Heroes of Might and Magic 3 - 15 mins of Tutorial gameplay - Sega Dreamcast Unreleased - Beta Leaked
3These are strange and unsettling times across the globe as we all go into Lockdown. I'll be trying to upload a video a day if I can just to do my bit to make social distancing slightly more tolerable. Please respect the guidelines and let's all get through this together.
Heroes of Might and Magic III: The Restoration of Erathia was the third game in the successful series on PC. It was being ported to Dreamcast before being cancelled - apparently due to technical difficulties however the decision by Sega to pull out of the hardware arms race was also likely a factor.
A Beta version has been in collectors hands, swapping hands a few times, since the early 2000's. In March 2020 a GoFundMe for 250 Euro was organised by Jan Baumgartner (who contributes a lot to the Dreamcast Community - see his Compact Flash Mod) on behalf of the owner of the Beta known as FatalistDC. I contributed to the fundraiser and it is great to have another release for the system who's Soul Still Burns.
It is clearly an unfinished Beta with sometimes laggy controls, unoptimised loading times and sound that sometimes stutters. Playable enough though.
This is the Tutorial and I play through this for around 15 minutes. Clearly it isn't finished or particularly optimised however it does show what could have been another solid game for Dreamcast if they had managed to overcome the technical hurdles. I suspect that given more time and if they had been willing to make some compromises to the hardware that this could have been a deep strategic title for the system.
I have uploaded the Intro sequence to the game in one of my other videos.
There are other known Betas out there including:
Colin McCrae Rally 2.0 - (30% complete - single stage of single track - not optimised)
Test Drive Cycles - (looks playable from videos but not sure if opponents are coded or events/collision detection)
Take the Bullet - (interesting light-gun game where you control your movement - not sure how complete)
There are likely others still out there nearly twenty years later. Who knows when and what might see the light of day in the coming years.
This is the longest video I've uploaded to date and with my connection speed it takes (Sega) Ages to upload anything longer than videos of a few minutes in length - let me know if you'd like to see more videos like this. t
I've always been a big Sega fan since falling in love with their arcade games and was heavily into the Dreamcast picking up a Japanese machine before the PAL system was released. I'll be featuring more Dreamcast titles from my collection over the coming months if this is of interest including most of the aftermarket games that were released after the system was cancelled.
As always if you enjoy this video let me know. As always this is running on original hardware. Also let me know if there are particular games or systems you'd like to see.
As always this is uploaded under the Fair Use Policy - no money is being made from this video.
Stay strong, stay safe and stay healthy - Grey Fox
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