HeroQuest
for Amiga (OCS/ECS)
Also available for: PC (DOS)

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Mr Creosote:Popular Vote:
4/6
Alternate Titles: Hero Quest
Company: Gremlin
Year: 1991
Genre: RPG
Theme: Board / Based on Other Media / Multiplayer / Sword & Sorcery
Language: English, Deutsch, Francais, Castellano, Italiano
Licence: Commercial
Views: 42235
Review by Mr Creosote (2001-03-14)
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Ah, Hero Quest... We all spent countless hours playing the board game! I still remember the christmas in Hotel Dorint in Hameln when my brother got it. We spent half of our time there playing it. Of course we were genious enough to use the blank map to create our own quest with a permanent and water resistant pen. And the rest of the time we played.... ummmmm...... hockey in the corridor! But back to Hero Quest.

It's a very simplistic RPG. Simplistic because it's not pen&paper based, but it takes place on a board. On this board plastic figures move around. Each 'hero' is controlled by a player and all the monsters by the master. This master also handles the events like traps or the outcome of treasure hunting. And he has the most workload because he has to put all the pieces of furniture on the board ;)

This (mostly) boring position is taken over by the computer here of course. Up to four human players can participate because there are four character classes which can only be used once at the same time. Each character has a special ability. The barbarian is good at fighting, the dwarf can disarm traps, the elf is an allrounder who can fight but also cast some spells and the wizard is a wimp full of magic.

Together (or on their own) they have to fulfill a number of quests to drive an evil sorcerer off the country eventually. But especially the first tasks hardly have any real link to this. But who cares about such a stereotype story anyway?

With the gold you find and get as rewards for completed quests, you can buy new equipment for your character. But there is only very few stuff available. Limited as the variety of spells. And the variety of monsters. And the variety of missions. And the variety of the choices the players have.

The expansion disk (which can also be used as a stand-alone game) adds new missions and nothing else. And these missions are aimed at developed characters - so don't start with them but play the 'regular' campaign first! Otherwise you'll find yourself kill in the very first room...

On the whole, Hero Quest is a nice and simple game. It may not be suited for RPG-freaks. But beginners and fans of the board game will like it because it imitates the original version almost perfectly! And the multiplayer option is especially well done because the characters don't have to play all the missions together, but can go their own ways partly.

Thanks to dlfrsilver for the manual and OddbOd for figuring out the copy protection codes!

Comments (15) [Post comment]

T-Pow:
Originally posted by Wandrell at 20:56 on December 5th, 2008:
Well, here in Spain Space Crusade was "Cruzada Estelar", which translates for Stelar Crusade. But Heroquest was kept as Heroquest, and all the other Games Workshop games I've seen also kept the english name, like Space Hulk.

By the way, have you seen http://home.quicknet.nl/qn/prive/lm.broers/download.htm? I've played just a little to it, but looked like a nice amateur computer version of the game.

I´ve tried it yesterday and it is a realy nice Windows version. Thanks for the link!

Mr Creosote:

I'm only talking about HeroQuest here, I don't know anyone who owned StarQuest. HeroQuest however... more than half of my friends at the time owned at least the basic game itself, some also the expansions. Yes, Risk probably comes close and certainly wins out on the long run (because I assume Risk still sells well and HeroQuest doesn't), but that's it. I, too, always read The Settler of Catan being sooooo successful, but I only ever met one single person who had that game.

Granted all that is very much personal experience, of course. In any case, HeroQuest was a fairly limited phenomenon time-wise. I don't remember anyone still playing it much in the mid-90s and after that. Nowadays, I guess it has become a sort of 'cult favourite' in certain circles, but as far as mass appeal goes, it's as dead as a doornail.

T-Pow:

I also jumped on the train and bought StarQuest and I enjoyed it very much.
But I disagree with MC because I thing games like Risk or Settlers have reached far more People than Hero Quest ot Star Quest did.
I have never seen anyone except me in my Hometown ho owned it.

Mr Creosote:
Hero Quest (being called Hero Quest) was a huge commercial success in Germany. I've never seen any board game being that wide-spread. I guess that was the incentive to retitle for Space Crusade as 'Star Quest' - hoping people would jump on it by association.
Wandrell:

Well, here in Spain Space Crusade was "Cruzada Estelar", which translates for Stelar Crusade. But Heroquest was kept as Heroquest, and all the other Games Workshop games I've seen also kept the english name, like Space Hulk.

By the way, have you seen http://home.quicknet.nl/qn/prive/lm.broers/download.htm? I've played just a little to it, but looked like a nice amateur computer version of the game.

Mr Creosote:
Oh, I liked playing the Master, too, but when I created my own levels, I never did much in the course of story, but instead tried to spice up things with small puzzles which the players had to solve (very basic things, admittedly, like hidden passages, levers or objects which had to be found and used elsewhere). That, in my opinion, brought some much-needed flexibility to the limited layout of the board.
T-Pow:
Haven´t I mentioned, that I mostly played the Master because I knew all levels. For me it was great fun!
Mr Creosote:

Space Crusade was known as StarQuest in Germany, but the computer game was released under the original title (confusing naming scheme). So, yes, there is in fact a computer conversion of that game, and a data disk as well. Now we just need to wait for Wandrell to put it on the site ;)

Back on the topic of Hero Quest, I once read in a review of the computer game (unfortunately, I can't find that review anymore) that the computer game is basically a conversion of the European version of the board game. In the US version, all the basic monsters have hitpoints, making the game a lot harder.

One speciality of the Ogres was, if I recall correctly, that you couldn't 'slip past' them after casting a smoke (?) spell (which I did a few times in regular levels). That literally broke my character's neck when the Ogres kept massing in front of the level exit and me being out of healing potions / spells.

Edit: Damn, T-Pow was faster ;)

T-Pow:

I just got it out of the shelf. It´s not called Space Quest. It´s Star Quest. My fault.

Edit: Damn didn´t use the Edit function :D

T-Pow:

I only know the german title Space Quest but it seems to be the same.
Are the Eldar avaible as playable race? They where added in the second addon "Angriff der Eldar" and had realy HUGE guns which gave them Cover too.

Wandrell:
You mean Space Crusade? My father had both Heroquest and Space Crusade, which was another tableboard game made from the same people. And there is a computer version, I have it around and is one of these ones I thought about reviewing more than once. If I'm not mistaked there is a CD version also, but I don't know if comes with extras or not (probably just voices, music or something similar).
T-Pow:

That´s right the levels where only interresting the first time. The big deal was to build your own levels and storys.
The expansion you mean was called "Die Rückkehr des Hexers" and it was indeed the bad guy from the Original Game.
But it is the second addon, the first was "Karak Varn" in which you play in old dwarf ruins (as far as i remember).
The third expansion was my personal favorite because in "Ogre Horden" the Monsters had hit points too.
It was very fun to see, that Heroes who killed everything in the campains
before without problems now ran away.
I owned the fourth addon too but i didn´t played it very much. I don´t know why. It was named "Morcas Magier" and had a lot of new Traps and spells.
Space Quest was cool too. But as far as I know there is no Computer game addaption avaiable. :(

Mr Creosote:

The biggest problem I always had with the board game (and obviously with the computer game, too) is the number of levels combined with the complexity of the levels. Remembering even the smallest detail of each level is very easy. I could never resist peeking into the quest book long before even playing those 'levels', so when I finally got to play them, I already knew exactly where to go and what to do to get most of the treasure while avoiding the real dangers.

As for NetDanzr's comments on the story, I have to agree. I didn't even understand there is a story linking the levels for many years.

This works better in the expansions. Or at least those I played. One of them dealt with some kind of demon lord (I think it might have been the main baddie of the main campaign returning; main enemies were lots and lots of skeletons and there was this turntable in the box which sent you into random directions) and the other one was about Ogres.

T-Pow:

I played the board game as a Kid and I still have it with all it`s expansions.
Played it 2 months ago with friends. It still rocks.
The Computer game is a quite exact the same! So go get it.

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