Heroes of Might and Magic III 15th Anniversary Week

3DO and New World Computing’s Heroes of Might and Magic III turned fifteen on February 28th, and to celebrate the official Might & Magic website and the official Facebook page are featuring a week’s worth of updates that include some factoids, the sharing of some Might and Magic memories, a “The Tale of Heroes of Might and Magic III” retrospective piece, and more. Here’s a bit from the retrospective, which just so happens to be penned by HOMM3 game director David Mullich and associate director Chris Vanover:

I first met Jon Van Caneghem, the founder of New World Computing and chief designer of most of its games, in 1994. We were both speakers on a panel about (The Art and Craft of Game Design) at the annual Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Jon was familiar with some of the games I had worked on in the past, such as Disney’s (DuckTales) and Harlan Ellison’s (I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream), and suggested that we should work together sometime.

That opportunity came three years later when New World Computing contacted me about becoming director for a new sequel in the Heroes of Might & Magic franchise. It was an exciting proposition but also a somewhat daunting one Heroes of Might & Magic II, which was released the previous year, had just been named the sixth-best PC game of all time by PC Gamer magazine. What could I possibly do for an encore?

That is precisely the question I was asked by Trip Hawkins, president of The 3DO Company, which had recently purchased New World Computing. Trip made it the habit of personally interviewing every key employee joining the 3DO family (in my case, it was a phone interview, since I lived in the Los Angeles area, where New World was located, whereas The 3DO Company was based in the San Francisco area), and he wanted to know what I brought to the party.

Fortunately, I had an answer ready. I had spent about a week playing Heroes II and found it to be a remarkably addicting and well-designed game. However, my one qualm was with the art style. I thought the artwork looked about five years behind the times, and so my focus would be on bringing the graphics up to current standards. Trip seemed satisfied with my answer, and I could only hope that my bosses at New World agreed with me.

It turns out, they did. On my first day on the job, my manager told me that the company was unhappy with its current art direction and wanted me to (secretly) find a new art director among the art staff. So, on the pretense of introducing myself to everyone, I held one-to-one conversations with each artist. They were all capable artists, but one, Phelan Sykes, used our discussion to talk about how unhappy she was with the status quo. (I have found my art director), I told myself, and as I later discovered, she was also the most talented artist in the company.

Another person I was happy to meet was Greg Fulton, a new employee New World had hired to be the lead designer the Heroes of Might & Magic III team I was putting together. Greg was hired on the same day I was, and we had never met each other previously, but we quickly became fast friends. I told Greg about my plan for upgrading the franchise’s art style from its past cartoony look to one that I called (extreme fantasy.) Greg showed me some artwork from the Warhammer tabletop miniatures game, proving to me that he knew exactly what I meant.