Play Heroes of Might and Magic II in Your Browser

About Heroes of Might and Magic II

Heroes of Might and Magic II: The Succession Wars is a turn-based strategy game developed by New World Computing under Jon Van Caneghem, who directed it and designed it with Phil Steinmeyer. The 3DO Company published it for MS-DOS and Windows in North America on October 1, 1996, with a European release later that year. A Classic Mac OS version followed in April 1997, and the game also came out on RISC OS. Paul Romero, Rob King and Steve Baca wrote the music.

It is the second game in the Heroes of Might and Magic series, and it’s usually credited as the breakout game that made the series a success. Less than a year after release, in May 1997, PC Gamer voted it the sixth-best game of all time for IBM PC compatibles. Because it’s turn-based, it moves at your pace: the game waits until you end your turn, so you can take as long as you like over each decision. The original supported both single-player and multiplayer games.

How it runs in your browser

Pressing Play opens the game’s page on DOS.Zone in a new tab. DOS.Zone runs the original PC version inside an emulated PC, using js-dos, its open-source build of the DOSBox emulator made for browsers. The game files come from the site, so there’s nothing to install and no copy of your own to supply. You don’t need an account, and DOS.Zone shows no ads.

Online play isn’t part of this listing. DOS.Zone has no multiplayer room set up for Heroes II, so treat it as a single-player game in the browser. Whether saved games are kept between visits isn’t stated on the listing, so check DOS.Zone’s page before you commit to a long campaign. When this page was written, the listing showed a rating of 5 from 514 player reviews.

Controls and devices

The game was made for a keyboard and mouse, and that’s how it works best here. DOS.Zone doesn’t list the controls, so use the game’s own menus and help screens to find your way around. If the game ignores your input, click inside the game window first.

DOS.Zone does offer virtual on-screen controls for phones, but Heroes II was designed around a keyboard and mouse, so a desktop or laptop is the better choice. Phones and Chromebooks haven’t been confirmed to work well.

Who it’s for

It suits strategy players who want the 1996 game as it was released, without tracking down an old copy and setting up an emulator themselves. It also makes sense for anyone who knows the series from its third game and wants to see the one that made it popular. When you’re ready to move on, Heroes of Might and Magic III runs on DOS.Zone too, through a web port of the VCMI engine rather than emulation. If you’d rather play strategy in real time, Blizzard’s Warcraft II from 1995 is also on DOS.Zone.