Considering the fact that Blizzard's MMORPG World of Warcraft has been enjoyed by fans for nearly 13 years and counting, it's understandable how the title's longevity could allow it to seep into the collective consciousness beyond the gaming world, as its popularity caused its own movie to be spawned, prompted South Park to dedicate an entire episode to the title, and, of course, inspired a plethora of parody videos. Speaking of the lattermost phenomenon, the YouTube channel known as Rkade Soup has now given the MMORPG the 8-bit NES treatment, by re-imagining the game as a top-down adventure title akin to The Legend of Zelda on the old console.

As seen below in the "What If?" styled video for World of Warcraft, the fan made NES rendition of the game starts out with a classic start up screen and allows would-be players to pick between the Alliance and the Horde, which then sends them to select what race they would like to represent, with the user choosing to be an orc. Following that, the character completely skips out on their first quest to instead join up with a group for a dungeon raid session even though they're only at Level 1, which plays out exactly how one would expect it to, with the orc nabbing all of the loot it doesn't deserve.

Without a doubt, Rkade Soup's re-imagining of World of Warcraft as an NES title is spectacularly done, as it manages to scale back the title's sweeping score into a neat little chiptune symphony, pokes fun at the aspects of WoW's clan culture, and provides a close portrayal of what the graphics would be like if it were originally made as a game for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Of course, not every element is as true-to-life as possible, for not only does the original NES lack the capabilities of connecting online, but also there are more colors and pixels used than the console could actually handle.

Nevertheless, Rkade Soup's NES version of World of Warcraft is meant to be taken as a delightful diversion of sorts, so expecting verisimilitude out of a non-existent product would be counter-intuitive. Should there be Blizzard and WoW fans out there who enjoyed the YouTuber's latest creation, they would do well to see the same channel's work that imagines what Overwatch as an NES game would look like.

World of Warcraft is available for PC and Mac.

Source: Rkade Soup – YouTube