Gone, but not forgotten!
January 14, 2005 4:42 PM   Subscribe

In 1995, Microprose released Master of Magic, a game best described as Magic: the Gathering meets Civilization. Despite a daunting list of bugs, the game developed a strong following. It's one of the top 150 games of all time (nevermind the date!), and easily one of the best turn based strategy games ever. Lots of people would love to see this franchise revived, and the good people at Stardock [makers of Galactic Civilizations] are trying to do just that. Godspeed!
posted by absalom (29 comments total)
 
I don't know. I think Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic is going to be hard to beat when it comes to trying to recapture the fun that was MoM (which I played more than the original, or any other iteration, of Civilization).
posted by WolfDaddy at 4:55 PM on January 14, 2005


Holy crap! I LOVED this game, but had completely forgotten about it! And that first link has it for download...man, I know what I'm doing with my weekend now!

And I can't wait to see what Stardock does with this. They've got a good track record so far, I'm excited to see more.

Thank you, thank you, absalom!
posted by Fontbone at 5:14 PM on January 14, 2005


Can someone tell me the relationship of these games to Heroes of Might and Magic? They all look the same.
posted by fleacircus at 5:40 PM on January 14, 2005


Now if only someone would make a -good- sequel to Star Control 2.
posted by TwelveTwo at 5:51 PM on January 14, 2005


if they can do this right, i'd love it ... and stardock, i'm sure, will do it right

the age of wonders series doesn't really do random maps well ... other than that, it's a fine set of games
posted by pyramid termite at 5:54 PM on January 14, 2005


I loved Master of Magic. I was even thinking about it the other day and there have been times where I've just wanted an updated version of it. The only thing I didn't like about it was the spell of mastery. It just ended things so simply and the AIs would always try to use it even if the player didn't.

Anyway, hopefully this happens. It seems like it would so rock.
posted by DyRE at 5:59 PM on January 14, 2005


For the life of me, I can't figure out why Microprose doesn't rerelease X-Com. I've never played Master of Magic, but if you're looking for turn-based strategy, I always thought X-Com was the gold standard. There's actually multiple open-source projects dedicated to cloning it, though I believe they're abandonware. Hollywood is all about reviving old genres these days; when will the gaming industry join them?
posted by gsteff at 6:36 PM on January 14, 2005


If I'm not mistaken MoM was an off-shoot/cousin to Master of Orion which was a very good game. They recently did a new MoO and it was pretty crappy.
posted by Justin Case at 7:12 PM on January 14, 2005


Master of magic is one of my favorite games ever. I own a copy of it, and was able to get it running perfectly fine in windows xp awhile ago using Dosbox. Also, Home of the Underdogs is pretty much my favorite gaming site ever. Go spend a few days browsing and downloading obscure games off there, I guarantee you'll have a great time.

For TwelveTwo, I'll assume you've already seen The Ur-Quan Masters, the official re(make/release) of Star Control 2, but for everyone else, it's great fun. You can pretend Star Control 3 never existed!.
posted by JZig at 7:28 PM on January 14, 2005


fleacircus: There is no relation between Master of Magic and any of the Might and Magic games; totally different things. Master of Magic was a turn based strategy game similar to Civilization.

More generally, let me add my "oh *PLEASE* make MoM 2" to the list. I would absolutely love for there to be a new iteration of MoM that fixed the problems of the old version, but stayed true to the coolness.
posted by sotonohito at 8:11 PM on January 14, 2005


I played this game so much as a kid. So much. I'd love conquering a node on Myrror and find as treasure a new spellbook. Or starting with 11 white spellbooks and summoning Torin the Chosen? So sweet.

Over the past year I've been slowly painting a mural based on the game, and I swear to God I will finish it soon.

I'm concerned that a sequel might not have enough of what made the original game great, though I really have very little idea what in the hell was so great about it. Maybe it was the music, or the super-cute appearance of skeleton troops. Or halfling slingers, those guys were the hot shit.

What were the problems with the original, sotonohito?
posted by breath at 9:00 PM on January 14, 2005


Galactic Civilizations was the suckingist suck ever to suck across my monitor. I hope Stardock DOESN'T make this game because I'd like to buy MOM2 someday... but not if Stardock makes it.
posted by wfrgms at 10:00 PM on January 14, 2005


Thanks for the links. I have the floppies for this game somewhere in the house. I spent entirely too much time playing this game during my last year of high school. I've been thinking about it lately too, and wished I could run it on my XP machine...so the links in this thread really, really help.
posted by Electric Elf at 10:22 PM on January 14, 2005


Much discussed in the recent top games of all time thread. That thread encouraged me to fire up a dosbox and play it yet One More Time.

Great news!
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 10:48 PM on January 14, 2005


Much discussed in the recent top games of all time thread. That thread encouraged me to fire up a dosbox and play it yet One More Time.

Could you provide a link to this?
posted by Berend at 1:10 AM on January 15, 2005


Or starting with 11 white spellbooks and summoning Torin the Chosen? So sweet.
Oh man do I ever agree. Get him with my decked out artifacts and he could conquer the world by himself.

Just adding to what everyone else said, this game brings back so many memories.

Also, for those who can't get it to work due to reported memory errors, you need to change the extended memory functions by right-clicking on the MoM exe file or something like that and changing the setting for extended memory. I only add this because I know tons of people who've had problems playing the game on modern computers.
posted by jmd82 at 1:38 AM on January 15, 2005


"Could you provide a link to this?"

Oops, it was in the abandonia.com thread.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 1:59 AM on January 15, 2005


I've got your links right here.
posted by onalark at 2:00 AM on January 15, 2005


"Oh man do I ever agree. Get him with my decked out artifacts and he could conquer the world by himself."

Yeah, Torin is fun because he kicks ass so much. But it's almost like cheating. When I played again a couple of months ago, I resolved to not play my preferred setup which allowed Torin.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 2:01 AM on January 15, 2005


Ha ha, I have a friend who only plays the Torin strategy. I guess he likes to win more than he enjoys overcoming a challenge.

Gotta load up yourself with some green, some blue, and then float your flying giant-strength Paladins right on over every city you see.

God I love paladins. I will often turn out absurd quantities of 9-stacks. They are a wave of righteousness!
posted by breath at 5:09 AM on January 15, 2005


breath ... the a i in the original wasn't aggressive enough for a lot of people ... it didn't build as many cities as it needed to and it didn't always go after a player who was near to getting the mastery spell ... i guess i'll have to try playing it on a harder level someday

and as an aside, MoO3 was an utter travesty
posted by pyramid termite at 5:23 AM on January 15, 2005


gsteff:The creators of X-Com have a new game, which I've not tried, but it looks awesome.
posted by sonofsamiam at 6:22 AM on January 15, 2005


I always liked maxing out blue spellbooks. Phantom warriors are really cheap and make you expand really quickly, and Time Stop is a good (but expensive) ultra rare spell. Playing as elves makes it that much easier.

White, though, was way overpowered. Not just Torin, but all those city enchantments. I *do* hope they do something to balance things a little more.
posted by absalom at 7:56 AM on January 15, 2005


White, though, was way overpowered.
Yea, but red always had Armageddon. Get that casted, and your magical power would vastly outstretch any others.
posted by jmd82 at 10:34 AM on January 15, 2005


That's true about the AI, even after the 1.3 patch. There was a lot of richness that you thought about but never executed simply because the computer players were squatting in their domains like little girls/sitting ducks.
posted by breath at 2:21 PM on January 15, 2005


My strategy was to Crusade and then used maxed-out Dark Elven Warlocks. I love the smell of bat guano in the morning... It is the smell of victory! But man, that is some time ago.
posted by cx at 2:55 PM on January 15, 2005


What a geat game that is!
I still play it sometimes and it still kicks ass - the anguish following invading a node only to see three Great Wyrms has no equal in the video game world.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 3:50 PM on January 15, 2005


Stardock, in my books, has excellent karma. They keep supporting older games... for free!

gsteff - I still play X-com on an XP box. The spiritual successor UFO:Aftermath is ok, but the original X-com (or UFO: Enemy Unknown) is still waaay better. UFO:Aftershock (? - the sequal) is suppose to redress some of the gameplay that was lacking, though.
posted by PurplePorpoise at 4:33 PM on January 15, 2005


Anyone ever beat it on impossible with 4 opponents?

I welcome our turn-based strategy AI overlords.
posted by sandking at 8:44 AM on January 17, 2005


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