Released quickly after Doom, using a modified version of the same game engine, Heretic is a fantasy first person shooter designed by Raven Software, published by id Software, and distributed, along with everything else in those days, by GT Interactive in 1994.
Heretic introduced ambient noise — evil laughter and such — that was random, as opposed to Doom’s enemy-spawned noises.
Like the Doom story, Heretic has hellish elements, demons and tons of different weapons at your disposal. There were also plenty of cheat codes.
There has always been a ton of literature and source documentation on the Doom/Heretic/Hexen/Quake games, and I was able to dig up the original FAQ for Heretic, which is a fun, long read and will tell you just about everything you’d ever want to know about this ultra-classic title.
Heretic is a supernatural blast-fest that is the most realistic, action-packed fantasy combat computer game for the PC. Created by the graphic masters at Raven Software in concert with the technical gurus of id Software, Heretic adds new levels of play and graphic wonder to the tried and true DOOM gaming environment.
In the old days, PC games came in large boxes, twice the size of the puny ones they come in now. Even my original Heretic shareware CD came in a large box and cost money at Toys”R”Us way back when.
One of the best things about these games in the present is that their source code has been released, and modern, high-resolution, Direct3D versions of the game are being made available to breathe new life into games like Heretic. This is a fine example of “they don’t make them like they used to.”
Ye Olde System Requirements:
- IBM PC and compatibles/MS DOS (works on DOSBox)
- 486-33
- 4 MB RAM
- 10 MB hard disk space
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