Generation XX

Gaming nostalgically is best done with a new purpose and a pungent aroma.

Being your classic computer nerd; suffering from chronic allergies that leave me with a permanently blocked nose and Chief Wiggam voice, I don’t think about my sense of smell very much, really. I feel like I can live without it. Occasionally, though, I’ve read articles about how aromas can conjure powerful nostalgic feelings for people. I’m interested, but it’s always been a moot point for me, until this month. Indeed, I guess the desensitisation treatment I’ve been on for years has actually worked enough that I can notice smells again.

So, I was sleeping fitfully one night last week, after seeing a band, with my ears ringing and that characteristic smoky smell in my hair, when I realised no-one had been smoking at the venue. It was an RSL. I sleepily turned to gaze of out the window, seeing the valley we live next to glowing with fire across several kilometres. It was just a back burn, but the smell was overpowering. There has certainly been smoke in my life since, but my most powerful smoky memory was formed during Sydney’s 2001 bushfires.

I’d missed Christmas dinner at my parents’ house in The Blue Mountains because the highway was closed. Then, my dad and I spent Boxing Day cleaning out the gutters, sitting on the roof with beers and watching the fire drizzle down the opposite ridge, then fizzle. I stayed over and we played Heroes of Might and Magic III until the early hours, assuring ourselves that we wanted to keep watching the fire a bit longer, just in case. It’s, basically, a perfect memory. That smoky night last week, it was surprisingly hard to force myself to go back to bed and not boot up the game.

those imps standing next to your pikemen are causing negative morale

I’m no stranger to the lure of nostalgic gaming, but the nocturnal, smoky smell added a whole new layer of compulsion. I did go back to sleep but I started playing the following night. Although I’d previously rifled through every skerrick of content, from the massive expansions to the faction-based chronicles and mods, I’ve specifically wanted to go back and beat the last scenario of Shadow of Death without Town Portal. Weirdly specific, I know. TP was that one overpowered spell that ruined, what I remember as, the perfectly balanced campaign.

It’s always a risk, going back to games you remember as perfect. Does the quintessential gaming experience really feature a lengthy crotch-cam on Queen Catherine’s chainmail g-string in the opening cutscene? (I had not remembered that.) Also, can you really not play and save two or more campaigns simultaneously? A few weird sexist and tech-related issues aside, I can say that HOMM III is one game for which you can expect your nostalgic love to remain ever strong, and not turn to bitter disappointment.

The campaign really is great and I want to touch on why, because I’m having trouble thinking of contemporary games which feature such carefully handcrafted progression. It’s all roguelike this and emergent that, these days. For starters, in HOMM III, forget tutorials and adding elements gradually. From the very first human scenario in Restoration of Erathia, you’re expected to handle armies, cities, mines, dwellings, heroes and terrain. You may not notice, for absolutely ages, that those imps standing next to your pikemen are causing negative morale, but they are.

HOMM III expects you to play by all the rules at the outset but it’s forgiving, locating mines close by and allowing you to capture neutral cities. Initially fixed, then customisable, difficulty settings also influence AI behaviour and starting resources to, very gradually, enhance the challenge. Towards the later scenarios, you’ll find yourself starting with one city while your opponents have more. Knowing your enemy, by intermittently commanding them along the journey, ensures all aspects of gameplay are organically introduced before they are stacked against you.

My favourite part of RoE, and I remember this well, is when the game allows you to meet the neutral, bestial factions. Basilisks! Swamp! So this is what Pathfinding and Logistics are for. What happens when unaligned AI players are behind a garrison? Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. And, speaking of angels, who needs resurrection when you have a fiveheaded Chaos Hydra decimating all adjacent stacks? Well, keep your hydra or learn to spread out. What is The Holy Grail, how is it found and what does it do? By the first whisper of it, you’ll be desperate to know.

So, rather than a campaign which gets incrementally more complex, I think of HOMM III as gradually inviting you to experience more of the complexity that was always there.