Well, since you brought it up, Lex...
Despite the contents of my website, my most passionate game obsession isn't a console RPG.
I really haven't ever done much console gaming, in the grand scheme of things. I had an Atari 2600, and then I had no other consoles until I bought my beloved PlayStation two years ago. Well, okay, I had a series of GameBoys, but I don't really count those as 'consoles'. More like 'oddly twittering boxes to entertain myself with on car trips'.
Anyway. My point is that it's not a console RPG that stole my heart and brain.
When I was in college (in my fifth year, actually, 1995), a well-meaning friend of mine gave me a copy of this little party-RPG called... Might and Magic 3. I was immediately entranced. I made myself a nice little party of six butch, strapping women and together, we set out to conquer this primitive-graphics world.
Those six women, created and named by me, were closer to my heart than anything Square could create. They had no personalities pressed on them by game designers. No backstories, no dialogue, only a nifty little picture of what they looked like. In other words, they were MINE. I named them, I outfitted them, I decided what race they were. I loved them all dearly, even though my archer looked kind of like a sulky mallrat.
I played for hours every day, side by side with my boyfriend, who was also playing. The game was extremely non-linear, and gave you absolutely no clues about where to go next after about ten hours of gameplay. I spent hours investigating every single square of land and sea, slowly but surely finding clues as to where my ultimate destination lay, conquering cleverly hidden dungeons, getting my collective six asses kicked by new and different creatures, learning the joy that is Lloyd's Beacon. Since the game was so non-linear, Boyfriend and I were always in different places, and each night we'd gleefully trade hints about where new things could be found.
And yes, I won the game. It took me about ninety hours, and none of that was mindless leveling-up crap. You couldn't run around in little circles and get into random battles anyway. There weren't random encounters; instead, monsters were generated by these little 'monster huts'. Once you fought your way to the monster hut, you could destroy it, and earn nifty rewards, and then those monsters were GONE. I committed genocide from one end of the world to the other, in the name of equipment.
Having won, I moved on. I deleted the game from my hard drive (small hard drive), and went about the business of graduating from college.
Three years later, I was living in Columbus, Indiana, a dull little town if ever there was one. My only window to the world was the very same computer, now hopelessly out of date, but with enough power to let me connect to the Internet. I MUDded a lot.
One night, Boyfriend and I started to reminisce about M&M3. After about three hours of trading 'remember when' stories, we were so worked up that Boyfriend went out on a newsgroup dedicated to the resale of ancient games, and bought an oooold copy of Might and Magic 3 off some nice guy. When the peeling cardboard box arrived in the mail, we grabbed those sheaves of blue diskettes, installed the game, and once again began simultaneously playing our way through.
I once again had a party of six strapping, butch women. In fact, they looked much the same as they always had. I still loved them dearly, even the mallrat. It was like a reunion with old friends. As I walked out of the gates of the first city and saw the well-remembered hordes of orcs closing in, it was as if I'd never left, and I was actually laughing out loud, I was so happy to see those orcs.
Then I shot them full of arrows. I'm not THAT sentimental.
I actually have yet ANOTHER game of Might and Magic 3, about half-finished, waiting to be played some more. And I still have the old cardboard box full of diskettes, in case I feel like playing again. After writing this, I find that I do.
Two more stories about Might and Magic 3, before your eyes glaze over.
First: as I said, I always played with a party of six women. It's a pride thing. We could kick ass better than any stupid guys anyway.
Unfortunately, one of the side quests required that you have male characters in your party to complete. (They had to fall in love with some siren.) After cursing the game roundly, I went back to the first city and hired a couple of henchmen.
You could have two hirelings at a time. You paid them by the day; the amount depended on how high level they were. So the hirelings in the first city were very low-level, and therefore cheap; an archer, named Alan Bow, and a druid, named Fineous. I paid their fees and dragged them out to show them the siren. They seemed to like her. I finished the quest.
Second: the most egregious rules loophole I have ever found, and quite possibly the reason I still love Might and Magic 3 after all these years.
You see, in Might and Magic 3, every character had her own, small inventory. There was no party inventory, and you only had so many spaces in which to carry things; furthermore, there was no way to store items. You had what you could carry, and that was that.
About halfway through my first game, I discovered that, if one of your hirelings is dead, then he's unable to work, and you therefore didn't have to pay him. But he stayed in your party.
I think you can see where this is going. I hired the cheapest hirelings I could find (Alan Bow and Fineous), coldly and specifically got them killed, and then filled their dead bodies with my extra stuff. Whenever they accidentally got brought back to life by beneficial fountains or other magics, I would have them killed again. They were my 'body bags', my 'lifeless luggage', and they went all over the world with me, dead.
I can just imagine the residents of these little pseudo-medieval towns staring at us; these six brawny, tough adventuring-women who just happen to be dragging a couple of well-dressed male corpses around. And those impeccably dressed handsome corpses went everywhere with us, too: into bars, into shops, into the inn at night...
Can you imagine the rumors? Why were we never run out of town as evil crazy necrophiliac bitches?
Probably because we were, after all, REALLY damn butch.
