I remember the first time I encountered Heroes of Might and Magic III (1999). I was 9 years old, at a birthday party of a friend from school. It was an unusually large party; I believe the entire class was invited. The main event of the party must’ve been about eating (pizza! chicken wings!) and drinking (soda!) and socializing with most of the class. But– and this was one of my favorite things about being a young boy in the 90s– a handful of us scurried off from the main party, all hush-hush into the hallowed ‘computer room’. There, all 7 or 8 of us crowded around the dim glow of the CRT monitor as our host proudly booted up the game that would form a core memory for me.
It would be quite a while later before I had a copy of my own to play on my own home computer. As I write this, I’m watching a YouTube video of someone’s playthrough of the main single-player campaign of the game, as I try to understand what I loved so much about this game. It had everything. Excellent, immersive music and sound effects. You get to manage your ‘town’ – multiple towns, even. It’s so satisfying to watch new buildings come up. You get to roam some interesting maps and interact with all sorts of things, accumulating resources. Your hero characters get to level up, learn spells, wear magical trinkets that boost their stats. And then there’s combat, where you can face random mobs of creatures, or enemy heroes who command an army of creatures (including sea battles, where you fight on ships!), and castle sieges. Beautiful art all around. It’s all incredibly immersive and compelling. And you get to make all these decisions…
✱
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