Might & Magic 6, 7 and 8 are literally games of my family. As a kid my dad and mom played M&M 6 on the same saves so they talked about it alot what they did so they both know what to do next. And only because of my dad's bad sense of directions my mom picked up a huge piece of paper and started drawing the map of the world. Literally... paths, houses, dungeons, tress and even chests. She later on labeled all the houses where is the teacher of Air magic for example and me, my brother and my sister were really young to play the game on our own so we coloured the map completely. Blue water, green tress, snowy mountains and even with the highlight pens the type of teachers. Expert was orange, Master was Green and later the Grand Master was Yellow. My mom even made a separate page for all the attributes and effects in game. Like this spell does this by this amount, this potion does this and this barrel of this colour does that. It was after 3 years before I first started my own game of Might & Magic 6 and already I knew everything about the game. Where to go, what all the things does and when I didn't know, my mom's map and instructions paper always had the answers... And yes, I have the map and the instruction paper still in my possesion to this day as a artefact of my own
I had a similar experience. My mom played this game and it was my entry to video games. She would give me her level 70 characters to run around with, and by the time I was old enough to play the game from the start I knew most of what I needed.
It's almost silly how much this game can mean to alot of us :D Either way yesterday I came back home, to take care of my mothers cat. They went to some event from 5:00AM to 10:00PM, before they went out my mom asked me if I could instal Might & Magic 6 on her notebook so she could play it when they return... I'm gonna probably have a run through MM6, MM7 and MM8 because of that xd
That would be a great idea! I will be sure it will be saved somewhere online and don't have to fear that I'll tear it up or something. But there is one problem, I don't have a scanner at home and the one at work broke last week, so I'll have to wait until they'll buy a new one :^) As soon as I'll upload it somewhere I'll live a link here :)
Having lived through the downfall of NWC, not enough credit is given to General Manager/ Executive Producer Mark Caldwell. Mark was with NWC since the beginning, and during the 3DO era, his ability to keep 3DO's upper management off the backs of the developers is really what allowed Might and Magic 6 and 7 to really shine. His departure during the development of MM9 and HOMM4 was crushing. Suddenly 3DO bore down on NWC like a hammer, and there was no one there to distract them.
So true. I would even add MM8 on that list. I play MM6-8 from time to time. Probably played through them 3 times each. Its sooo addictive and nostalgic. And this from a guy who rarelly replay a game. Heroes 2 and 3 is mostly nostalgic, but at the time was the pinnacle of computer gaming. If i want a Heroes experience today though, i swich it up with usually Heroes 3 or 5. Even Kings Bounty. Wich are really good aswell.
I agree. One this i have noticed is that a lot of things have UI clutter. Like the adventurers faces on the bottom at 3:50. The sword/shield and whatnot clutter the faces and made it harder to understand what the game was trying to portray with these sprites. It is something that bothers me to no end with older games. But what can ya do, being 20/20 and all....
I disagree. Early polygons look attrocious, but they fit better with their environmrnt. I just find it really jarring when I see 2D sprites used to simulate a 3D object. I'd rather have ugly polygons in a 3D game and beautiful 2D sprites in a 2D game.
@@Hagashager I remember when sprites started to get phased out in favour of 3D polygons. I absolutely hated it. Sure, sprites behave weirdly in a 3D environment, but a nicely rendered sprite still looks better than a rudimentary 3D object with those hideous and unnaturally sharp corners and edges. To this day, sprites don't bother me in old games. Still love the hell out of MM6-8.
I feel that the adoption of true 3D graphics was what more or less ended my childhood fascination with video games. Ever since the 80s I'd been glued to the computer screen, and each new technical evolution was a big step forward. 8-bit to 16-bit, EGA to VGA to SVGA. Couldn't wait to see what came next. As weird as the pseudo-3D of sprites mixed with 3D environments looked, I was fine with it. There was probably some pixelated charm to it, and the colors could still be very vibrant. As much as I told myself that it's the gameplay that matters, not graphics, I remember when Quake came out, and I couldn't stand to look at it. Not only were things blocky, the lighting got uniformly drab. From then on, most new games just looked terrible to me, so I ignored them. I was content playing older games with pixel art or pseudo-3D: Civilization 2, Wing Commander 2, Daggerfall, Final Fantasy (blocky characters got a pass because of the beautiful backgrounds - probably also the low resolution obscuring the simple polygon count). Picked up some new hobbies and didn't look back for a long time. It's only recently that I've come back to gaming that I've more or less accepted modern 3D rendered graphics and admit they can look pretty good nowadays. I also find it a lot easier now to play the early 3D titles, because I can take them for what they are, amusingly retro. It's almost like I have some nostalgia for things that actually aren't a part of my personal past. ...But I do make sure to use a low enough resolution on my PC. :)
Fantastic video! I remember playing M&M III for the first time and being blown away by it's colorful world and characters. And yes, 4 + 5 World of Xeen was also amazing at the time!
M&M 6, 7 and 8 were probably the best gaming experiences of my life. As a kid/teen I was so immersed in the M&M universe. Today I'm acutely aware of the sense of dread I feel whenever I think about the way things played out behind the scenes in the industry. Imagine what fantastic sequels we could've had if the developers had been able to create the games they wanted to make in the first place.
Oh my god. Right in the feels. My sister and I used to watch my dad play through MM VI. Whenever he died, he would get up and let us mess around in New Sorpigal (usually just killing all the peasants and not saving). Later in high school, I played through it again seriously on a Windows XP OS. Now I have a Macbook, and I almost regret buying it because it's nearly impossible to find a way to run the game on my computer. I'm playing through Baldur's Gate right now, but there's nothing like good old Might and Magic to take you back to your childhood in the 90s.
the good old might and magic VI, a beautiful dream, that came true when its beauty got you and you began to stick with it, all the amazing athmospheres and so on, cheese.......something so beautiful.......truly.......amazing memories
I started with Blood and Honor and enjoyed M&MVIII too. I really loved them didnt care about graphics. Actually I replayed them one or two years ago. They are still great. The music is fenomenal and unique one of the best and easily recognizable in the industry.
Yeah me too and i was so hungry for M&M game back then that i regret not playing M&M6 cause i didn't felt going backwards. Today i cant stomach those old graphics.
I started with MM5 and in retrospect I was surprised how much freedom the player had in exploring that world. My party was not strong enough to defeat the monsters guarding a desert town (Sandcaster) where I was supposed to go next. So I went to the opposite side of the world up into the clouds to get past the impassable mountain range, crossed the lava field, wandered through the entire desert constantly dodging the monsters and finally at the brink of death my party was able to enter said city through the sewers...
LOL one of my favourite things about old-school crpgs was how easily you could explore the 'wrong' place, it wasn't one of those 'on rails' modern games. I remember stumbling into the 'Forbidden Zone' at too low a level. EEEK! Lloy'd Beacon, Lloyd's Beacon!!
Same here - I was very young when playing for the first time and In the end totally destroyed my mm v party and had to start all over again but before that, it was such a fun adventure and I would go to so many places I wasn’t even supposed to go yet 😝
I still get Vietnam flashbacks when I think of those Armadillos. I played MM5 first without Clouds added, which basically is hard mode since you only have the first town's spells whereas in Clouds you can progress through the whole story and end up being at a much lower level (~20-22ish) than you'd have when playing Darkside only and getting to those Armadillos (25-30ish). Having access to all the spells and special fountains that increase MP it becomes a walk in the park since you just have to cast a few Infernos or Implosions to deal with them, use Lloyd's Beacon and the MP fountain... back in the day my solution without the other half of the world was pulling them south to the river and shoot lightning bolts across. Literally took months of ingame time though :D
Old man preaching; M&M 6, 7, and 8 are to date the only games i consistently replay year after year. Better games count in the hundreds but I've never gotten the same sense of enjoyment from any of them.
My first game in 1999, when I was only 6 years old, was nothing else than H&M 3. Then in 2000 I bought a computer newspaper with the game M&M 7 and 8, which I fell in love with and to this day, thanks to the Polish company GOG, I can play it. There was something almost magical about these games back then. Thank you to the creator for creating them.
M&M is the kind of series that will never be the same if it is remade in a modern game engine. 99% of the charm of those old games is the low resolution depth buffer combined with 2D sprites and low poly heightmap terrains. It's like chiptune for the eyes
Fantastic video. Thanks so much for taking the time to summarise the series and provide insights into the companies that made the games. Fascinating. I played MM6 years ago and adored it and you've inspired me to dust it off, (apply a patch or two), and relive the joy.
My first introduction to this series was through Might and Magic 7 as a pre-teen. I absolutely loved it and still love it to this day, replaying it once a year or so. Then I got 6 and 8 and enjoyed them both very fondly. Even though 9 seemed very unpolished, I still enjoyed it for some reason. I have tried the previous 5 games, but could never get into them to play them from start to finish. Also, there's a nice glitch you can do in Might and Magic 7: In the beginning of the game you can kill the dragon in the cave quite easily if all your characters have the Bow skill. It will take like 15-20 minutes, but it's doable. Now, before you pick up the loot from the dragon's body, save the game. Sometimes when you pick up the loot, the dragon's body stays there, but you still get the loot, pretty much allowing you to get infinite loot. So you just reload the game until you get the glitch, then save again and repeat. This way after 30 minutes you will have an inventory full of the best loot, including artefacts and relics and have a pretty much unstoppable party, if that's how you want to play the game :P
I know I'm 2 years late with this comment, but that item glitch actually works for all enemies, not just the starting dragon. So if you want good loot? Level up a bit once you reach the mainland where the story takes place and do the aforementioned glitch with one of the dragons you can find there. You'll find it a lot easier :P Also, there's a particular spell book you need to get, the weird part about that is however, that you can sell it, despite it being a quest item. Thankfully, there's a wizard dude in a hut who will be happy to replace any quest items you may have *ahem* "misplaced". In short, unlimited cash, because this wizard guy can spawn infinite copies of a seemingly rare and ancient tome :P
It is not actually a glitch or bug, just an exploit. The game rolls you the loot of enemies and a chance to drop an item. But some enemies are powerful and were given a chance to drop more than one item. But thanks to engine limitations, they could only award you with one item per loot. So to bypass that, they gave these monsters a chance to be looted again, in order to loot more than 1 item. Clever way to bypass the limitations, but allowed single-minded players to just keep rolling for a new loot. If I'm not mistaken, the games even have a fail safe that tags a body when it was already looted to keep you from looting it more than twice, but that tag was overwritten when you load a game.
You should check out this animated slide show of the monster encounters form M&M3, some a quite hilarious (unintentionally that is) ruclips.net/video/JvrNgmJXPW4/видео.html
Thank you so much for this. This is one of the only, if not the only, series retrospective on this amazing series. I love the M&M series so much and it is great to see it get some love. Truly an over-looked series now a days! I hope to see more retrospectives on the spin offs and other randomness M&M has! Great Work!
MrBassface85 Thanks for the kind words! The next episode will be about Chris Roberts and the Wing Commander series, but I'd like to come back to M&M someday, maybe with a lore summary video or a couple of mini-sodes. I'll inevitably tackle Ultima and Wizardry as well, eventually. So many topics, so little time...
I really only played MM3. And I was absolutely blown away by it's style when I played it in 1991. Mix of Science Fiction, puzzles, exploration and power-gaming made it very appealing to me. In fact I am playing it now for the first time since then, having forgotten most of it, and having an absolute blast and even lol-ing in some unexpected demise of my group from time to time. Might have to play "World of Xeen" eventually, woudn't mind wrapping the story and see how Sheltak or w/e his name meets his doom. Thanks for the review. MM's creator seems to have gotten shafted by EA the same way Richard Garriot was. At least they gave us magnum opuses before they got destroyed.
Thank you for actually covering the REGULAR might and magic series. You dare to speak the words Might and Magic and all people every spout is Heroes, heroes, HEROES of Might and Magic II. I get that it was a good game, but I don't see the same masterpiece in the series others do. Frankly I tried HOMM 1 and couldn't get that into it(yes, I KNOW, HOMM2 was a lot better) but no one ever talks about the DND ripoffs that started it all. I LOVE the regular Might and Magic series and I have spent whole days across many of the titles and while I have never beaten any of the one of them, I have still frequently revisit them and I always have a good time. They have some of the best character creations of any DND-like games I've ever played, I spent a ton of time in 7, less in 6 but I still loved it, and I even love MM 1 with it quite possibly the one I have played the most of. While the combat of 1 and 2 was technically inferior to say Pool of Radiance and Curse of the Azure Bonds with their actual grids, the normal interface was much smoother(for me, at least). I love the standard MM so much and they are such classic games. It's so tragic that such a gigantic franchise was the victim of rushed entries and ultimately fell by the wayside. TBH I feel like a lot of "smaller" franchises rose and fell unfairly during this time, as if someone got a hold of them who wanted them to fail. While it's easy to suggest that agents of the actual DND(for example) had a hand in this, and for all we know it may have considering it showed them up in some regards, this seemed to be the case of a lot of similar franchises of the time, both for DND like games and others. It just seems to me like some powerful force in the media hates actual creativity and blights it at every turn. So whether DND itself played a hand or not it just seems to be a symptom of a larger problem.
This video brought back many good memories of the old days of gaming. Such a great series of games! Interesting to hear about the history behind the scenes. Crazy that Jon Van Caneghem created the first game in the series by himself on his apple 2... so talented! Thanks for this! Nice to relive old and nice memories!
I still have my CD Roms, booklets, and cloth gameworld maps for Might & Magic VI, VII, & VIII. Those three titles are all in my Top 5 Favorite RPGs of All Time. I also own the GOG versions and still put in a few hours of play time here and there.
Ah Arcomage. You were one of the best parts of the M&M games. There is a smartphone app that largely duplicates it if anyone is curious...Archmage I think.
OMG, thank you sooo much my friend. Here i am a year later reading this...just downloaded it, and playing my ass off. It is literally the same game just with more Cards. Amazing. Thank you again.
I really miss the days of Clouds of Xeen & Darkside of Xeen. I've re-played them so many times over the years, and ALWAYS enjoyed them thoroughly, since there is just SO much going on, it never feels boring. The magic of being able to pick up a game and play it... yet... for the finer details of success and having a "leg up" on defeating the enemies & obstacles in the game rewarding only those who looked into things closer... well... it seems LOST now in today's age. :( Basically, I think JonVC MASTERED this art... again... that art being that you can pick up his games and play... but to TRULY master or defeat them--you had to immerse yourself. I LOVED THAT. It's seriously missing from a lot of games these days, or, worse... games are just mindless button mashers and/or way too easy and holding your hand throughout the ENTIRE experience. *sigh* Rant over. :D THANK YOU FOR MAKING THIS VIDEO!!! It's awesome. You are a super goober.
I'd add MM8 to that list. HMM4 had great music and not needing a hero for monsters was good for avoiding the need of ferry heroes. It did suck that they killed the old world tho, a lot
Indeed. In the same era we have Quake/Half-Life/Unreal for FPS; Fallout, Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale for another taste of RPGs. I actually only got to play all those games 2-4 years after their release but hell they are brilliant!
My favorite RPG series. I've played them all multiple times (yes, even 9!). Too bad the series is dead. MM10 was disappointing, and I doubt Ubi will ever make 11... BTW, amazing video, my friend. ^^
@@shichaoma9325 I know its an old comment. But please, no. Bethesda hasnt made a game worth playing since 2006. You can do so much more in any might and magic game than in a post oblivion bethesda.
I actually enjoyed MMX, but I didn't play this expecting something too close to the older ones. It was more of an hommage to the series than an actual 10th part. And I also played 9, until I ran into some plot-breaking bugs, can't even remember how far I got.
What a great vid to find! Wonderfully put together, and GREAT voice (perfect for videogame RPGs too!). Might & Magic VI [ 6:12 ] ... (sigh...) I loved that one, and those character portraits were AWESOME! What a pity character portraits like those were never made again. It's so sad the Might & Magic series is dead. Thanks for sharing, Chris, and keep up the good work!
Eight Virtues Thanks, that's some compliment! But really, I'm just building on and summarising the work of actual journalists here... it's not like I went out into the world to do research, they did all that.
Chris Chapman Well in this day and age with humanity effectively becoming a "hive mind", the old phrase "standing on the shoulders of giants" is ever more apt. It's really how you curate, assemble and present the available information that is important. Keep up the good work, and long live Might & Magic (I played the first two back in the day).
For me the journalism is dead when it talks about anything new. Never have I seen an adequate review of a new game by even a middle-sized news outlet. Maybe I understand journalism differently. This here for me is rather "game history" rather than "game journalism" I believe journalists should inform, compare and draw objective and competent conclusions, what we get is "game hyping" industry that overinforms, overhypes and underdelivers just like the industry itself.
+Lord Dumpkins If your interested in a Wizardry video you should check out this /watch?v=ab08qIbo9e4 The main focus is not on the history, but the old installments are mentioned - its worth to check out!
I'd also be very interested in a history video on the Wizardry series - including the Shaker game that ALMOST came out through Kickstarter a few years ago.
You did a fine job with this. I am a big fan of the series. I played 1 when it came out on my commodore 64. To this day I still play and experiment with different kinds of party creations on M&M Mandate and Blood. Good fun, I just never get bored with them. I am 48 yrs old and prefer the golden age games over whats out now.
One thing which was ignored was Legends of Might and Magic. It was basically a release of the PvP mini game of what was suposed to be the new MMO which was canceled. It used the graphics engin that was used in MM9 and within 3 month after the game was released 3DO pulled all of the servers for the game. The game went on for many years later entirely on player owned servers. It had it's own modding comunity and guilds would fight each other on private servers. It was a masive sucess on the part of the player base and a masive failure on teh part of 3DO.
M&M, so many memories, taste of my youth. Played, loved and finished each and every one, but the last one. I actually experienced M&M 1 and 2 as more interesting than the later ones, as they were more demanding and their difficulty was higher. Music in M&M 3, 4, 5 - so beautiful, so evocative. Dramating ending of the Corak & Sheltem saga. Marriage of Roland and Catharine, which laid foundations for both HoM&M 3 and M&M 6 and 7. Well-written and unforgettable story, a world one could drown in and find shelter in. JVC will always be more like a god than an usual mortal for me for that. Wonderful and detailed work, Chris Chapman, no doubt it took a lot of time and effort to do, thank you for that.
I wanted to know something about the series, it was informative, well written, good footage. You are amazing, never ever forget that. Easily one of the best retrohistories on yt. ;D
That's pretty disgusting that Might & Magic Online was cancelled by 3DO management when that was the very reason Jon Van Caneghem went to 3DO in the first place. It almost sounds like it was their plan all along, since they effectively got rid of a potential competitor, took his M&M franchise from him, and then proceeded to drive it into the ground in the attempt to maximize profits. This should be a lesson to future independent or small game developers. I've actually seen this with other games, but also with other businesses in general, where they're basically acquired by a competitor, whether through a buyout or hostile takeover via equity stock, and then systematically driven into the ground. Might & Magic Online could still have been around today, there might have even been M&MO 2 or 3 today, and the series could have been significantly more innovative. It would have been interesting to see a continuation of the story by the original author too. This is very sad, but an excellent video, and very insightful. 10/10
Wrob99 It's possible that it was their plan, but I think I'd attribute it to shortsightedness rather than malice, because 3DO was so spectacularly good at being shortsighted. I'd love to do a video specifically about 3DO, because it'd be an A-Z of wrong business decisions. Another fun piece of trivia is that Trip Hawkins also made an enemy out of Ultima creator Richard Garriott. So much so, that in more than one Ultima game, Garriott buried thinly disguised personal jabs at Hawkins. But that's material for a later episode!
MaM6,7 and 8 was a game that me and my brother used to play together when we were kids. I used to write our own manual where to find expert and mastery for skills and magic, where are secrets and what to do. Now I have a kid on my own… time flies. One the greatest series that I have seen and played. And yes - I do still play Arcomage (there’s a fan site and an app)
These were the games I grew up with. Might and Magic were a lot of fun and quite the games at the time. It's a crime that things went south with the Hero's of might and magic. I also played a few other role playing games but might and magic were always my favorites.
Oh my goodness, Might and Magic 6 was my childhood. My brother and I used to rush home every day to watch our dad play. I read the entire player manual (the one that's a few hundred pages long) cover to cover. The Castle Ironfist music still makes me tear up a little bit, so much nostalgia.
It was a informative and good video in my view, nice to see Might and Magic getting some attention after Ubisofts MM10 (which i was part of the VIP team during development), i also reposted this on the RPGCodex.
Very nice overview of this series. I never finished any of them but did played quite a bit of 3 through 5. It is great that we can get them now on GOG and replay our childhood memories.
Nice Video - enjoyed it very much! I've started my M&M experience with 3, which I adore to this day. I loved 4-7 as well. My love got cold with 8 and - you said it - didn't recover with 9. X Legacy was surprisingly good, but nothing beats your first minotaur encounter, after you dared to set foot on the marsh lands in the far east. Boy, how he wiped out my party....
Thanks for the video! Very informative!! M&M2 was by far the game I spent more hours playing in my Commodore Amiga back in the day, and I have played and beaten every single game in the series!
You don't even want to know how long it took young me to beat that stupid "Flick a farthing? Fool! You have no farthing to flick!" puzzle nor how nearly it resulted in broken controllers....
Might & Magic II on the Sega Genesis was a foundational game for me and my brother. For obsessive fantasy geeks it was a world to immerse ourselves in, and we would alternate between M&M and Dungeons & Dragons: Warriors of the Eternal Sun. We still play both game on emulators to this day.
Absolutely first rate. I was recalling playing MM2 on the Genesis back in the day and reflected that I knew hardly anything about this venerable series. Low and behold, everything I needed to know was right here in this video. Bravo!
For those wanting to scratch the itch of CRPGs golden days, but with a more polished gaming experience akin to modern standards, the Etrian Odyssey series has lots to offer.
very well made video, I'd love to see more. Hopefully the next one won't take as long now that you have the format down, but it still must take a lot of effort to get everything looking so smooth and to get your primary magazine sources together. Keep it up, I think it paid off, subbed
Would it be easier if you released them piece by piece as opposed to one complete video? It could keep your subscribers more engaged, as some may be subbed for more retrohistories as opposed to Let's Plays
GerardBlaize I'm mulling over a few ideas to make them less sporadic. I'd definitely like to get those sorts of videos out more often. But a couple of times I've picked out a subject that I thought would be short and easy and it turned out to be a monster.
Thank you for this enormously enlightening summary of the MM games. My neighbour lent me his Might and Magic 6 CD when I was 7 and it's the reason I fell in love with the fantasy and RPG genre. Back then, wandering about New Sorpigal and having a tough time with Goblinwatch was part of many childhood afternoons... The soundtrack still brings it all back! It sucks that 3DO trampled NWC the way it did... I still hope that someday JVC will create another MM masterpiece, as unlikely as that may be
Great great video! M&M World of Xeen and M&M6 are probably my favourite video games ever by the way ;) Investigating on the in game card game in M&M7 would also be interesting considering the recent success of Gwent in Witcher 3. That was definitely a precursor: MM6 really shaped the RPGS to come and I believe World of Warcraft for example wouldn't have been as it is without referencing it quite heavily.
Might and Magic 6-7-8. Where my life as a gamer, storyteller and dungeon master started to grow. Me and my sister, as children, used to look at our grandma playing. She was the true gamer in the family, i miss her so much. She had 3 big ring binder books full of her handwritten guides to the games, with maps, stats, quest lore, setting lore, dungeon solutions and so on, that we read to her during her games. I must say, she didn't liked M&M9, and me neither, even now. It broke my heart when i recently discovered that to make M&M9, New World killed off Enroth from their settings, by destroying it in its lore.
Thanks for the great video. I was a baby in the mid 80's so I didn't get old enough to enjoy these games until the late 90's and by then I was consumed by UO, Everquest and Baldur's Gate. Now that I'm in my mid 30's and GOG makes it so easy I broke down and paid the $2.50 for M&M 1-6. I'm currently playing MM6 and loving it. Until recently I didn't know much about the series so your video really helped me get an idea of what I've missed over the years. Hopefully Ubisoft brings the series back in some meaningful way but I'm guessing that wont happen for another half decade or so. Still I'm enjoying all the cheap GOG re-releases.
One of my favourite series. I still remember Might And Magic 3 on five and a quarter inch disks. Lots of fun, and different from a lot o f titles at the time. I liked Might And Magic 10. It may not be identical to the earlier games, but to my mind it was still Might And Magic enough to enjoy and play over and over.
I really enjoyed this video, really good work man! Can you make video on the Heroes of Might and Magic series? Heroes 3 was my childhood. Keep up the good work!
3DO can be compared to that one sports team that overpays for every player and pretty much ignores what the stats say about said player. They had a few good games like the Might and Magic games, but they also had a myriad of awful games. If you install something with the original disk, you get ads for other 3DO or NWC games, most of which have been forgotten. Some may be recognized like the Toy Soldiers game or an old MLB game, but most simply sucked. Not only that, but 3DO ran up a massive debt trying to sell their overpriced and almost unusable console, so they had to milk the few good games harder. When the good games went sour from the constant pressure, the bottom fell out from underneath 3DO. When things like Heroes 4 and Might and Magic 9 released to poor sales and even worse reviews, that was it. Unlike a sports team, 3DO didn't have billions of dollars backing it, so it just went bankrupt.
I love how you took a shot of my characters all being weak when you were talking about Might and Magic 8 being such a disappointment :P Very nicely done, interesting video :)
OK. Fucking Uplay was golden. Although have to point out that Might and Magic X is not a spiritual successor. It's in fact the exact opposite. Now if Jon Van Caneghem were to release a new first person dungeon crawler that liberally borrows from the Magic & Magic play mechanics and he called it... I dunno... Strength & Sorcery, that game would be considered a spiritual successor. Might & Magic X on the other hand is simply known as a soulless cock-up.
Yeah. There are a few books (written by a "Lord Caneghem") that suggest that at least someone managed to scry the events of the OG games and put them down in pen and paper. No suggestion that Ashan has any real connection to Enroth or Xeen, or any underlying space alien ruins though. I did hear that the team that did X actually played the old games and wanted to start reconnecting Ashan to the overarching narrative, though. Of course, Ubisoft is Ubisoft, so they didn't let them put in anything more than references as far as I know. X was a decent game. You could definitely tell it had a small dev team, and it didn't feel like a Might and Magic Classic, but I always take the time to counter negative reviews because it honestly doesn't deserve them (and because if nobody buys X we'll never have a XI which may actually be premitted some connections to the overcanon).
I believe all credits for attempting to link Ashan to any of the old universes (HoMM/M&M) goes to long time fan, Marzhin who was (I believe) in charge of MMX. As far as I know he also put in some reference in some of his HVII maps and even did a remake of old Heroes II maps for Heroes VII, but true Ubisoft is Ubisoft and one can only imagine in how many ways the team(s) would've been limited. Basically all their M&M releases shows this...
Yeah, you gotta admit that with the constraints the team had on them, they did what they could. Even small jabs such as the "forbidden saga" quest and "Ubimancers" could be taken as veiled expressions of contempt for Ubisoft taking the franchise in such a direction.
The first game of the series I played was MM6. And I love the game so much. Now 31 years after its release I started playing the NES version of MM1 The Secret Of Inner Sanctum (The only version I was able to get to run on modern system). This game just sucks all of my time. I can't stop playing it. It just blows my mind what Jon was able to accomplish. Just for fun the game is one year older than I am :)
I remember been drawn to a very nice fantasy cover art on a cheap PC-magazine, which included the World of Xeen CDR. I really can't remember the year, but after playing an hour or so i was hooked. Countless hours "wasted" (as my roommate would say) on this, and all the following titles. One of many quite unique things, was the possibility to turn your own characters into freaking LICHES ...that was just BEYOND AWESOME!
I was born in 1975, and I unfortunately though I was just a teen or younger when much of these came out - the entire RPG golden age 85 onwards, I missed just about all of it. I love RPGs, they are my favorite, just look at my channel! But fortunately I did catch on with Fallout 1-2, and Baldur's Gate. Since then I look forward to any and all RPGs. If I don't play it, I at least make a point to see reviews about it. I had no idea so many came out just between 85-95. Damn. All those stories and fantasies that I missed. I feel left out now. I used to watch my friend play Dungeon Master in 87-88. I bought two SSI gold box D&D games in around 92, as well as Eye of the Beholder II, but that was it before Fallout. Good video though. I'd love to see one all about the golden age of RPGs, and why it slumped off and on. Today we get so few a year. Perhaps over-saturation? Each game genre seems to have it's high and lows. Turn-based games are recently making a little bit of comeback, while they were nearly wiped out in the late 90s due to real-time strategy games. Now real-time strategy games only live on in Starcraft II. MMOs are really slowing down and may die over the next ten years, and FPS games are turning many off due to barely any innovation.
I couldn't even fit all the Golden Age titles into the graphic; there were so many that you could never hope to finish them all even if you dedicated the rest of your life to the task. Don't feel too bad for missing out though. Yes, that era had its share of classics, but there was a lot of filler, and even in the good ones there were some real crimes against game design by modern standards, and plots and characters were pretty thin, by and large. (There are exceptions; I'd put Ultima 7 up against anything from the present day.) I'm hoping to cover more facets of the Golden Age in later videos, but the best source on it I've found is part two of Matt Barton's three-part History of CRPGs for Gamasutra: www.gamasutra.com/features/20070223b/barton_pfv.htm Barton (who's on RUclips here: ruclips.net/user/blacklily8 ) has an unrivalled, encyclopedic knowledge of this subject. Thanks for the comment!
Chris Chapman I had forgotten about Ultima 7! I bought the Black Gate and Serpent Isle around 1997 on CD. I finished the first one, and got far into the second. It was one of the first open game worlds that I played around in. I especially remember that the people had work, eating, and sleeping every day and I was fascinated with that. I was very happy when Bethesda incorporated something similar with the Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion. I came back years later, probably around 2008, and bought Planescape Torment, and Arcanum. Planescape Torment had a heck of an interesting story to it. Arcanum, not so much at least as far as I got in that game. I might do a Let's Roleplay of Planescape Torment in the future.
I actually had my first introduction to the franchise on the Super NES version of M&M 3. I really had a lot of fun wandering around and discovering random things.
Good video. 6 was the first one I played and I loved the series. 7 is the one that sticks out to me the most. 1 minor correction; while Meridian 59 was the first MMO, it was only ahead of The Realm Online by a couple months.
>With the launch of Ultima Online still a year away, 3DO was the only company operating what we would now call an MMO: Meridean 59 But Neverwinter Nights was still up in 1996...
Me and my buddy were so addicted to M&M6 at the time, during summer vacation we were working at a computer camp for kids which was somewhere out in the mountains ( so kids would focus on learning). We had signed up before the game was released so we really rather wanted to play the game then work...anyhow, lucky for me, i didn't really know anything about computer programming or even setting them up in a linked network, so for 2 weeks i was assigned night guard, kids went to bed around 9pm and i was basically there to make sure they don't fool around (lol the computer nerds had zero intent on sneaking out of their quarters anyway !) So i installed the game on one of the computers and was playing until like 4am, then had to prepare kitchen/breakfast for the morning. My buddy who had to deal with often annoying kids all day, was so envious. I had the quiet of the night and the best of the best computers to play that game...Those were 2 great summer weeks :)
I remember playing Might and Magic III - Isles of Terra on my old PC when I was in high school and really falling in love with it. We were fortunate enough to be one of the few people with a Roland LAPC-I soundcard, and the soundtrack was just amazing on that compared to the FM synth of your typical Soundblaster card.
Might & Magic 6, 7 and 8 are literally games of my family.
As a kid my dad and mom played M&M 6 on the same saves so they talked about it alot what they did so they both know what to do next.
And only because of my dad's bad sense of directions my mom picked up a huge piece of paper and started drawing the map of the world.
Literally... paths, houses, dungeons, tress and even chests.
She later on labeled all the houses where is the teacher of Air magic for example and me, my brother and my sister were really young to play the game on our own so we coloured the map completely. Blue water, green tress, snowy mountains and even with the highlight pens the type of teachers. Expert was orange, Master was Green and later the Grand Master was Yellow.
My mom even made a separate page for all the attributes and effects in game.
Like this spell does this by this amount, this potion does this and this barrel of this colour does that.
It was after 3 years before I first started my own game of Might & Magic 6 and already I knew everything about the game.
Where to go, what all the things does and when I didn't know, my mom's map and instructions paper always had the answers...
And yes, I have the map and the instruction paper still in my possesion to this day as a artefact of my own
That's honestly amazing man...
I had a similar experience. My mom played this game and it was my entry to video games. She would give me her level 70 characters to run around with, and by the time I was old enough to play the game from the start I knew most of what I needed.
It's almost silly how much this game can mean to alot of us :D
Either way yesterday I came back home, to take care of my mothers cat.
They went to some event from 5:00AM to 10:00PM, before they went out my mom asked me if I could instal Might & Magic 6 on her notebook so she could play it when they return... I'm gonna probably have a run through MM6, MM7 and MM8 because of that xd
Show it please! It sounds very nice! I would really like see how youre family translated all that stuff to paper and how it compares to my memories!
That would be a great idea! I will be sure it will be saved somewhere online and don't have to fear that I'll tear it up or something.
But there is one problem, I don't have a scanner at home and the one at work broke last week, so I'll have to wait until they'll buy a new one :^)
As soon as I'll upload it somewhere I'll live a link here :)
Having lived through the downfall of NWC, not enough credit is given to General Manager/ Executive Producer Mark Caldwell. Mark was with NWC since the beginning, and during the 3DO era, his ability to keep 3DO's upper management off the backs of the developers is really what allowed Might and Magic 6 and 7 to really shine. His departure during the development of MM9 and HOMM4 was crushing. Suddenly 3DO bore down on NWC like a hammer, and there was no one there to distract them.
Some of the best games ever made. Thank you for everything.
MM VI and VII, combined with HoMM II and III are the definition of the golden age of games. Some of the best games ever released of that time.
So true. I would even add MM8 on that list. I play MM6-8 from time to time. Probably played through them 3 times each. Its sooo addictive and nostalgic. And this from a guy who rarelly replay a game. Heroes 2 and 3 is mostly nostalgic, but at the time was the pinnacle of computer gaming. If i want a Heroes experience today though, i swich it up with usually Heroes 3 or 5. Even Kings Bounty. Wich are really good aswell.
Real talk? Early 3d games that use sprites aged a LOT better, despite people calling them outdated.
I agree. One this i have noticed is that a lot of things have UI clutter. Like the adventurers faces on the bottom at 3:50. The sword/shield and whatnot clutter the faces and made it harder to understand what the game was trying to portray with these sprites. It is something that bothers me to no end with older games. But what can ya do, being 20/20 and all....
Absolutely...early polygon models are so hideous.
I disagree. Early polygons look attrocious, but they fit better with their environmrnt. I just find it really jarring when I see 2D sprites used to simulate a 3D object. I'd rather have ugly polygons in a 3D game and beautiful 2D sprites in a 2D game.
@@Hagashager I remember when sprites started to get phased out in favour of 3D polygons. I absolutely hated it. Sure, sprites behave weirdly in a 3D environment, but a nicely rendered sprite still looks better than a rudimentary 3D object with those hideous and unnaturally sharp corners and edges. To this day, sprites don't bother me in old games. Still love the hell out of MM6-8.
I feel that the adoption of true 3D graphics was what more or less ended my childhood fascination with video games. Ever since the 80s I'd been glued to the computer screen, and each new technical evolution was a big step forward. 8-bit to 16-bit, EGA to VGA to SVGA. Couldn't wait to see what came next. As weird as the pseudo-3D of sprites mixed with 3D environments looked, I was fine with it. There was probably some pixelated charm to it, and the colors could still be very vibrant.
As much as I told myself that it's the gameplay that matters, not graphics, I remember when Quake came out, and I couldn't stand to look at it. Not only were things blocky, the lighting got uniformly drab. From then on, most new games just looked terrible to me, so I ignored them. I was content playing older games with pixel art or pseudo-3D: Civilization 2, Wing Commander 2, Daggerfall, Final Fantasy (blocky characters got a pass because of the beautiful backgrounds - probably also the low resolution obscuring the simple polygon count). Picked up some new hobbies and didn't look back for a long time.
It's only recently that I've come back to gaming that I've more or less accepted modern 3D rendered graphics and admit they can look pretty good nowadays. I also find it a lot easier now to play the early 3D titles, because I can take them for what they are, amusingly retro. It's almost like I have some nostalgia for things that actually aren't a part of my personal past. ...But I do make sure to use a low enough resolution on my PC. :)
Fantastic video! I remember playing M&M III for the first time and being blown away by it's colorful world and characters. And yes, 4 + 5 World of Xeen was also amazing at the time!
this game were really fun to play ...I do not know but the next gen of this series were kind of difficult to play for me.
M&M 6, 7 and 8 were probably the best gaming experiences of my life. As a kid/teen I was so immersed in the M&M universe. Today I'm acutely aware of the sense of dread I feel whenever I think about the way things played out behind the scenes in the industry. Imagine what fantastic sequels we could've had if the developers had been able to create the games they wanted to make in the first place.
Oh my god. Right in the feels. My sister and I used to watch my dad play through MM VI. Whenever he died, he would get up and let us mess around in New Sorpigal (usually just killing all the peasants and not saving). Later in high school, I played through it again seriously on a Windows XP OS. Now I have a Macbook, and I almost regret buying it because it's nearly impossible to find a way to run the game on my computer. I'm playing through Baldur's Gate right now, but there's nothing like good old Might and Magic to take you back to your childhood in the 90s.
the good old might and magic VI, a beautiful dream, that came true when its beauty got you and you began to stick with it, all the amazing athmospheres and so on, cheese.......something so beautiful.......truly.......amazing memories
Wine doesn't help?
You can buy the game for a few $ on GOG, this will run on modern OS
Ah, Might and Magic... It hurts right in the childhood to watch this clip...
Bible Illustrated Part of me can’t wait till I can get a pc to play this awesome series.
I started with Blood and Honor and enjoyed M&MVIII too. I really loved them didnt care about graphics. Actually I replayed them one or two years ago. They are still great. The music is fenomenal and unique one of the best and easily recognizable in the industry.
Yeah me too and i was so hungry for M&M game back then that i regret not playing M&M6
cause i didn't felt going backwards. Today i cant stomach those old graphics.
I started with MM5 and in retrospect I was surprised how much freedom the player had in exploring that world. My party was not strong enough to defeat the monsters guarding a desert town (Sandcaster) where I was supposed to go next. So I went to the opposite side of the world up into the clouds to get past the impassable mountain range, crossed the lava field, wandered through the entire desert constantly dodging the monsters and finally at the brink of death my party was able to enter said city through the sewers...
LOL one of my favourite things about old-school crpgs was how easily you could explore the 'wrong' place, it wasn't one of those 'on rails' modern games. I remember stumbling into the 'Forbidden Zone' at too low a level. EEEK! Lloy'd Beacon, Lloyd's Beacon!!
Same here - I was very young when playing for the first time and In the end totally destroyed my mm v party and had to start all over again but before that, it was such a fun adventure and I would go to so many places I wasn’t even supposed to go yet 😝
I still get Vietnam flashbacks when I think of those Armadillos. I played MM5 first without Clouds added, which basically is hard mode since you only have the first town's spells whereas in Clouds you can progress through the whole story and end up being at a much lower level (~20-22ish) than you'd have when playing Darkside only and getting to those Armadillos (25-30ish). Having access to all the spells and special fountains that increase MP it becomes a walk in the park since you just have to cast a few Infernos or Implosions to deal with them, use Lloyd's Beacon and the MP fountain... back in the day my solution without the other half of the world was pulling them south to the river and shoot lightning bolts across. Literally took months of ingame time though :D
Old man preaching; M&M 6, 7, and 8 are to date the only games i consistently replay year after year. Better games count in the hundreds but I've never gotten the same sense of enjoyment from any of them.
Might and Magic VI and VII are still the fucking benchmark of western RPG.
My first game in 1999, when I was only 6 years old, was nothing else than H&M 3. Then in 2000 I bought a computer newspaper with the game M&M 7 and 8, which I fell in love with and to this day, thanks to the Polish company GOG, I can play it. There was something almost magical about these games back then. Thank you to the creator for creating them.
M&M is the kind of series that will never be the same if it is remade in a modern game engine. 99% of the charm of those old games is the low resolution depth buffer combined with 2D sprites and low poly heightmap terrains. It's like chiptune for the eyes
I'm so glad I found this channel
MM6 and MM7 are the best adventure games in the universe
YES!
next to wizardry 6 and 7
i should play it, i played heroes of might and magic 1 but never even heard of the might and magic series
Yes but 8 it's not so far !
Fantastic video. Thanks so much for taking the time to summarise the series and provide insights into the companies that made the games. Fascinating. I played MM6 years ago and adored it and you've inspired me to dust it off, (apply a patch or two), and relive the joy.
The gameplay and storyline for III / IV / V were amazing! Glad you chose the intro music for V (Darkside of Xeen) for your ending!
Yep, those games really hit the sweet spot with me. I never got into the later ones with 3d worlds. I just thought they looked too ugly.
My first introduction to this series was through Might and Magic 7 as a pre-teen. I absolutely loved it and still love it to this day, replaying it once a year or so. Then I got 6 and 8 and enjoyed them both very fondly. Even though 9 seemed very unpolished, I still enjoyed it for some reason. I have tried the previous 5 games, but could never get into them to play them from start to finish.
Also, there's a nice glitch you can do in Might and Magic 7: In the beginning of the game you can kill the dragon in the cave quite easily if all your characters have the Bow skill. It will take like 15-20 minutes, but it's doable.
Now, before you pick up the loot from the dragon's body, save the game. Sometimes when you pick up the loot, the dragon's body stays there, but you still get the loot, pretty much allowing you to get infinite loot. So you just reload the game until you get the glitch, then save again and repeat. This way after 30 minutes you will have an inventory full of the best loot, including artefacts and relics and have a pretty much unstoppable party, if that's how you want to play the game :P
EstonianViking Tempting exploit when I get round to MM7, thanks!
I know I'm 2 years late with this comment, but that item glitch actually works for all enemies, not just the starting dragon. So if you want good loot? Level up a bit once you reach the mainland where the story takes place and do the aforementioned glitch with one of the dragons you can find there. You'll find it a lot easier :P
Also, there's a particular spell book you need to get, the weird part about that is however, that you can sell it, despite it being a quest item.
Thankfully, there's a wizard dude in a hut who will be happy to replace any quest items you may have *ahem* "misplaced".
In short, unlimited cash, because this wizard guy can spawn infinite copies of a seemingly rare and ancient tome :P
It is not actually a glitch or bug, just an exploit.
The game rolls you the loot of enemies and a chance to drop an item.
But some enemies are powerful and were given a chance to drop more than one item. But thanks to engine limitations, they could only award you with one item per loot.
So to bypass that, they gave these monsters a chance to be looted again, in order to loot more than 1 item. Clever way to bypass the limitations, but allowed single-minded players to just keep rolling for a new loot.
If I'm not mistaken, the games even have a fail safe that tags a body when it was already looted to keep you from looting it more than twice, but that tag was overwritten when you load a game.
i did that every time i played the game =)) same thing with the dragon in Tatalia.
Wow. I've been pretty ignorant of the Might and Magic series overall but this was extremely informative.
You should check out this animated slide show of the monster encounters form M&M3, some a quite hilarious (unintentionally that is) ruclips.net/video/JvrNgmJXPW4/видео.html
DariaPlaysRPGs yeah I played Heroes of might and magic series but never played Might and Magic. But loved TSR games.
Great video TYTY Might and Magic series is always one of my favorites from way back in 90's. 3 is aways my favorite with 6/7/8 closely behind
Thank you so much for this. This is one of the only, if not the only, series retrospective on this amazing series. I love the M&M series so much and it is great to see it get some love. Truly an over-looked series now a days!
I hope to see more retrospectives on the spin offs and other randomness M&M has!
Great Work!
MrBassface85 Thanks for the kind words! The next episode will be about Chris Roberts and the Wing Commander series, but I'd like to come back to M&M someday, maybe with a lore summary video or a couple of mini-sodes. I'll inevitably tackle Ultima and Wizardry as well, eventually. So many topics, so little time...
I really only played MM3. And I was absolutely blown away by it's style when I played it in 1991. Mix of Science Fiction, puzzles, exploration and power-gaming made it very appealing to me.
In fact I am playing it now for the first time since then, having forgotten most of it, and having an absolute blast and even lol-ing in some unexpected demise of my group from time to time.
Might have to play "World of Xeen" eventually, woudn't mind wrapping the story and see how Sheltak or w/e his name meets his doom.
Thanks for the review. MM's creator seems to have gotten shafted by EA the same way Richard Garriot was. At least they gave us magnum opuses before they got destroyed.
Thank you for actually covering the REGULAR might and magic series. You dare to speak the words Might and Magic and all people every spout is Heroes, heroes, HEROES of Might and Magic II. I get that it was a good game, but I don't see the same masterpiece in the series others do. Frankly I tried HOMM 1 and couldn't get that into it(yes, I KNOW, HOMM2 was a lot better) but no one ever talks about the DND ripoffs that started it all. I LOVE the regular Might and Magic series and I have spent whole days across many of the titles and while I have never beaten any of the one of them, I have still frequently revisit them and I always have a good time. They have some of the best character creations of any DND-like games I've ever played, I spent a ton of time in 7, less in 6 but I still loved it, and I even love MM 1 with it quite possibly the one I have played the most of.
While the combat of 1 and 2 was technically inferior to say Pool of Radiance and Curse of the Azure Bonds with their actual grids, the normal interface was much smoother(for me, at least).
I love the standard MM so much and they are such classic games. It's so tragic that such a gigantic franchise was the victim of rushed entries and ultimately fell by the wayside. TBH I feel like a lot of "smaller" franchises rose and fell unfairly during this time, as if someone got a hold of them who wanted them to fail. While it's easy to suggest that agents of the actual DND(for example) had a hand in this, and for all we know it may have considering it showed them up in some regards, this seemed to be the case of a lot of similar franchises of the time, both for DND like games and others. It just seems to me like some powerful force in the media hates actual creativity and blights it at every turn. So whether DND itself played a hand or not it just seems to be a symptom of a larger problem.
This video brought back many good memories of the old days of gaming. Such a great series of games! Interesting to hear about the history behind the scenes. Crazy that Jon Van Caneghem created the first game in the series by himself on his apple 2... so talented! Thanks for this! Nice to relive old and nice memories!
I played mm7 as a kid. I know everything about that game.
I still have my CD Roms, booklets, and cloth gameworld maps for Might & Magic VI, VII, & VIII. Those three titles are all in my Top 5 Favorite RPGs of All Time. I also own the GOG versions and still put in a few hours of play time here and there.
Ah Arcomage. You were one of the best parts of the M&M games. There is a smartphone app that largely duplicates it if anyone is curious...Archmage I think.
OMG, thank you sooo much my friend. Here i am a year later reading this...just downloaded it, and playing my ass off. It is literally the same game just with more Cards. Amazing. Thank you again.
I must see if it exists for Android
I really miss the days of Clouds of Xeen & Darkside of Xeen. I've re-played them so many times over the years, and ALWAYS enjoyed them thoroughly, since there is just SO much going on, it never feels boring.
The magic of being able to pick up a game and play it... yet... for the finer details of success and having a "leg up" on defeating the enemies & obstacles in the game rewarding only those who looked into things closer... well... it seems LOST now in today's age. :(
Basically, I think JonVC MASTERED this art... again... that art being that you can pick up his games and play... but to TRULY master or defeat them--you had to immerse yourself. I LOVED THAT.
It's seriously missing from a lot of games these days, or, worse... games are just mindless button mashers and/or way too easy and holding your hand throughout the ENTIRE experience. *sigh*
Rant over. :D
THANK YOU FOR MAKING THIS VIDEO!!! It's awesome. You are a super goober.
Super Goober!
MM6, 7 HOMM2, 3 era was the best for me.
1998-2000... The golden age!
I'd add MM8 to that list. HMM4 had great music and not needing a hero for monsters was good for avoiding the need of ferry heroes. It did suck that they killed the old world tho, a lot
M&M 6-7-8 and HOM&M 1-3 = best M&M era. Yes, Enroth was a very good place. Im miss Enroth...
3 is where I started, on the SNES, then I bought 6 for pc, after that I got 7,8,9. About a year or two ago I got the fan made game number 10.
Indeed. In the same era we have Quake/Half-Life/Unreal for FPS; Fallout, Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale for another taste of RPGs. I actually only got to play all those games 2-4 years after their release but hell they are brilliant!
My favorite RPG series. I've played them all multiple times (yes, even 9!). Too bad the series is dead. MM10 was disappointing, and I doubt Ubi will ever make 11...
BTW, amazing video, my friend. ^^
+marcsm2008 Thanks!
Imagine MM was sold to Bethesda... I bet MM would become a more successful series than the ES.
@@shichaoma9325 I know its an old comment. But please, no. Bethesda hasnt made a game worth playing since 2006.
You can do so much more in any might and magic game than in a post oblivion bethesda.
I actually enjoyed MMX, but I didn't play this expecting something too close to the older ones. It was more of an hommage to the series than an actual 10th part. And I also played 9, until I ran into some plot-breaking bugs, can't even remember how far I got.
What a great vid to find! Wonderfully put together, and GREAT voice (perfect for videogame RPGs too!). Might & Magic VI [ 6:12 ] ... (sigh...) I loved that one, and those character portraits were AWESOME! What a pity character portraits like those were never made again. It's so sad the Might & Magic series is dead. Thanks for sharing, Chris, and keep up the good work!
Some say game journalism is dead. I say it's not so as evidenced here.
Eight Virtues Thanks, that's some compliment! But really, I'm just building on and summarising the work of actual journalists here... it's not like I went out into the world to do research, they did all that.
Chris Chapman Well in this day and age with humanity effectively becoming a "hive mind", the old phrase "standing on the shoulders of giants" is ever more apt. It's really how you curate, assemble and present the available information that is important. Keep up the good work, and long live Might & Magic (I played the first two back in the day).
For me the journalism is dead when it talks about anything new. Never have I seen an adequate review of a new game by even a middle-sized news outlet. Maybe I understand journalism differently. This here for me is rather "game history" rather than "game journalism" I believe journalists should inform, compare and draw objective and competent conclusions, what we get is "game hyping" industry that overinforms, overhypes and underdelivers just like the industry itself.
Great video, I've never sunk so many hours into one game as I sank into M&M VI in the days of old :) Keep 'em coming!
Thanks a lot, you've done a great work! It would be great to hear what you've got to say about Wizardry series in one of the next episodes.
+Lord Dumpkins If your interested in a Wizardry video you should check out this /watch?v=ab08qIbo9e4
The main focus is not on the history, but the old installments are mentioned - its worth to check out!
+Horst Linse That was really good. Thanks for the link.
I'd also be very interested in a history video on the Wizardry series - including the Shaker game that ALMOST came out through Kickstarter a few years ago.
Hey hey people, merchant's guild here
This brings back so many memories. My favorite series ever! Thank you for putting this together
This was a great watch. I don't know why this doesn't have at least 10x the views it does, but I appreciated this.
You did a fine job with this. I am a big fan of the series. I played 1 when it came out on my commodore 64. To this day I still play and experiment with different kinds of party creations on M&M Mandate and Blood. Good fun, I just never get bored with them. I am 48 yrs old and prefer the golden age games over whats out now.
Fantastic video. Loved the Scorpia part. Subscribed.
One thing which was ignored was Legends of Might and Magic. It was basically a release of the PvP mini game of what was suposed to be the new MMO which was canceled. It used the graphics engin that was used in MM9 and within 3 month after the game was released 3DO pulled all of the servers for the game. The game went on for many years later entirely on player owned servers. It had it's own modding comunity and guilds would fight each other on private servers. It was a masive sucess on the part of the player base and a masive failure on teh part of 3DO.
Oh my god this channel is gold. How do you not have more subs and views? Keep up the good work.
M&M, so many memories, taste of my youth. Played, loved and finished each and every one, but the last one. I actually experienced M&M 1 and 2 as more interesting than the later ones, as they were more demanding and their difficulty was higher. Music in M&M 3, 4, 5 - so beautiful, so evocative. Dramating ending of the Corak & Sheltem saga. Marriage of Roland and Catharine, which laid foundations for both HoM&M 3 and M&M 6 and 7. Well-written and unforgettable story, a world one could drown in and find shelter in. JVC will always be more like a god than an usual mortal for me for that. Wonderful and detailed work, Chris Chapman, no doubt it took a lot of time and effort to do, thank you for that.
Just came here from a 20th year re-run of MM6. Still super addictive, nothing compares to it!
I wanted to know something about the series, it was informative, well written, good footage. You are amazing, never ever forget that. Easily one of the best retrohistories on yt. ;D
+Haku - The White Void Thank you, that's incredibly kind.
No Problem! ;D
Thank for making this. It was very well done and informative!
That's pretty disgusting that Might & Magic Online was cancelled by 3DO management when that was the very reason Jon Van Caneghem went to 3DO in the first place. It almost sounds like it was their plan all along, since they effectively got rid of a potential competitor, took his M&M franchise from him, and then proceeded to drive it into the ground in the attempt to maximize profits. This should be a lesson to future independent or small game developers. I've actually seen this with other games, but also with other businesses in general, where they're basically acquired by a competitor, whether through a buyout or hostile takeover via equity stock, and then systematically driven into the ground. Might & Magic Online could still have been around today, there might have even been M&MO 2 or 3 today, and the series could have been significantly more innovative. It would have been interesting to see a continuation of the story by the original author too. This is very sad, but an excellent video, and very insightful. 10/10
Wrob99 It's possible that it was their plan, but I think I'd attribute it to shortsightedness rather than malice, because 3DO was so spectacularly good at being shortsighted. I'd love to do a video specifically about 3DO, because it'd be an A-Z of wrong business decisions.
Another fun piece of trivia is that Trip Hawkins also made an enemy out of Ultima creator Richard Garriott. So much so, that in more than one Ultima game, Garriott buried thinly disguised personal jabs at Hawkins. But that's material for a later episode!
Your description reminds me of what happened to Richard Garriott and Ultima Online.
It's EA's business model
MaM6,7 and 8 was a game that me and my brother used to play together when we were kids. I used to write our own manual where to find expert and mastery for skills and magic, where are secrets and what to do. Now I have a kid on my own… time flies.
One the greatest series that I have seen and played. And yes - I do still play Arcomage (there’s a fan site and an app)
These were the games I grew up with. Might and Magic were a lot of fun and quite the games at the time. It's a crime that things went south with the Hero's of might and magic. I also played a few other role playing games but might and magic were always my favorites.
More Might and Magic please!!! this was great! but Xeen fan :)
Oh my goodness, Might and Magic 6 was my childhood. My brother and I used to rush home every day to watch our dad play. I read the entire player manual (the one that's a few hundred pages long) cover to cover. The Castle Ironfist music still makes me tear up a little bit, so much nostalgia.
It was a informative and good video in my view, nice to see Might and Magic getting some attention after Ubisofts MM10 (which i was part of the VIP team during development), i also reposted this on the RPGCodex.
Borin81 Thanks!
Very nice overview of this series. I never finished any of them but did played quite a bit of 3 through 5. It is great that we can get them now on GOG and replay our childhood memories.
Nice Video - enjoyed it very much! I've started my M&M experience with 3, which I adore to this day. I loved 4-7 as well. My love got cold with 8 and - you said it - didn't recover with 9. X Legacy was surprisingly good, but nothing beats your first minotaur encounter, after you dared to set foot on the marsh lands in the far east. Boy, how he wiped out my party....
Thanks for the video! Very informative!! M&M2 was by far the game I spent more hours playing in my Commodore Amiga back in the day, and I have played and beaten every single game in the series!
This was very enjoyable, thanks for making this resume of the M&M franchise!
Might and Magic on Sega Genesis devoured so many hours of our time during gradeschool it was simply amazing.
You don't even want to know how long it took young me to beat that stupid "Flick a farthing? Fool! You have no farthing to flick!" puzzle nor how nearly it resulted in broken controllers....
Amazing video mate. Thank you! Learned a lot about one of my favourite series.
Might & Magic II on the Sega Genesis was a foundational game for me and my brother. For obsessive fantasy geeks it was a world to immerse ourselves in, and we would alternate between M&M and Dungeons & Dragons: Warriors of the Eternal Sun. We still play both game on emulators to this day.
M&M, Wizardry, Ultima, so many memories. Gone, like tears in rain.
Absolutely first rate. I was recalling playing MM2 on the Genesis back in the day and reflected that I knew hardly anything about this venerable series. Low and behold, everything I needed to know was right here in this video. Bravo!
So glad I was there for it all, these were the days of real gaming imho, endless hours of fun
I love this game series, it's so sad that it died.
For those wanting to scratch the itch of CRPGs golden days, but with a more polished gaming experience akin to modern standards, the Etrian Odyssey series has lots to offer.
Brilliant video friend! Keep up the good work! :)
Joe Crook Thank you! Already working on the next one.
very well made video, I'd love to see more. Hopefully the next one won't take as long now that you have the format down, but it still must take a lot of effort to get everything looking so smooth and to get your primary magazine sources together. Keep it up, I think it paid off, subbed
+GerardBlaize Thanks! Second one has already taken longer than the first, but that's because I changed subjects after months of research/writing...
Would it be easier if you released them piece by piece as opposed to one complete video? It could keep your subscribers more engaged, as some may be subbed for more retrohistories as opposed to Let's Plays
GerardBlaize
I'm mulling over a few ideas to make them less sporadic. I'd definitely like to get those sorts of videos out more often. But a couple of times I've picked out a subject that I thought would be short and easy and it turned out to be a monster.
Awesome review! Excellent research and a job well done. You should definitely create more cRPG retrohistories episodes
Thank you! And I definitely will.
Mandate of Heaven was my favourite and I still play Ultima online...23 years later.
The best review of gaming I had ever seen. Thank you!
Just found this, absolutely adore it!
Thank you for this enormously enlightening summary of the MM games. My neighbour lent me his Might and Magic 6 CD when I was 7 and it's the reason I fell in love with the fantasy and RPG genre. Back then, wandering about New Sorpigal and having a tough time with Goblinwatch was part of many childhood afternoons... The soundtrack still brings it all back!
It sucks that 3DO trampled NWC the way it did... I still hope that someday JVC will create another MM masterpiece, as unlikely as that may be
Very nice video, you did well to keep it short and to the point.
Great great video! M&M World of Xeen and M&M6 are probably my favourite video games ever by the way ;) Investigating on the in game card game in M&M7 would also be interesting considering the recent success of Gwent in Witcher 3. That was definitely a precursor: MM6 really shaped the RPGS to come and I believe World of Warcraft for example wouldn't have been as it is without referencing it quite heavily.
Federico Pinci my favourite is 6 and 7. 8 is ok but its kinda stupid to start with one character
Might and Magic 6-7-8. Where my life as a gamer, storyteller and dungeon master started to grow.
Me and my sister, as children, used to look at our grandma playing. She was the true gamer in the family, i miss her so much.
She had 3 big ring binder books full of her handwritten guides to the games, with maps, stats, quest lore, setting lore, dungeon solutions and so on, that we read to her during her games.
I must say, she didn't liked M&M9, and me neither, even now. It broke my heart when i recently discovered that to make M&M9, New World killed off Enroth from their settings, by destroying it in its lore.
I played MM6 in late 90s, then I played it a few years after that, and then once more in 2013/2014. It holds up even now.
Thanks for the great video. I was a baby in the mid 80's so I didn't get old enough to enjoy these games until the late 90's and by then I was consumed by UO, Everquest and Baldur's Gate. Now that I'm in my mid 30's and GOG makes it so easy I broke down and paid the $2.50 for M&M 1-6. I'm currently playing MM6 and loving it. Until recently I didn't know much about the series so your video really helped me get an idea of what I've missed over the years. Hopefully Ubisoft brings the series back in some meaningful way but I'm guessing that wont happen for another half decade or so. Still I'm enjoying all the cheap GOG re-releases.
One of my favourite series. I still remember Might And Magic 3 on five and a quarter inch disks. Lots of fun, and different from a lot o f titles at the time. I liked Might And Magic 10. It may not be identical to the earlier games, but to my mind it was still Might And Magic enough to enjoy and play over and over.
I really enjoyed this video, really good work man! Can you make video on the Heroes of Might and Magic series? Heroes 3 was my childhood. Keep up the good work!
This review, is way just too amazing satisfying. Thanks for the video.
Best regards.
Great video! Great show! Keep up with the show, it's great!
I still play M&M6 every couple of years. This game is perfect.
3DO can be compared to that one sports team that overpays for every player and pretty much ignores what the stats say about said player. They had a few good games like the Might and Magic games, but they also had a myriad of awful games. If you install something with the original disk, you get ads for other 3DO or NWC games, most of which have been forgotten. Some may be recognized like the Toy Soldiers game or an old MLB game, but most simply sucked. Not only that, but 3DO ran up a massive debt trying to sell their overpriced and almost unusable console, so they had to milk the few good games harder. When the good games went sour from the constant pressure, the bottom fell out from underneath 3DO. When things like Heroes 4 and Might and Magic 9 released to poor sales and even worse reviews, that was it. Unlike a sports team, 3DO didn't have billions of dollars backing it, so it just went bankrupt.
Great video, MM 6-8 are some of my favourite games ever. Such a shame what happened
I love how you took a shot of my characters all being weak when you were talking about Might and Magic 8 being such a disappointment :P
Very nicely done, interesting video :)
Simpelicity Thanks for the comment and the footage :)
OK. Fucking Uplay was golden. Although have to point out that Might and Magic X is not a spiritual successor. It's in fact the exact opposite. Now if Jon Van Caneghem were to release a new first person dungeon crawler that liberally borrows from the Magic & Magic play mechanics and he called it... I dunno... Strength & Sorcery, that game would be considered a spiritual successor. Might & Magic X on the other hand is simply known as a soulless cock-up.
MM10 from what I heard, actually contains lines of dialogue that suggest that Ashan is just another planet in the original universe.
Yeah. There are a few books (written by a "Lord Caneghem") that suggest that at least someone managed to scry the events of the OG games and put them down in pen and paper. No suggestion that Ashan has any real connection to Enroth or Xeen, or any underlying space alien ruins though.
I did hear that the team that did X actually played the old games and wanted to start reconnecting Ashan to the overarching narrative, though. Of course, Ubisoft is Ubisoft, so they didn't let them put in anything more than references as far as I know.
X was a decent game. You could definitely tell it had a small dev team, and it didn't feel like a Might and Magic Classic, but I always take the time to counter negative reviews because it honestly doesn't deserve them (and because if nobody buys X we'll never have a XI which may actually be premitted some connections to the overcanon).
The astronomer from one quest clearly says that he saw Terra and Xeen through his looking glass in the game :D
I believe all credits for attempting to link Ashan to any of the old universes (HoMM/M&M) goes to long time fan, Marzhin who was (I believe) in charge of MMX. As far as I know he also put in some reference in some of his HVII maps and even did a remake of old Heroes II maps for Heroes VII, but true Ubisoft is Ubisoft and one can only imagine in how many ways the team(s) would've been limited. Basically all their M&M releases shows this...
Yeah, you gotta admit that with the constraints the team had on them, they did what they could. Even small jabs such as the "forbidden saga" quest and "Ubimancers" could be taken as veiled expressions of contempt for Ubisoft taking the franchise in such a direction.
MM6 I think was the most innovative and popular at the time and is now more nostalgic because of it!!
I played the original on up. Those were great days. I still remember making maps for this era of gaming.
The first game of the series I played was MM6. And I love the game so much. Now 31 years after its release I started playing the NES version of MM1 The Secret Of Inner Sanctum (The only version I was able to get to run on modern system). This game just sucks all of my time. I can't stop playing it. It just blows my mind what Jon was able to accomplish. Just for fun the game is one year older than I am :)
really nice review. love it.
really feeling bad for caneghem, thinking without his bad luck, might and magic could have been todays world of warcraft
I remember been drawn to a very nice fantasy cover art on a cheap PC-magazine, which included the World of Xeen CDR. I really can't remember the year, but after playing an hour or so i was hooked. Countless hours "wasted" (as my roommate would say) on this, and all the following titles.
One of many quite unique things, was the possibility to turn your own characters into freaking LICHES ...that was just BEYOND AWESOME!
I was born in 1975, and I unfortunately though I was just a teen or younger when much of these came out - the entire RPG golden age 85 onwards, I missed just about all of it. I love RPGs, they are my favorite, just look at my channel! But fortunately I did catch on with Fallout 1-2, and Baldur's Gate. Since then I look forward to any and all RPGs. If I don't play it, I at least make a point to see reviews about it.
I had no idea so many came out just between 85-95. Damn. All those stories and fantasies that I missed. I feel left out now. I used to watch my friend play Dungeon Master in 87-88. I bought two SSI gold box D&D games in around 92, as well as Eye of the Beholder II, but that was it before Fallout.
Good video though. I'd love to see one all about the golden age of RPGs, and why it slumped off and on. Today we get so few a year. Perhaps over-saturation? Each game genre seems to have it's high and lows. Turn-based games are recently making a little bit of comeback, while they were nearly wiped out in the late 90s due to real-time strategy games. Now real-time strategy games only live on in Starcraft II. MMOs are really slowing down and may die over the next ten years, and FPS games are turning many off due to barely any innovation.
I couldn't even fit all the Golden Age titles into the graphic; there were so many that you could never hope to finish them all even if you dedicated the rest of your life to the task.
Don't feel too bad for missing out though. Yes, that era had its share of classics, but there was a lot of filler, and even in the good ones there were some real crimes against game design by modern standards, and plots and characters were pretty thin, by and large. (There are exceptions; I'd put Ultima 7 up against anything from the present day.)
I'm hoping to cover more facets of the Golden Age in later videos, but the best source on it I've found is part two of Matt Barton's three-part History of CRPGs for Gamasutra: www.gamasutra.com/features/20070223b/barton_pfv.htm Barton (who's on RUclips here: ruclips.net/user/blacklily8 ) has an unrivalled, encyclopedic knowledge of this subject.
Thanks for the comment!
Chris Chapman
I had forgotten about Ultima 7! I bought the Black Gate and Serpent Isle around 1997 on CD. I finished the first one, and got far into the second. It was one of the first open game worlds that I played around in. I especially remember that the people had work, eating, and sleeping every day and I was fascinated with that. I was very happy when Bethesda incorporated something similar with the Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion.
I came back years later, probably around 2008, and bought Planescape Torment, and Arcanum. Planescape Torment had a heck of an interesting story to it. Arcanum, not so much at least as far as I got in that game. I might do a Let's Roleplay of Planescape Torment in the future.
The patch to IX is included in the Gog version. This makes it playable.
heroes of might and magic deserves its own rise and fall series.
I actually had my first introduction to the franchise on the Super NES version of M&M 3. I really had a lot of fun wandering around and discovering random things.
This was my first experiance with M&M and I was instantly hooked.
Good video. 6 was the first one I played and I loved the series. 7 is the one that sticks out to me the most.
1 minor correction; while Meridian 59 was the first MMO, it was only ahead of The Realm Online by a couple months.
I found it funny that Trip Hawkins and Jon Van Caneghem were goblins in the new world computing building in MM6 and the others were human.
Nice work---it was really something for me to see how large a virtual world could be created when I first went to Xeen
>With the launch of Ultima Online still a year away, 3DO was the only company operating what we would now call an MMO: Meridean 59
But Neverwinter Nights was still up in 1996...
Me and my buddy were so addicted to M&M6 at the time, during summer vacation we were working at a computer camp for kids which was somewhere out in the mountains ( so kids would focus on learning). We had signed up before the game was released so we really rather wanted to play the game then work...anyhow, lucky for me, i didn't really know anything about computer programming or even setting them up in a linked network, so for 2 weeks i was assigned night guard, kids went to bed around 9pm and i was basically there to make sure they don't fool around (lol the computer nerds had zero intent on sneaking out of their quarters anyway !)
So i installed the game on one of the computers and was playing until like 4am, then had to prepare kitchen/breakfast for the morning. My buddy who had to deal with often annoying kids all day, was so envious. I had the quiet of the night and the best of the best computers to play that game...Those were 2 great summer weeks :)
its still weird to think that Elder Scrolls and i guess Fallout are the only survivors of this era of RPGs
@triplehelix3207 Gothic is getting a new game
@@Mark-sd4hv remake isn't quite the same and a new Elex ain't either
I remember playing Might and Magic III - Isles of Terra on my old PC when I was in high school and really falling in love with it. We were fortunate enough to be one of the few people with a Roland LAPC-I soundcard, and the soundtrack was just amazing on that compared to the FM synth of your typical Soundblaster card.