Downloading replays is easy. However, because Blizzard didn't think backward-compatibility was useful, it is sometimes difficult to watch old ones. Here's a little guide on how to properly view replays.

Using ReXplorer

ReXplorer is tool we made that integrates into Windows' file browser (aka Explorer) and adds many features to help you with StarCraft's replays and maps. The complete list of these features can be found here.
One of these features is named "Load in StarCraft" and gives you a list of different SC versions to choose from. The specified version will then be launched, opening the replay in the same process. Here is how you can achieve the whole thing :

  1. Download and install ReXplorer
  2. Download StarCraft's old executables and unzip them into your StarCraft directory (i.e. where your original StarCraft.exe is).
  3. In Start -> Programs -> ReXplorer, click on Configure ReXplorer.
  4. In the Load in StarCraft section, you will have to add an entry for each old exe
  5. You will end up with something like this :
  6. Now, each time you will want to load a replay in StarCraft, just right-click on the replay and select the appropriate version :

Using old SC executables manually

Other than using ReXplorer, you may want to launch the exe yourself. Unless you're using Windows Vista, I don't know why you would prefer that but hey, that's not my problem ;p

  1. Download StarCraft's old executables
  2. Unzip them into your StarCraft directory (i.e. where your original StarCraft.exe is)
  3. Now, instead of launching the basic StarCraft.exe to watch an old replay, launch the executable matching the version the replay was played with.

Actually patching StarCraft

This is a bit overkill IMHO as it will really apply the patch to your StarCraft. It ensures the maximum compatibility to watch the replay but it might be a bit overkill to watch just one replay... Luckily, there's a tool out there that eases the whole process drastically : 7x patcher.

  1. Download 7x patcher (page is in Russian but you should find it)
  2. Double-click on the exe you just downloaded and make it uncompress the data to the folder you want.
  3. In that folder, you will find a big install.exe file : double-click on it and the following menu will be displayed :
  4. Select the version you want to patch your StarCraft to and the patch will be applied.
  5. Lauch StarCraft and load your replay as usual. Do not forget to patch back to the latest version if you intend to play afterwards !