Heroes of Might and Magic: A Strategic Quest

This page details pre-release information and/or media for Heroes of Might and Magic: A Strategic Quest.

This page or section needs more images. There's a whole lotta words here, but not enough pictures. Please fix this. Specifically: Screenshots from vanilla for comparison.

This needs some investigation. Discuss ideas and findings on the talk page. Specifically: Look for an interview for what was cut from the game.

“Heroes was born from King’s Bounty (...) When making games in those days, we had no idea if we’d make enough money to be able to make the next game. So after the success, it was obvious we were gonna make another one. And we took the fan feedback on everything they were asking for, which I think is very important in game development, especially making sequels.” - ¹ - Jon Van Caneghem

Game Concept#

• Heroes of Might and Magic was originally called "King's Bounty II" before it was decided to change the title to capitalize on the "Might and Magic" franchise.²

• "How did the Heroes of Might and Magic genre come about? Was Heroes the creation of one mind, or many?"

“The basic goal was to create a compelling strategy game which utilized the monsters and characters from the Might and Magic series. We wanted to bridge the gap between the 'classic strategy gamer' and the 'classic FRP gamer'.” - Jon Van Caneghem³

• "Was the overall atmosphere of Heroes I and II something that came about naturally, or were there ideas for different kinds of atmospheres?"'

“The Heroes atmosphere was always fantasy-based, being an offshoot of the Might and Magic series. Fantasy settings are compelling to a broad range of people; they make the simplest settings for people's natural escapist tendencies. What's difficult about a fantasy setting is making it cohesive, making it make sense. You can't just throw a few dragons into the woods outside your house without providing a logical means of defeating them. As an example, J. R. R. Tolkien made Smaug a powerful creature, but gave him a powerful weakness that could be taken advantage of.” - Jon Van Caneghem

Winter CES 1994 (January '94)⁴#

Obviously a screenshot from a preview trailer, featuring unseen and much bigger than in final release buildings, hero and decorations. There are also no hero portraits, only hero classes images. Some of shown buildings miniatures can be found in OBJECT32.ICN from the final release.

CGW 128 march 1995 page 41 and CGW 137 december 1995 page 364. By assessing size and placement of obstacles and heroes (85x64 pixels instead of 50x32 pixels), we can assume that objects tiles were as big as 64x64 pixels instead of final 32x32.

A piece of music for winter CES preview by Tim Tully & Greg Alper:#

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555a - King's Thing - version A [unused]

GAME FILE: king's thing

Date Composed: 1994-01-03

“This isolated theme was found in a folder along with nothing else except a sub-folder containing the Darkside of Xeen MIDI files, but was not included in the Darkside folder itself. It was initially suspected that this might have been an unused piece of music from Darkside and so was included on the soundtrack. However, an invoice in Tim's archives was eventually found, reading, "Invoice to Mark Caldwell, New World Computing. Services from 12/1/93 to 1/3/94. Produce Theme for CES show "King's Bounty" demo." Mark Caldwell has verified for us that Heroes of Might and Magic was originally called "King's Bounty II" before it was decided to change the title to capitalize on the "Might and Magic" franchise. Instead of it becoming an orphaned composition, it has been retained as part of Darkside soundtrack, where it forms a fitting conclusion for the series (since what was used for the third end game was merely the third attempt at a Blacksmith theme which was never intended to be used in the ending).”

Music⁵#

Warlock

Warlock town theme was inspired by Bach's Gavottes from English Suite No.6:

Watch on YouTube

Barbarian

Inspired by a Solfeggio in C Minor by Carl Philip Emmanuel Bach (Paul Anthony Romero in response to tobiasadolfsson9016; he also says the piece is in D minor with similar physical structure):

Watch on YouTube

Interactive Entertainment Previews#

Prerelease	Final

IE#4 - August 1994 (Screenshots July '94)⁶: Knight hero on an adventure map has no shadow. Empty trolley in front of the mine. Heroes classes instead of heroes portraits, Dragon Utopia on a town list and unknown town icon.

Prerelease	Final

IE#4:Scrapped crest and hero (Alamar?).

Prerelease	Final

IE#4: Probably mashup of creature graphics, Paladin without a cape.

Prerelease	Final

IE #10 - February 1995⁷: Unused Tree Stump, different coastline. Hero can't be placed on this map tile in a map editor, because it's adjacent to a lake, so this screenshot was most probably taken when in-game. Pikeman's idle position (in vanilla present only in a map editor) indicates that his adventure map miniature didn't have an animation at this time.

Other Screenshots#

Prerelease	Final

Different font, Hero's main skills are placed differently. Sir Galant instead of Sir Gallant.

Prerelease	Final

Hard to tell, whether this screenshot was captured during the gameplay or is it a mash-up of map editor screen and an interface from the game. Nomad idle position is the same as in vanilla map editor, Knight Heroes have no shadows, curiously in the forest on the left hides a lonely Sorceress; it's impossible to put there a hero in vanilla.

References#