The Molten Core recreates a 2008 April Fools’ joke by Blizzard Entertainment as a game. On 1st April 2008 Blizzard announced that it would bring World of Warcraft to the consoles as a spin-off of the 40-player raid dungeon The Molten Core. Generally mocking consoles in general, the title was presented as a top-down dungeon crawler from the early eighties. The press release claimed that the game would be “fully loaded with nine different shapes (and possibly colors)”, with the addition of “tinted cellophane TV overlays, further increasing the array of colors available to players”. It was also said to be released for the Atari 2600 platform, with other platforms following later.
Half a year later the concept was fully developed by an amateur team, not related to Blizzard, as an actual game. The entire game concept was based on the official concept art. Choosing one of the two factions, the player controls two characters (a warrior and a priest) through a top-down dungeon, fighting all the bosses of The Molten Core. Each character has hit points and mana and they need to defeat the different bosses. Support for two players is also included, where each player controls a different character. Bosses need to be defeated in the order of the original raid and they leave behind loot when slain.
