Heroes of Might and Magic III Dreamcast unreleased community fundraiser

[dreamcast ™]

Would be a bit ironic if after 2 decades of a beta disc floating around from collector to collector, the game is actually released not from said disc, but the original developers themselves.

The irony is going to be when Mr. Free (@PCWzrd13) gets the fundraiser shut down by Ubisoft because he drew attention to all this by going directly to them, then no one gets to play anything because anyone holding the actual known-to-exist copy of the beta will be worried Ubisoft will come after them if they should ever release it (reimbursed or not). .

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

[deluxux]

No its a DC friend hes not emailing the CEO

[megavolt85]

Would be a bit ironic if after 2 decades of a beta disc floating around from collector to collector, the game is actually released not from said disc, but the original developers themselves.

The irony is going to be when Mr. Free (@PCWzrd13) gets the fundraiser shut down by Ubisoft because he drew attention to all this by going directly to them, then no one gets to play anything because anyone holding the actual known-to-exist copy of the beta will be worried Ubisoft will come after them if they should ever release it (reimbursed or not). .

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

tell me where can I get such a good marijuana?

[thedoctor45]

While it's good to see that the community is suddenly increasing their efforts to get unreleased games out there for free, people should consider the possibility that in case the current fundraiser isn't successful the original owner (Fatalist) will most likely be very reluctant to release any of his other prototypes (of which there are quite many) to the community later on, so this would be a late but not so unexpected downside...

[Ian Micheal]

Would be a bit ironic if after 2 decades of a beta disc floating around from collector to collector, the game is actually released not from said disc, but the original developers themselves.

The irony is going to be when Mr. Free (@PCWzrd13) gets the fundraiser shut down by Ubisoft because he drew attention to all this by going directly to them, then no one gets to play anything because anyone holding the actual known-to-exist copy of the beta will be worried Ubisoft will come after them if they should ever release it (reimbursed or not). .

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

tell me where can I get such a good marijuana?

must be good stuff lol.. If the guy is worried Ubisoft find out he is trying to sell something he should not being as it's unreleased beta he should not be doing it now.. doing it because you think Ubisoft is not watching you that makes it fine is silly..

[fafadou]

@pcwzrd13 : I don't want to be rude but if you can request him if he has eidos contact about commandos 2 and soul reaver 2 ?

Well, hope both version oh HOMM3 will be release, like half-life there are some things that the other version doesn't have I guess.

[pcwzrd13]

The irony is going to be when Mr. Free (@PCWzrd13) gets the fundraiser shut down by Ubisoft because he drew attention to all this by going directly to them

Do you really think Ubisoft cares about someone releasing a buggy build of a 20+ year old game for a long-discontinued console? They're certainly not going to waste time and resources to stop something like that. They're a business at the end of the day and if it's not going to impact them in any significant way, it's a waste of their time.

I know many game devs from large companies including Sega, 2K Games/Visual Concepts, Ubisoft, Nintendo, etc... They know about stuff going on in the community. VC knew about the reverse-engineered servers and the release of Internet Game Pack. Did they care? Nope. In fact, they were thrilled when they heard about it. Now are they going to just send you unreleased games upon request without getting permission? Certainly not. At the same time they're not going to come after you if you acquire it from another source.

Shout-out to the devs at VC BTW! Some of the coolest guys I've ever had the pleasure of speaking with.

[Bob Dobbs]

I agree with PCwzrd13 for various reasons.

[pcwzrd13]

Ok so a littel bit of an update. Unfortunately the producer wasn't able to find a build of the game in his own files. We're still trying to contact the former Westka Entertainment guys though. I think there's also a good chance Ubisoft themselves might have it. My contact is going to look into it.

In the meantime, here's some info about the game that was given to me by the producer:

The project was nearing beta, but there was a lot of technical issue, mostly in terms of performance. This was never adressed to as satisfactory level, and so the project was killed.

So it appears they were unable to get the game running smoothly on the Dreamcast so this is the reason for the cancellation.

[thedoctor45]

Ok so a littel bit of an update. Unfortunately the producer wasn't able to find a build of the game in his own files. We're still trying to contact the former Westka Entertainment guys though. I think there's also a good chance Ubisoft themselves might have it. My contact is going to look into it.

In the meantime, here's some info about the game that was given to me by the producer:

The project was nearing beta, but there was a lot of technical issue, mostly in terms of performance. This was never adressed to as satisfactory level, and so the project was killed.

So it appears they were unable to get the game running smoothly on the Dreamcast so this is the reason for the cancellation.

Thanks for the update.

There‘s hoping that GD-EMUs or DreamShells G1-ATA based storage solutions will at least help reduce some of the problems the Beta has with loading times and performance.

Could you maybe give me a rough estimate on how long it could take until we see results on this? I'm not sure if it's wise to keep the fundraiser running when there‘s still a chance that your source could release it later because the longer this takes the more people will invest money and the more difficult the situation will become if it does indeed get released for free in the end.

It would have been better to coordinte your efforts with Tom or myself before going public with this tbh.