> Development stared in the first months of 1995, and the game was released in North America and Australia on December 9, 1995.

This feels absolutely insane for today's standards. And not just in the gaming world. Somehow with all the advancement of libraries, frameworks, coding tools, and even AI these days, development speeds seem so much slower and it seems like too much time is spent on eye candy, monetization and dark patterns and too few times on things people actually like to see - that's what made us buy games and software in the old days.

(But also in the gaming world, especially the past few years when almost no game studio develops its own engine, assets don't look more detailed than what was used 3 years ago, stories seem hastily written and it feels like 80% of developer's time is spent on making cosmetic items for purchase which often cost more than the base game price)

Also somehow we spend lots of times researching UX and developing tutorials (remember when software had the "?" button next to the close button and no software "tutorials" were needed?) and yet all the games and software are harder to learn than what we had in the 90s and 00s.

Not at all crazy. You could very easily get a game with the same art style, features, number of missions done now in a month but people want much more. QOL features, multiple platforms, high quality graphics - $50 (average game price back then) is $105 now - you can't sell any game for that price nowadays, and a game at WC2 level of features wouldn't be accepted by customers for more than $5. A full price $59.99 game now needs a billion different side quests, character customisation, full VA, multiplayer servers, an orchestral score, etc etc or people just won't buy it.

Crazy how much bigger modern games are … I wonder how many total pixels were shipped in the art assets of Warcraft 2 vs. StarCraft 2? My guess is at least 4 orders of magnitude higher for SC2

Not that it is any less impressive but they continued the development of their existing engine from WC1.

Additionally, the product was completed and released on CD, so no hundreds of bug fixes after the release.

Even smaller games now have ludicrously long development cycles as developers have learned they can exploit mentally challenged gamers by selling them "early access" (unfinished games).