I was about to play Heroes of Might & Magic IV and remembered that I still have a bootleg CD of it, that just so happens to also say “Excalibur”. It not only lead me to discover that I’ve been playing the wrong version of HoMM4 the whole time, but also down a rabbit hole of Russian video game bootlegging scene.
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
0:16 The Bootleg
02:34 Russian Bootleg Scene
09:32 HoMM4 Overview
11:46 The Bootleg part 2
12:37 The Lord of the Rings
19:51 Dungeons & Dragons
26:51 Excalibur
35:07 Closing Thoughts
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Fascinating insight into the Russian bootleg scene, great video.
Takes me back to buying bootleg albums at a St Petersburg street market in 1998…
Pirated games provide us with some unique stories to tell, i grew up with pirated games and i cant imagine NES era in serbia without the yellow cartridges that can have any game possible.
Lmao I remembered that this "campaign pack" existed, but then blocked that memory along the way
4 years back I went on torrent hunt for it and its just insane. Like, Alexander maps is so crammed with trash its unplayable, while every other campaign is just MP duel maps, where starting hero is renamed to Frodo or something.
The memories 😂
Homm4, its like a bit of a turd wrapped in pure gold wrapping, wrapping being the soundtrack
So good to see you're still posting! Feels like ages since your last upload. Quality over quantity after all, and there's plenty of that here. Keep doing what you're doing, and looking forward to whatever's next.
18:19 – [initating nerd talk] I'm quite confident that's the sprite of the Blue keymaster's tent which matches the quest gate on Frodo's third map, they might have mixed up the coding or the sprites with the cyan tent though [nerd talk over]
This brings back memories of the Bengali edition of Vice City.
Great video as always D-Man! 🖤
Im amazed people would distribute fanmade hacked copies of games. Wild times back then. Nice video!