Originally planned for the the Apple ][GS; but never to be realized. Due to the declining market share of the Apple ][ and poor sales of the ][GS, this game was moved to the older but more numerous Apple ][ platform (though no longer a relevant market force, their were still many, many Apple ][s in active use). That version turned out to be technically impractical and was also canceled. The project was started from scratch for a IBM-PC (MS-DOS) release.
It was decided that character portraits could not be done on the 8-bit Apple II. In reality, they could have been done in the Apple II's double hi-res mode, but they would have been limited to 16 colors (32 simulated colors). The music and mouse interface were factors also. Again, the 8-bit apple could have done these also. All these things were built into the Apple ][GS hardware and/or system software The 8-bit Apple could actually do cassette quality digitized music and there was an Apple II mouse. Both of these would have required more software, more memory and *a lot more storage space. Unless the customer wanted to be swapping disks or shell out a fortune for an Apple II hard drive (extremely rare and expensive at the time). So these features would have been missing from the 8-bit version. Origin successfully dealt with all of these limitations when they ported Ultima VI to the Commodore 64; then again when they ported another Commodore 64 version. But, the market share for the Apple II began a rapid decline on top of all these issues. The 16-bit version (IIgs) was abandon first then the 8-bit version was scrapped and the IBM-PC version was started from scratch. Note, the IBM-PC version had CGA, EGA, and Tandy graphics options which were all limited to 16 on screen colors. 4 colors for CGA on a non-composite monitor. It also had a greyscale Hercules graphics option. Of course most people played in 256 color VGA mode, but the other graphics options show that an Apple versions could have been done.
About Ultima VI: The False Prophet
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