>There aren't many games from that era that are as infinitely replayable.
I think A lot of games from that era were infinitely replayable. Diablo, Sim City. It really is the case we dont made them like that any more. The amount of small details that goes into it. Not just the games itself, but also the packaging, manual and things surrounding.
It is somewhat strange that group of people grow up and start producing in the 90s still have the attention to detail mind set. This is mostly gone in modern Gen Z generation.
Another vote for the Horn of the Abyss! It is a community pack that keeps the HOMM3 gameplay spirit but adds a lot of minor UI enhancements fixing various pain points.
And if you like insanely complex scenarios, check out HotA user maps on maps4heroes.
Yuri's Revenge never gets old - it's just the right balance of RTS with a bit more of an arcadey feel. Sadly I missed the original Starcraft train (finished Starcraft II), but one of these days I'm going to sit down and work my way through it.
Back then I was crazy about the story of Starcraft and I thought that was the best of the RTS games. I used to dip into the level editor too but it was kinda limited, missing some of the scripts Blizzard used in the expansion.
By pure coincidence, both Starcraft 2's writers and /me believed that Kerrigan should be brought back to her human form in Starcraft 2 :)
> Good Old Games has produced a fixed version, so I could pay for it a fourth time
It probably wouldn't cost more than $1, given that you're clearly willing to wait for a sale.
Advertised price right now is $5 with "lowest price in the last 30 days" of $2.50. The bundle of all 8 expansion campaigns shows the same current and recent pricing.
I would be quite surprised if a modern Linux could run the original binary without gymnastics. Windows is the only OS which prioritizes backwards compatibility.
Earlier this year I found a boxed copy of Might and Magic IV: Clouds of Xeen on Marketplace. Everything is in the box and it's all pristine. It goes very nicely with my boxed copy of Might and Magic III that I bought (used!) to play on my first computer, my 386.
Is there any webpage or book or any media that analyzes the technical aspects of a game? Take HOMM3 as an example -- what are the most difficult technical problems and how did the developers solve them? What are the algorithms that run aspects of the game (e.g. how is path-finding implemented? How is AI implemented?)? What is the architecture of the engine? Does it have a scripting engine and if so how is it implemented?
I like post-mortems but mostly are given by designers, directors, not programmers -- and even by programmers they did not go very deep like "John Carmack" type deep. The "Black books" by Fabien came into mind but these are few and far between.
You're probably looking for something more detailed and implementation-focused, but Ars Technica had a series of 10 minute videos where they interviewed developers about technical challenges. E.g. they had one on pathfinding and CD video in second generation Westwood RTS games [1]
That being said there are a couple technological marvels out there (maybe just not on greatest game lists). Teardown, for instance, has an unfathomable number of voxels that make everything in the world simulated.
Check out "Game Programming Patterns" by Robert Nystrom and the GDC Vault for technical deep-dives. For HOMM specifically, the VCMI project (open-source HOMM3 engine) has source code that reveals implementation details like their A* pathfinding and combat AI systems.
One thing I loved about HOMM 3 was that even with just one computer you could take turns and get a game going with friends. Not many games offered that unless they were based on board games
This title would be clearer if the case were reflected in the title. And significantly clearer still if the name of the game was shown with quotes. What's HN's beef with quotes in the title about? Is it so prone to misuse that we have to lose out on legitimate uses?
I remember, as a kid, seeing the first ad for M&M in a computer journal I read. At the time I was happy playing Ultima and it looked like it was going to be a better ultima, and ordered it. Waiting for the floppy disk to arrive seemed like an eternity and at some point I literally dreamed I was playing the game. The game itself, I barely remember- it wasn't that great, kind of like ultima and wizardry but didn't really improve on either of them significantly.
Me and my friends had really been playing M&M 6&7 in 98/99, such fond memories. We had really high hopes for Ultima 9 - which came out in 99, as it looked so much more modern than the M&M games...nope, a total turd. Think I still have the box somewhere in the attic though, that was probably the most impressive thing about the game.
M&M8 which came out the year after, was good enough though. That's around the time I stopped playing the M&M series.
Ultima IX was so bad that I stopped playing computer games entirely. 3D worlds just never worked for me. All the story immersion and imagination that I’d loved in the games of my childhood seemed to be gone. (I never cared for Doom either, and then all games somehow became Doom.)
The next time I bought a high-end 3D game was over 15 years later. That was Fallout 4. I played 30 minutes and then never returned to it. Uncanny valley graphics and boring first person action — nothing like the original Fallouts 1 and 2 of my memories.
I guess I’ll have to try another AAA PC game in 2030 just to stick to the schedule.
World of Xeen was an enchanting experience. The interlocking quests in an open exploration world with a party of characters you could custom select with different attribute strengths, the large spells and weapons compendium, and the music just all came together in a way that no other RPG before or since engrossed me.
"By the seventh go-round, this was no longer quite the shock it once was, but series tradition must be served."
To be fair, MM7 was the first time for some of us, and it was quite a shock. What do you mean all the points I put into might and magic are now moot, as the only endgame weapons worth using are blasters?!
I don't even play the game. But I value very highly the artwork, the music, the sounds, the whole atmosphere. The endless autumn forests, the castles, the fairy dragons—they all rightfully belong to a museum of baroque art. A game can be a work of art in itself; HoMM III definitely is.
I remember coming across HoMM around 2008, but the published game was nowhere available near where I lived, so I ended up playing a web based clone[0].
Been playing it for around 17 years, and it is still quite fun.
I agree with the author: Heroes II is my favorite of the series, just for the innocent vibe. Also, Heroes IV is underrated. It got bad reviews because it came out buggy, but the bugs were fixed in updates, and of all the HOMM games, it has the best soundtrack.
100% agree, esp. on the soundtrack. I thought I was going crazy when in Witcher 3's Skellige island it started playing the soundtrack from HOMM4. (See Track 14 here: https://youtu.be/F9sG0r_9f4M?t=4400).
Heroes IV has a bad design. Your hero can be attacked, so you are forced to pick the warrior class to not get oneshot. You can only have 2 classes and one slot is kinda fixed.
I keep seeing might and magic related content, despite never having played it, or even having heard of it until recently! But in the last few months I have been getting the odd YouTube recommendation, or see the occasional Reddit (and now HN) thread.
Possibly this is a game you will love playing and should check it out. Whether by emulating an ancient DOS machine or by picking up one of the eleven games in the series available on Steam. (https://store.steampowered.com/sale/might-magic/)
If it is the latter case then I am sure some enthusiastic fans of this series will reply to this comment or yours with detailed opinions on which option is the best :)
I played the shit out of HOMM3. I bought it, though, only after sneaking plays in between customers while working at Radio Shack. We had some ~300MHz Compaq machines that Radio Shack had recently partnered with to sell and on slow days, it was a good way to pass the time.
There aren't many games from that era that are as infinitely replayable. Command and Conquer: Yuri's Revenge and Starcraft come to mind.