Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny

created and published by Origin in 1987, running on Apple II E
type: role-play
genre: Fantasy
series: Ultima, Ultima: The Age of Enlightenment
perspective: 1st person bird's-eye
player options: single player
languages: eng jpn
4.5/5

Description

Comes on four 5.25" disks (8 sides).
Can optionally use one or two Mockingboard cards to produce up to 8 channels of stereo sound. Use of sound hardware requires 128K RAM. Otherwise the game has a minimum requirement of 64K RAM. Game box and materials claim "Apple II" compatibility but as it requires 64K RAM this seems to rule out the original Apple II with it's 48K limit. An Apple II plus could be upgraded to meet the RAM requirement and seems a reasonable minimum system. However, there are Slot 0 cards that will upgrade an original Apple II allowing for compatibility of games that must access more RAM and/or ROM functions that were not otherwise possible in the original Apple II. These option would cost many thousands of dollars. Since the game was designed for the possibility of 2 Mockingboards, perhaps Origin intended this extravagance for original Apple II owners. But this option would be obscure since some such cards for the original Apple II were created long before the IIe and IIc existed while ones created after where intended for (compatible with) the II plus or IIe. Such cards were in fact intended for adding Integer BASIC, Pascal, or other languages with the RAM and ROM upgrades merely being a requirement for these rather than being intended to be used by finished software.

Compatible sound hardware includes:
Mockingboard A
Mockingboard C
Mockingboard Sound I
Mockingboard Sound II
Mockingboard Sound/Speech I
Phasor
Passport MIDI

The title screen includes and ACTIVATE MUSIC option and all hardware options can be configured there. The user must specify what hardware is present and which slots contain which hardware. The user is warned not to create a configuration with more than 12 voices. Phasor support is discussed further in the game's manual. A single Phasor can supply the same features as 2 Mockingboards plus additional voices for a total of 12 (But the game only uses 8). Passport MIDI provides different sound and music than Mockingboard(s). Mockingboards and Passport MIDI can be used simultaneously and the different sounds are complimentary; that is, 1 or even 2 Mockingboards + MIDI (8 voices + MIDI) are intended configurations by the developers. The player must manually configure the 14 instrument selections. While this could be considered a bit tedious by modern standards, it has the advantages being universally compatible with virtually any MIDI device and allowing the player to select instruments other than suggested by developers such as electric guitar and violin.

Trivia:
Officially, this was the last Ultima for which Richard Garriott contributed a major portion of code. He would act in design and management roles on all published original Ultima games after this one. He actually coded the PC version of Akalabeth in assembly in 1998 (for the Ultima Collection package). But, this was not an original Ultima game as it was based on the Apple 2 version of Akalabeth.

This would also be the last Ultima game published for the Apple and designed for the Apple then ported or converted to other systems. All following Ultimas began as IBM-PC products and did not have Apple versions. However, Ultima V was not planned to be the last Apple II Ultima but was planned at one time to be the last 8-bit Apple II Ultima. See the descriptions of the Apple II and the Apple IIgs versions.

(Zerothis) - # 2008-07-13 17:41:57

Technical specs

hardware: Keyboard,
display: raster

Authors / Staff

management

Dallas Snell (project director)

design

Chris Roberts (designer)
Dallas Snell (documentation design)
Dallas Snell (designer)
Doug Wike (documentation design)
John Miles 'Captain Johnne' (documentation design)
John Miles 'Captain Johnne' (designer)
Lori Ogwulu (documentation design)
Mark Hamner (designer)
Marsha Meuse (documentation design)
Paul Isaac (designer)
Richard Garriott 'Lord British' (lead designer)
Richard Garriott 'Lord British' (documentation design)
Steve Meuse (designer)
Stuart Marks (designer)
Toshi Morita (designer)

writer

Dallas Snell (writing)
Dallas Snell (documentation writing)
Doug Wike (writing)
Doug Wike (documentation writing)
John Miles 'Captain Johnne' (writing)
John Miles 'Captain Johnne' (documentation writing)
Lori Ogwulu (writing)
Lori Ogwulu (documentation writing)
Marsha Meuse (writing)
Marsha Meuse (documentation writing)
Richard Garriott 'Lord British' (writing)
Richard Garriott 'Lord British' (documentation writing)

coding

Dallas Snell (programmer)
John Miles 'Captain Johnne' (lead programmer)
Kenneth Arnold (programmer)
Mark Hamner (programmer)
Richard Garriott 'Lord British' (programmer)
Steve Meuse (programmer)
Toshi Morita (programmer)

graphics

Denis Loubet (documentation illustration)
Denis Loubet (game graphics)

audio

Kenneth Arnold (music)

packaging

Lord British [Richard Garriott] (documentation)

tester

Cheryl Chen (playtester)
Colin Sachs (playtester)
Dale Nichols (playtester)
Dallas Snel l (playtester)
Ed Nelson (playtester)
Herman Miller (playtester)
Ian Manchester (playtester)
Jean Tauscher (playtester)
John Fachini (playtester)
John Miles 'Captain Johnne' (playtester)
Kirk Hutcheon (playtester)
Kurt Boutin (playtester)
Laurel Treamer (playtester)
Mac Senour (playtester)
Mark Hamner (playtester)
Mary Taylor Rollo (playtester)
Richard Garriott 'Lord British' (playtester)
Steve Meuse (playtester)
Tim Beaudoin (playtester)
Toshi Morita (playtester)

External reviews (2) - average: 90%

review sourceissuedatescore
Power Playde51988-0590/10090%
view
Tilt 39-113fr551988-0618/2090%
view

Contributors (4)

teran01
zerothis
dandyboh
Sanguine

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