Heroes of Might and Magic III : The Restoration of Erathia

Heroes of Might and Magic III: The Restoration of Erathia for Dreamcast is an unreleased console conversion of New World Computing's 1999 turn-based strategy game. Ubisoft announced an agreement with The 3DO Company to bring the title to Sega's system in April 2000, but the planned release never arrived. The surviving Dreamcast version is therefore a prototype rather than a finished retail game, making it a notable part of the console's lost-project history.

Its foundation is the fantasy strategy design of The Restoration of Erathia. Players recruit heroes to lead armies across an adventure map, explore the continent, collect resources and artifacts, claim mines, visit locations and take towns from opposing forces. Each hero has a limited distance to travel during a turn, so plotting a route, deciding which objectives matter most and protecting important territory are central to progress.

When armies meet, battles switch to a separate hex-based battlefield. Creature stacks move and attack under the player's command, while a hero influences the fight with spells rather than acting as a unit on the field. Victories grant experience, allowing heroes to improve and develop skills over the course of a scenario. The wider strategy comes from joining tactical battles to long-term choices: expanding a town's buildings, growing its army, gathering the resources needed for stronger units and denying those advantages to a rival.

The Restoration of Erathia is set on Antagarich, where Queen Catherine returns to her homeland after the death of her father, King Nicholas Gryphonheart, and the invasion of Erathia. Its campaign structure follows several viewpoints and town alignments as the conflict unfolds. Beyond campaigns, the original design includes standalone maps for solo, cooperative and competitive play, giving its fantasy armies and town-building systems room to support different objectives and opponents.

The Dreamcast project was intended to adapt this established PC game to Sega hardware, and contemporary reporting said Ubisoft planned to use the console's modem for online multiplayer. Technical limitations prevented a commercial release, however, and the surviving build was later preserved by the Dreamcast community. A prototype dated August 11, 2000 was made public in 2020, so Heroes of Might and Magic III on Dreamcast remains a window into a cancelled adaptation rather than an official product that reached stores.