Get the latest tech news

The year of peak might and magic

Some passions are lifelong, but many others fade away over the course of a life, to be replaced by others. Not long after Jon Van Caneghem, the founder of New World Computing, sold his company to 3DO, it started to become obvious to everyone who worked for him that the torch he carried for computer games no longer burned as brightly as it once had.

Aided by two expansion packs that added yet more campaigns, scenarios, monsters, treasures, and other goodies, along with one more faction to play and even a random map generator for those who had plowed through all of the set-piece content, it sold steadily for years on end, defying the conventional wisdom that turn-based, pixel-graphics games were a hopeless proposition in the marketplace. Meanwhile the addition of an Invisibility spell opens up the possibility of sneaking your way through some areas instead of falling back on the standard approach of methodical monster genocide; Thief this game is not, but skulking about in a demon town whose inhabitants would reduce your party to a handful of smoking cinders in about half a second if they could only see them is not without its thrills. In the immediate aftermath of Might and Magic VII ‘s release, fans set up entire websites dedicated strictly to this game-within-a-game; the level of interest was so high that New World later published a standalone version of Arcomage, with networked multiplayer support.

Get the Android app