Today I was helping my friend's dad clean out a house where the previous tenants had left stuff behind. One of the things I found was a CD of Heroes of Might and Magic II.

I'm wondering if I will be able to play it? The CD itself looks fairly unscratched, but it is from 2001 I think. Are there any mods or patches that would let me play the game and try it out? I've never actually played a HoMM game before, so I want to see what they are like and thought this could be a good opportunity.

Thanks!

Thanks. I'll try running the game when I get some more free time this weekend.

The CD says Dos/Win 95, but it also says "Designed for Microsoft Windows 95" so I'm thinking it is a Windows thing and not purely DOS.

I've been able to run my CD copy of HoMM2 Gold on my WinXP machine without the need for DosBOX or any patches or tweaks. Not sure if the original release of HoMM2 will be as easy to deal with, but it's definitely worth just seeing if it will work before playing around with DosBox or any patches.

Just curious: does multiplayer between DOS and Win95 versions work?

IMO it should. But I've never tried it, so it is just my opinion.

I've never tried installing it, but i'm sure that my CD copy of HOMM2 comes with both executables and both installers...IIRC there are a "setup.exe" and a "install.exe", the former is the usual InstallShield windows setup, the latter should be the DOS version of the installer.

You might want to set compatibility mode on the exe just to be sure.

Can't you use an XP Virtual Machine instead? You can get the Virtual PC app free from Microsoft, unless that's changed recently.

I have never heard of a virtual machine before. I'll check that out!

It uses a chunk of memory and hard drive space to simulate another computer. You configure devices and install Windows within it as normal (although you can't control both your desktop and the virtual PC at the same time).