We can be heroes just for one day, even for more than that, possibly...

Opinions - we all have them, I have a lot of them and we do not always agree, which is all right when we don't see eye-to-eye with each other, because we're big boys/gals and our feelings getting hurt isn't the end of the world. What is nice however is when we can all agree on something, so I'm hoping to achieve that with what you will see here.

A small addition to what you will read next, it would be amazing if you could share your thoughts on anything I will mention below as the biggest praise for me would be if we all could have a good discussion about something we like!

The below will not actually be about Bowie's "Heroes", yet about heroes still. I am going to have a go at one of my favorite gaming series, which is (as you may have guessed by now) Heroes of Might and Magic. Reason being that even though it is quite old by now and in a lot of aspects overshadowed by new titles, HOMM games just never get old! The formula still works exactly as expected to this day, I still play these games with my friends and I would be happy if after reading this you would pick up your favorite HOMM game, get some friends over and pull an all-nighter! As well as that we can try to understand what exactly makes this series a timeless piece of gaming history.

The first thing I am going to talk about is neither "Heroes of Might and Magic" nor even "King's Bounty", but a short intro to for the man behind it.

Jon Van Caneghem - the creator of the "Might and Magic" game series. In 1984 along with his wife, Jon started new World Computing and soon after that (in 86) the company released "Might and Magic Book One: The Secret of the Inner Sanctum". In the meanwhile Van Caneghem was working on a new games "Kind's Bounty" which is the ancestor of the HOMM series and that is exactly what I am going to stop on. I might cover Jon's later work in some of my future posts.

 

 

 

King's Bounty

Already adopting the same concept you will see in later games, King's Bounty gives you control of a hero and his army on a quest to find an artifact, "Sceptre of Order".
I will not got that deep into the story, I think it's much more fun to make it visual - for you to see how the game looked like and maybe even compare it with newer ones.

I will be putting side by side comparisons with the first HOMM game.
First off - movement. The map itself and the way you move is presented in a way that can be seen in future HOMM games.

However Individual enemy units, unlike in the next HOMM games, are able to wander around the map on their own.

Combat is also done in a similar turn-based manner using stacked units.

The game later got a MegaDrive/Genesis port which also had some significant gameplay changes to fit console gameplay, with the main one being a move from a turn-based concept to real-time. Making the game considerably harder as enemy armies now were able to engage the hero on their own, where in the PC version you could evade those encounters where needed.

King's Bounty as stated by Van Caneghem himself is the inspiration behind the later series and is often included in various HOMM anthologies. The 2001 PlayStation 2 title Heroes of Might and Magic: Quest for the Dragon Bone Staff is an enhanced remake of King's Bounty made by 3DO.

A small side note, in 2007 a Russian game publisher 1C purchased the rights to the King's Bounty franchise and attached the name to a game which was in development by Katauri Interactive, calling it King's Bounty: The Legend. Prior the name change the game was supposed to be called Battle Lord.

That's about it for King's Bounty, it is a significant step away from my other posts, but as I truly love the series I would like to make a number of more detailed and informative, comparison posts about HOMM games, so I you fancy this, please stay tuned.

And don't forget to check out the super long gameplay!