Dhruin
SasqWatch
It's nice to see something on M&M, with GamersInfo kicking up a review of Might & Magic VI: The Mandate of Heaven.
More information.
Might & Magic VI - The Mandate of Heaven - Review @ GamersInfo
- Thread starter Dhruin
- Start date
M&M 6 comes just second after M&M 7 for me in this series. These two games both had that magical 'oh I just need to do one more thing' element to them that easily had you hooked hours longer than your budgeted game time allowed.
I remember how great the implementation of their 'paper doll' system was. All the gear you had in your bags and on your character was represented with nice graphics (for the time) and you equipped things by dragging and dropping them on your characters.
Back in the days of the M&M series as well as Ultima, Wizardry, and Bard's Tale series, the manuals and other items were all real world extensions of the game. This is totally lost on today's gamers where it is now all but accepted to get games in plain old DVD cases with nothing more than a registration card inside.
Back in those days, a 70 page manual was just getting by. We actually enjoyed reading those manuals in order to suck out every tidbid of enjoyment of a game that we could. The manuals were actually part of the fun and not considered a drudgery as most of today's younger gamers consider them to be. The Ultima series wasn't even happy with just a manual and typically those games includes extra 'compendiums'. In hindsight, this was a diabolic plot stretching over decades to send today's gamers into fits of horror as they learn of CRPGs past.
I remember an early interview, sometime in the 80s with Richard Garriot where the review was asking about how just about every single key on the keyboard is used in Ultima 2. His response was essentially that computers are complex machines and therefore the games should be complex as well, utilizing all the keys of the keyboard - a practical antithesis to game development these days.
The early days of CRPGs were great because the machines had far inferior processing and graphical capabilities. The manual and other extras in the box sort of made up for this, drawing the player into the game by surrounding their real world with items about the game. Add to this a player's own hand written notes and hand drawn maps and you have one highly personalized gaming experience.
Although their games were not RPGs, Infocom did this pretty well too.
I remember how great the implementation of their 'paper doll' system was. All the gear you had in your bags and on your character was represented with nice graphics (for the time) and you equipped things by dragging and dropping them on your characters.
Back in the days of the M&M series as well as Ultima, Wizardry, and Bard's Tale series, the manuals and other items were all real world extensions of the game. This is totally lost on today's gamers where it is now all but accepted to get games in plain old DVD cases with nothing more than a registration card inside.
Back in those days, a 70 page manual was just getting by. We actually enjoyed reading those manuals in order to suck out every tidbid of enjoyment of a game that we could. The manuals were actually part of the fun and not considered a drudgery as most of today's younger gamers consider them to be. The Ultima series wasn't even happy with just a manual and typically those games includes extra 'compendiums'. In hindsight, this was a diabolic plot stretching over decades to send today's gamers into fits of horror as they learn of CRPGs past.
I remember an early interview, sometime in the 80s with Richard Garriot where the review was asking about how just about every single key on the keyboard is used in Ultima 2. His response was essentially that computers are complex machines and therefore the games should be complex as well, utilizing all the keys of the keyboard - a practical antithesis to game development these days.
The early days of CRPGs were great because the machines had far inferior processing and graphical capabilities. The manual and other extras in the box sort of made up for this, drawing the player into the game by surrounding their real world with items about the game. Add to this a player's own hand written notes and hand drawn maps and you have one highly personalized gaming experience.
Although their games were not RPGs, Infocom did this pretty well too.
Any of Sid Meier's masterpieces. About 1/4 of the manual was filled with purely historical information.
Game guides reached their height with Ultima. I read, re-read, and re-re-read the Underworld guide not for the information but because the maps were drawn by none other than my in-game nemesis. Then Prima came on to the scene and they all started sucking.
Game guides reached their height with Ultima. I read, re-read, and re-re-read the Underworld guide not for the information but because the maps were drawn by none other than my in-game nemesis. Then Prima came on to the scene and they all started sucking.
- Joined
- Feb 23, 2009
- Messages
- 522
I think I posted this link here once, now it's twice 
:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandate_of_Heaven
:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandate_of_Heaven
for some reason, I think I played all M&Ms since 2, but only #3 comes up to mind as 'the awesome'. I specially didn't really dig the ones in '3d' where you could walk around free-style for some reason. And the last one I played was the royal s0x0rz!