Ultima

[Harrison]

Are any of you fans of this long running series?

I played some of the early games on the Amiga but then missed out on the later ones due to them being released on the PC at the time, and I was sticking firmly with the Amiga until it's end!

I especially remember reading the reviews for Ultima VII and really wishing I had a PC to play it. That in many people's view is the best of the series and contains a very unique graphical style with a forced 3D perspective that isn't completely isometric. It also had a number of expansion packs and is meant to contain a great story. I've still not played VII so am going to try and get a copy running so I can.

The following game VIII: Pagan was not well received by fans, but I did play it and thought it was quite good. I do understand why they didn't like it though as the gaming world was much smaller, the style of gameplay had changed from controlling a traditional rpg party, to one centred around a lone character, and the core gameplay was changed completely to one of an action RPG with mouse based hack and slash combat. Plus the platform style gameplay also often seen in action RPGs. But I personally think that if taken as a single game, and forgetting the rest of the series, it is a great game in it's own right, all be it more Diablo in style than the Ultima series of old.

I've not played Ultima IX: Ascention yet so am not sure how good that was, but from what I've read it isn't that good. Interestingly many fans of the series have continued to attempt to remake IX using different gaming engines and reworking the story to create the game they had hoped for. The longest running of these is called Eriadain and was first created using RPG Maker, and then became a Neverwinter Nights project. It was sadly cancelled by I've read that the firsts in their current state can be downloaded which could be interesting to see how far thet got. The biggest of these fan prjected at the moment is Ultima IX: Infinity Eternal which is being built using the Oblivion engine so could be interesting.

And there is the next game due our finally this year, Ultima IX: Redemption which is promising to be very good.

Also there was the offshoot series Ultima Underworld which took the series into a true 3D environment that was quite revolutionary at the time. So much so that it is reported to be how ID got their ideas for Wolfenstein and DOOM which is quite amazing. I've also read that an enhanced version of the Underworld game engine went on to later power System Shock! I've also heard that there is an updated version of Ultima Underworld released on the Playstation using true 3D in game objects instead of sprites, but sadly it was only released in Japan.

And there was also of course Ultima Online, which copies the graphical style of Ultima VII and is said to be instrumential in the development of MMORPGs as a genre. I've never played Ultima Online, but it is still running, even after 10 years! So I might still give it a try at some point as there have been many expansions released over the years creating a huge gaming universe. Also interesting is the fact that newer clients for Ultima Online have been written over the years which update the graphics of the game to bring them more up to date. The most recent, which is meant to have just been released really brings the visuals of Ultima Online bang up to date with some very nice looking 3D graphics. So it seems it might still be worth playing.

There have also been many console only Ultima games but I've not tried any of them yet.

[Demon Cleaner]

I have tried playing some earlier Ultima versions on the C64, but I found them to be too hard, not the actual gameplay, but hard to understand. I was very young, had no manual and my english was very sparse. Why didn't I have a manual? Because already at 12-13 years I did a lot of swapping and my "not buying any game" career took its first steps

[Harrison]

I think my similar career took off around the same time, armed with a set of blank audio tapes and a twin deck hi-fi.

[Sharingan]

I'm ashamed to say I've never tried any of the Ultima games, but I was always impressed by the artwork in the gaming mags. Since the storyline seems to be a continueing one (instead of each game having standalone plots, like Final Fantasy), it would be pretty much impossible to jump in and expect to understand any of it, or am I mistaken?

[Harrison]

The central thread connecting them all together is quite straight forward, so any of the games would be easy enough to jump into and play without first needing to have knowledge of the previous games.

Basically the game centres around a character known as the Avatar. The gaming world, when in trouble, calls forth the Avatar from the heavens and he magically appears through a portal from another dimension known as Earth! The game therefore centres around you playing as the Avatar, called forth to save the world from destruction or some other form of disaster as is common in many RPGs.

[Demon Cleaner]

armed with a set of blank audio tapes and a twin deck hi-fi.

So we were not the only ones who did that. Man, it worked fine, even in double speed mode, or what was that feature again?

[Harrison]

I think it was called high speed dubbing. The sound was quite annoying while copying them, but at least you could turn the volume right down. The biggest problem was that it took so long to copy each tape.

[Submeg]

Man am I glad I only ever had to copy CD!

[Demon Cleaner]

The advantage of tapes was that they could contain many games, and they weren't expensive. Still more expensive than CD or DVD nowadays, a bit like a DVD DL.

[Harrison]

I can't remember how much tapes cost over here but they definitely would have been more than a DVD-R. I think I used to buy packs of 10 TDKs for something like £4.99, or it could have been a bit more. I cannot remember at all.

I never bothered copying more than one game to each tape, instead just preferring to keep each on their own.

And talking about the volume level while trying to load a tape brought back memories. I never had that issue with the CPC as the tape desk was built in so wasn't affected by the volume level, but I remember on a friends ZX Spectrum it would always crash while loading games due to the volume not being set just right.