Diablo 1 Diabdat.mpq ((top))

To this day, every time you double-click Diablo.exe , the program reaches for DIABDAT.MPQ , opens it, and whispers to you, in the voice of Deckard Cain: "Stay a while, and listen."

First, a brief history lesson. Before Diablo , most PC games stored assets (sprites, sounds, levels) in thousands of loose, easily accessible files. This was a mess—files got deleted accidentally, load times were slow due to fragmented disk reads, and piracy was trivial. Diablo 1 Diabdat.mpq

: Matt Uelmen’s legendary acoustic guitar tracks (the Tristram theme) and all voice lines, including the famous "Stay awhile and listen!" To this day, every time you double-click Diablo

: MPQ (MoPaQ), a proprietary archive format developed by Mike O'Brien for Blizzard Entertainment. To this day