Heroes of Might and Magic IBM PC MS-DOS 1995 New World Computing

Heroes of Might & Magic

New World Computing released Heroes of Might & Magic for IBM PC MS-DOS in September of 1995.

Heroes of Might & Magic was designed by Jon Van Caneghem and lead-programmed by Phil Steinmeyer.

Heroes of Might & Magic gameplay is strategy-lite and cRPG-lite.

In Heroes of Might & Magic players assume the role of one of four conquesting warlord faction-leaders in the medieval-fantasy world of Enroth. The warlord upgrades strongholds, assembles an army and explores the overworld via armies led by Heroes, collecting treasures, acquiring resources and battling monsters and the forces of rival warlords. The warlord must garrison their strongholds to protect them from annexation by rivals. Upgrading strongholds by constructing buildings unlocks units and other features, both strategic and tactical.

The overworld switches to a side-on battlefield when opposing units attempt to occupy the same tile on the overworld; in addition, when opposing units besiege strongholds. On the battlefield or during siege warfare units can be commanded to move and attack independently. In addition, Heroes can cast unit-specific and AoE spells in order to increase the chances of winning combat encounters.

New Heroes can be recruited at strongholds. Players end up controlling several Heroes and managing several strongholds simultaneously. Note that multiple Heroes can benefit from the same overworld bonuses, but not artifacts.

The infographic below shows the first scenario (Gateway) of Lord Ironfist's campaign. Each row shows one faction in five columns.

Note how the Heroes of Lord Ironfist (of the Knight faction) gained control of the three other factions, along with their castles, units and spells. Note also how opposing faction Heroes can be recruited.

Heroes of Might & Magic is like a much simpler version of Simtex's Master of Magic of 1994.

Heroes of Might & Magic displays in square-pixel 256-color VESA SVGA 640x480. Display fidelity is the only advantage that Heroes of Might and Magic has over Master of Magic, which only displays in VGA 320x200. However, HoMM's fidelity increase only impacts graphics: Master of Magic's user interface is far superior; it wastes almost no screenspace; it does much more with much less.

That said, Heroes of Might & Magic is a polished game. I'm not going to criticize a game too much for lack of depth and complexity when it did not set out to be grognard-level. Heroes of Might & Magic achieved what it set out to achieve; it isn't a bad game; it's just not my cup of tea -- too pedestrian.

Heroes of Might & Magic requires 450K of free conventional RAM and 5 megs of EMS/XMS RAM. Heroes of Might and Magic is a Rational Systems DOS/4GW Protected mode run-time.

Heroes of Might & Magic Features

• Medieval-fantasy setting with mythic, Tolkienic and AD&D influences
• Standard and Campaign modes of play
• Campaign consists of 8 scenarios
• 4 Campaign factions aka Hero types: Lord Ironfist (Knight), Lord Slayer (Barbarian), Lord Alamar (Warlock) and Queen Lamanda (Sorceress)
• Barbarian: Goblin, Orc, Wolf, Ogre, Troll, Cyclops
• Knight: Peasant, Archer, Pikeman, Swordsman, Cavalry, Paladin
• Sorceress: Sprite, Dwarf, Elf, Druid, Unicorn, Phoenix
• Warlock: Centaur, Gargoyle, Griffin, Minotaur, Hydra, Dragon
• Each faction constituted by 4 stats
• Each Hero unit and general unit constituted by 6 stats
• 8-way bird's eye perspective exploration
• 8-way side-on perspective movement: invisible gridded battlefields [1]
• Battlefield active drawspace: 640x460
• Overworld active drawspace: 448x448
• Tailorable overworld movement speed (not battlefield movement speed) [2]
• Hardware mouse cursor edge-screen autoscrolling
• Non-smooth avatar anchorless screen-scrolling
• Large but artlessly drawn and animated sprites
• Super-bright, overly colorful and soulless presentation
• Turn-based combat and exploration
• Basic city-building and Resource acquisition
• Overworld fog-of-war and collectables
• Terrain movement costs / terrain obstructions
• Vancian Magic-style spells and spellcasting
• Experience point acquisition results in skill-ups
• 1-line combat feedback
• On-move, on-attack, on-hit and on-cast sound effects
• Multiplayer: Hot Seat, Network and Modem

Heroes of Might & Magic was distributed on 1x CD-ROM and extracts and installs to hard disk drive via Heroes of Might & Magic Installation & Configuration Utility. The install size is 22.5 megs and consists of 55 files.

Heroes of Might & Magic graphics support Video 7, Tseng Labs, Tseng Labs Version 4, Paradise, Chips & Technologies, Trident, ATI Technologies, Everex, Ahead Version A, Ahead Version B, Oak Technologies, Genoa, NCR, Compaq and XGA.

Heroes of Might & Magic audio supports Gravis UltraSound, Microsoft Sound System, Ensoniq SoundScape, WaveJammer, ESS Audio Drive, Pro Audio Spectrum, Roland RAP-10, Sound Blaster, Sound Blaster 16, Sound Blaster Pro and Sound Blaster AWE-32.

Heroes of Might and Magic 2 1996

New World Computing released Heroes of Might & Magic 2: The Succession Wars for IBM PC MS-DOS 5.0 in November of 1996.

As the above infographic makes plain, Heroes of Might and Magic 2 was built on the original HOMM engine. As is the case with many sequels, HOMM2's campaign is much more involved than the original one. cRPG veterans and strategy gamers are much more likely to get into the HOMM2 campaign because its beginning is not as pedestrian as the beginning of the original's campaign; in short, there is more to see, to do and to experiment with in the first mission -- 10 times more. However, the basic gameplay-flow and object of the sequel are the same -- and HOMM2 is still pedestrian in comparison to, say, Master of Magic.

That said, HOMM2 gameplay is comfy and the "Baroque" organ music is relaxing.

Heroes of Might and Magic 2 Extra Features

• 2 Campaigns: Roland or Archibald (the sons of Lord Morglin Ironfist vie for the throne)
• 36 Standard Game Scenarios
• 6 Factions aka Hero types (two new factions: Wizard and Necromancer)
• Barbarian: Goblin, Orc, Orc Chieftain, Wolf, Ogre, Ogre Overlord, Troll, War Troll, Cyclops
• Knight: Peasant, Archer, Ranger, Pikeman, Veteran Pikeman, Swordsman, Master Swordsman, Cavalry, Champion, Paladin, Crusader
• Necromancer: Skeleton, Zombie, Mutant Zombie, Mummy, Royal Mummy, Vampire, Vampire, Lord, Lich, Power Lich, Bone Dragon
• Sorceress: Sprite, Dwarf, Battle Dwarf, Elf, Grand Elf, Druid, Greater Druid, Unicorn, Phoenix
• Warlock: Centaur, Gargoyle, Griffin, Minotaur, Minotaur King, Hydra, Green Dragon, Red Dragon, Black Dragon
• Wizard: Halfling, Boar, Iron Golem, Steel Golem, Roc, Mage, Archmage, Giant, Titan
• Neutral: Rogue, Nomad, Ghost, Genie, Medua, Air Elemental, Earth Elemental, Fire Elemental, Water Elemental
• Visible hex-gridded battlefields (hexagonal grid overlayed on the battlefield)
• Tailorable overworld movement speed and battlefield movement speed [2]
• 2-line combat feedback
• Spell points replace spell memorization
• Upgradeable buildings/units
• Merchant interface (trade resources)
• 65 Heroes and 66 different monsters
• Secondary skills for Heroes
• 3 more castle defenses
• Overworld can be up to 4 times larger
• More info pop-ups
• Multiplayer: 6-player TCP/IP, modem, network
• Bundled World Builder
• Level scaling: Neutral encounters scale into, for example, 300x5 wolf stacks (30k XP)
• Note that rival Heroes can "steal" your Neutral encounters on the overworld

The active battlefield drawspace was not enlarged in HOMM2, it was actually reduced by 17 vertical pixels due to the two-lined combat feedback bar. Instead, HOMM2 decreased sprite sizes and increased the resolution of the tactical drawspace aka hexagonal grid, which is now also visible. It should go without saying that the 2-line combat feedback, increased grid-space and visible hexgrid constitute inarguable improvements, but they are features that the original HOMM should have included in the first place. [1]

 

Heroes of Might & Magic 2 requires 480K of free conventional RAM and 6,400K of XMS RAM. Heroes of Might and Magic 2 is a Rational Systems DOS/4GW Protected mode run-time.

Heroes of Might & Magic 2 was distributed on 1x CD-ROM and extracts and installs to hard disk drive via Heroes of Might & Magic 2 Installation & Configuration Utility. The install size is 55 megs and consists of 105 files.

Heroes of Might & Magic 2 music supports MIDI or CD Audio. Heroes of Might and Magic 2 MIDI supports General MIDI, InterWave General MIDI, NV Direct General MIDI, Yamaha WaveForce DB50-XG, Ensoniq SoundScape, Gravis UltraSound MIDI Synth, Sound Blaster AWE-32, Media Vision Pro Audio Spectrum, Media Vision Pro Audio Spectrum Plus, Media Vision Pro Audio Spectrum 16, AdLib Gold Music Synthesizer Card, ESS Technology ES688 FM Audio, ESS Technology ESS1688, 1788 and 1888 Enhanced FM Audio, Generic Yamaha OPL3-based FM Music Synthesizer, Roland MT-32 MIDI with MPU-401, Sound Blaster, Sound Blaster 16, Sound Blaster Pro (old and new), Tandy 3-voice music and IBM Internal Speaker Music.

Heroes of Might and Magic 2 digital audio supports InterWave Digital Audio, NV Digital Audio Driver, Roland RAP-10, Media Vision Pro Audio Spectrum, Gravis UltraSound, New Media Corporation WaveJammer, Ensoniq SoundScape, Microsoft Windows Sound System, ESS Audio Drive, Sound Blaster, Sound Blaster, Sound Blaster 16, Sound Blaster Pro and Sound Blaster AWE-32.

Heroes of Might and Magic 2: The Price of Loyalty 1997

Cyberlore Studios released Heroes of Might & Magic: The Price of Loyalty in May of 1997. The Price of Loyalty expansion adds two full-length campaigns, two mini-campaigns and 24 campaign maps to HOMM2.

Heroes of Might & Magic: The Price of Loyalty was distributed on 1x CD-ROM and extracts and installs to hard disk drive via Heroes II: The Price of Loyalty Installation and Configuration. The install size of Heroes II becomes 72 megs and consists of 170 files.

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