't even fit in the internal memory of the Saturn, necessitating the purchase of a backup memory cartridge).
*In order to get the game to fit on the console disc though, much of the background art, button variety, unit speech, and sound effects were removed. Background music is completely absent, although some of the new cinematics incorporate themes from the classic soundtrack into their score.
**One example of this is that the orcish death cry sound is removed, so Horde units like the Grunt, Death Knight, and Skeleton all use the human death cry instead.
*The sprites are more compressed to fit the memory of the Playstation and Saturn.
**The portraits of units are always either Blue (for generic Alliance units) or Red (for generic Horde units).
==Videos==
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==Notes==
*There is a glitch unique to the Playstation 1 version where if a Skeleton is put into a Transport and left alone for a long period of time, the skeleton will be unloaded from the transport as the unit it was originally resurrected from. For example, if a skeleton created from a Knight is put onto a transport and left alone for a while, the transport will eventually unload the skeleton as the knight unit it originally was.
 
==Gallery==
WC2TDS-logo game.png|In-game logo
Warcraft 2 The Dark Saga Title Screen.png|Title screen
Warcraft2Console PlayStation Screen1.png|An auto-build option
Warcraft2Console PlayStation Screen2.png|The beginnings of an orc town.
Warcraft2Console PlayStation Screen3.png|Naval battle. The orcs just lost a ship.
Warcraft2Console PlayStation Screen4.png|The orcs destroy a human shipyard.
Warcraft2Console PlayStation Screen5.png|Humans raiding an orc town.
Warcraft2Console PlayStation Screen6.png|Orc vs. orc battle
Warcraft2Console PlayStation Screen7.png|Can select a lot more characters at a time than the PC version.
Warcraft2Console PlayStation Screen8.png|A pop-up is how you issue commands.
Warcraft2Console PlayStation Screen9.png|Auto-upgrade option
Warcraft2Console PlayStation Azeroth map.jpg|Azeroth map
Draenor color PlayStation.jpg|Draenor map
;Media
Warcraft2Console Cover Art2.jpg|Sega Saturn cover art
Warcraft2Console Cover Art2 back.jpg|Sega Saturn back cover art
Warcraft2Console Disc2.jpg|Sega Saturn disc
Warcraft2Console Cover Art.jpg|PlayStation cover art
Warcraft2Console Cover Art back.jpg|PlayStation back cover art
Warcraft2Console Disc.jpg|PlayStation disc
==External links==
 
Category:Warcraft computer games
es:Warcraft II: The Dark Saga