{"id":687,"date":"2010-01-17T19:03:22","date_gmt":"2010-01-18T00:03:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/archives\/687"},"modified":"2016-11-03T14:05:15","modified_gmt":"2016-11-03T21:05:15","slug":"might-and-magic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/archives\/687","title":{"rendered":"Might and Magic, Book 1: Secret of the Inner Sanctum"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have to admit that what little I know about the Might and Magic<\/em> series comes from its spin-off series, the Heroes of Might and Magic<\/em> turn-based strategy games. I was curious enough about where it all came from to pick up the Ultimate Might and Magic Archives<\/em> when it was released in 1998 as publicity for Might and Magic VI<\/em>, but not curious enough to actually get around to playing it until now. Presumably the package was named by the same committee as the Ultimate Wizardry Archives<\/em>; it isn’t exactly “ultimate” today, containing the first five of what is now a nine-game series. It’s a pretty nicely-put-together package, though, containing several handsome and colorful world maps on stiff paper, which fit neatly in a 6×9 envelope along with a compact booklet containing summarized instructions and spell descriptions. The full manuals are in PDF format on the disc, rather than in a thick book the way Ultimate Wizardry Archives<\/em> did it.<\/p>\n

Am I mentioning Wizardry<\/em> a lot? I shall continue to do so. Might and Magic<\/em>, it turns out, is a Wizardry<\/em> clone. At the navigation level, it plays so much like Wizardry<\/em>, with even the same visible distance and everything, that I’m finding the minor differences in the controls quite disconcerting. (Where in Wizardry<\/em> the down-arrow key did an about-face, in M&M<\/em> it moves you backward without turning.) I’ll note just three major differences that I’ve noticed so far in what little time I’ve spent playing:<\/p>\n

\"mm1-town\"<\/a>First and most visibly, there’s the graphics. Instead of line drawings, we get textures, like in The Bard’s Tale<\/em>. Remember when I said that Wizardry<\/em>‘s minimalism holds up better than more ambitious graphics from the same era? This game is a good example of what I was thinking of. The wall textures just scream “The programmer who drew me was really pushing the limits of Apple II hi-res mode!” The PC version is actually capable of running in 640×400 EGA mode 1<\/sup><\/a>[23 January]<\/b> It turns out that EGA doesn’t have a 640×400 mode. I think the emulator I’m using is automatically upscaling. Still, it’s definitely using multiple pixels to represent each Apple II pixel. Apple II hi-res mode pixels are just freakishly elongated.<\/span><\/span>