Of course as soon as we procured an *cough* unlicensed *cough* copy of the game, we geeked out over it for weeks and weeks on end. I didn’t have a PC of my own back then, so we spent entire afternoons replaying the demo at his place, in anticipation of getting our hands on the full product. I had been a huge fan of the series ever since HoMM2 in the 90s, so when the third game was about to hit stores, I had my friend find a demo of it. I asked Polish retro gaming Youtuber Archon if he remembers his first moments with the game: There were a lot of people with stationary computers, firmly offline, who’d appreciate a game keeping them occupied for longer. In 1998 only 26.2% of US households had access to the internet, but 42.1% owned a PC. Replay value is almost endless: with campaign and multiplayer modes, different factions to choose from and randomly generated maps, the game kept giving (and its players were entertained). Rules are simple - you swap every turn, until someone wins (or you give up). It’s called the hot-seat mode, named after how disgustingly warm the only chair in front of the computer felt after you and up to seven other people sat on it for hours. Sounds like it’d be a perfect game to play with your friends? Well, you’d never guess - you can! LAN multiplayer is good fun, but playing together turn-by-turn on one PC is where the game really shines. There’s still more: training your heroes, sabotaging other players, finding the Holy Grail, fighting rare creatures, solving mysteries, sailing the sea… If you lose your last town and can’t get it back or find another one in seven days, it’s game over. The more towns you have, the more money you get each day, and the more units you can buy each week. Towns from different factions differ in buildings and units. It’s where your fighter units come from, where you train your heroes in magic, and where most of your income comes from as well. You’re greeted by this very colourful and heroic-looking menu:Īnother layer is managing and growing your town. After a bit of a wait, you find the HoMM3 icon on your desktop. Now, imagine it’s 1999, and you just turned on your 128mb RAM, 400MHz PC with an astonishing 10 GB of hard drive space and two (!) optical drives. It was an improvement on all fronts: sound design, custom map building, multiplayer, campaigns, factions and gameplay. The HoMM formula truly reached its sweet spot with Heroes of Might and Magic III. New World Computing was dedicated to giving their fans what they wanted, and it shows. No time was wasted - Heroes of Might and Magic II followed a year later, quickly selling out in all stores which pressured retailers to reorder the product. The first instalment came out in 1995 to a very warm reception from the gaming press and sold enough units to warrant a part two. With the “throw ’em up against the wall and see what sticks” philosophy, New World Computing got something that stuck: Heroes of Might and Magic. Its success inspired New World Computing to create various spin-offs of Might and Magic: Crusaders of Might and Magic, Legends of Might and Magic, Warriors of Might and Magic and, most notably of Might and Magic, Heroes of Might and Magic. Sequels followed, and by 1999 Might and Magic series sold over 4 million copies. The first Might and Magic game came out in 1986 to critical acclaim, partly thanks to first-person 3D graphics and a Dungeons & Dragons inspired party system. It all started with a brilliant RPG series called Might and Magic, created by Jon Van Caneghem of New World Computing. The story behind it involves perfecting a franchise, the rise of game piracy, localisation, Eastern European markets and a powerful word-of-mouth marketing campaign that no marketing exec ever had a say in. So, what’s the deal with Heroes of Might and Magic III? To put this in perspective, that’s when I Want It That Way by Backstreet Boys came out, but you wouldn’t necessarily expect it to hop back onto the charts in 2019. Heroes of Might and Magic III, a turn-based strategy game released in 1999. Let me say this again: more people watch Heroes of Might and Magic III than Red Dead Redemption 2, a game that sold over 24 million copies in the nine months since its release, or Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, which at one point in October hit 62,000 concurrent players. It’s one of the oldest games in top 100 categories on Twitch, and it’s consistently watched by more people than Red Dead Redemption 2 or Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. For me, it’s Farming Simulator nested between two AAA games, House Flipper surrounded by fast-paced MMOs or Heroes of Might and Magic III next to this year’s blockbuster action RPG. If you’re anything like me and love to scroll aimlessly through categories on Twitch, you may have noticed a couple of odd ones out.
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