Fanstratics - a spiritual Heroes of Might & Magic 3 successor

[Blake00]

Anyone who's followed my work in the Civ2 forums on the Heroes of Might & Magic 2 mod knows I'm a big HoMM fan! Ubisoft has pretty much ruined the franchise with the disastrous unfinished releases of HoMM6&7 however thankfully the franchise lives on through awesome fan mods & maps, along with new spiritual sequel games made by other companies (eg the rather excellent looking Song's of Conquest game coming soon). One of these HoMM like indie games I've been following the development of is the rather terribly named 'Fanstratics' which is making made by HoMM3's (many peoples fav in the series) lead designer Gregory Fulton. He plans for his game is be very similar to HoMM3 but naturally be set in a different original universe with new faction lineups. Over the last couple of years he's been emailing out newsletters where he answers fan community questions about HoMM3 & Fanstratics and tells stories. Some of the stories he tells about the New World Computing days in the 90s while they made the HoMM and Might & Magic RPG games are a joy to read (although they can go on for a bit lol). If there's any fellow HoMM fans here maybe you'll enjoy them too...

Here's links to all the newsletters he's sent so far with some pics and some sporadic comments (taken from my posts on other forums)...

Newsletter 1...
https://www.fanstratics.com/fstnewsletter01



Newsletter 2...
https://www.fanstratics.com/fstnewsletter02



Newsletter 3...
https://www.fanstratics.com/fstnewsletter03



Newsletter 4...
https://www.fanstratics.com/fstnewsletter04



Newsletter 5...
https://www.fanstratics.com/fstnewsletter05



Newsletter 6...
https://www.fanstratics.com/fstnewsletter06



Newsletter 7...
https://www.fanstratics.com/fstnewsletter07



Newsletter 8...
https://www.fanstratics.com/fstnewsletter08



Newsletter 9...
https://www.fanstratics.com/fstnewsletter09



Newsletter 10, 11 & 12...
https://www.fanstratics.com/fstnewsletter10

https://www.fanstratics.com/fstnewsletter11

https://www.fanstratics.com/fstnewsletter12

Newsletter 13...
https://www.fanstratics.com/fstnewsletter13

Newsletter 14... There's a rather amusing piracy story.
https://www.fanstratics.com/fstnewsletter14

Newsletter 15... Gotta love the story about "Phil" lol.
https://www.fanstratics.com/fstnewsletter15

Newsletter 16... Sounds like there's been some setbacks...
https://www.fanstratics.com/fstnewsletter16

Newsletter 17... interesting story about Greg's take on the death of 3DO
https://www.fanstratics.com/fstnewsletter17

Newsletter 18...
https://www.fanstratics.com/fstnewsletter18

Newsletter 19. Greg reckons Early Access in 2023... hmmmm... righteo.. anyway... there's another 3DO story here where Greg buries Trip and a few other people he clearly didn't think much of lol!
https://www.fanstratics.com/fstnewsletter19



Newsletter 22...
https://www.fanstratics.com/fstnewsletter20



Newsletter 21...
https://www.fanstratics.com/fstnewsletter21



Newsletter 22... Looks like old man Greg (Mighty Boosh FTW) has got another long story for us about that time he got pizza in 1979... so long in fact this is just part 1 of the story lol.
https://www.fanstratics.com/fstnewsletter22



Newsletter 23... The 'big' finale to the pizza hut story arrived lol... Man his stories really keep going and going don't they haha.. although he did successfully trigger a lot of nostalgia for me as much like him I remember getting my first 286 computer with no VGA card lol, all the hours I spent tinkering with stuff learning how to edit config sys and autoexec bat to eek out those extra bits of conventional memory some memory hog games like Master of Magic needed lol. Also reminded me of the first time I discovered Might & Magic 3 and then MM4&5 World of Xeen, however by then it was late 90s, so they were less technically amazing but I loved playing them nonetheless.
https://www.fanstratics.com/fstnewsletter23

Newsletter 24...
https://www.fanstratics.com/fstnewsletter24



Newsletter 25... no stories this time but apparently the next one is gonna be a 2 parter again lol
https://www.fanstratics.com/fstnewsletter25



Newsletter 26 27. Sounds like Greg is still pretty unwell and not making much progress due to long covid messing with his heart. Got a new story though about his first day at NWC and dealing with "Wario" lol!
https://www.fanstratics.com/fstnewsletter26

https://www.fanstratics.com/fstnewsletter27

 

[Blake00]

Oh and speak of the devil.. a new Newsletter 28 is here... contains Part 3 of the HoMM3 dev story detailing the fall of Wario lol.

https://www.fanstratics.com/fstnewsletter28

 

[sherbz]

Interesting. Im a big HOMM fan. HOMM3 is probably my most played game of all time. And i still boot it up today and it holds up pretty well i think. The series went downhill in HOMM4. HOMMM 5 was a decent reboot. HOMM6 not so much. And 7 was an abomination. Hopefully they are going back to basics and recognising that what made HOMM3 so good was not so much the story, it was the strategic gameplay that made it so good. Not read all of them, but sounds like this guy knows the bits that made HOMM3 great. So hopefully with a bit of license we may get something good.

 

[Blake00]

Pretty similar for me. I started way back at HoMM1 so I still have a lot of nostalgic love for it and play it every few years even though the sequels are technically superior. Loved HoMM2. HoMM3 is my favourite of course. While HoMM4 felt like a step backwards I actually really enjoyed it. HoMM5 was great after patching and gave me hope that ubisoft would do a good job continuing the series. Then HoMM6 happened.. I still can't finish that game due to a bug they won't fix and I spent so much money on the collectors version of that. Then stupid me did the same and spent big on the HoMM7 boxset and we know how that went too.. death of the franchise sigh...

Although thankfully fans keep things going with endless amazing mods and scenarios for nearly all the HoMM games and hopefully some of these spiritual sequels/spin offs will be good too (eg Songs of Conquest and Fanstratics).

Speaking of Fanstratics, Newsletter 29 is here! This time Greg talks about how amazing Fallout 1 was and how no one at NWC was interested in it which he found worrying.

https://www.fanstratics.com/fstnewsletter29

 

[Blake00]

Newsletter 30 is here. Greg tells more behind the scenes HoMM3 dev stuff with this one being part 1 of a new story.

https://www.fanstratics.com/fstnewsletter30

 

[Blake00]

Newsletter 31 is here. Greg continues with part 2 of his story about... oh man I don't even know it's about anymore lol. Something about takin a dump in the dark and a good game needs a heavy game box lol! Think he's running low on material.

https://www.fanstratics.com/fstnewsletter31