showing 3 games
| name | publisher(developer) | year arrow_downward | description | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar | Origin | 1985 | [52]*** [48]***Comes on two 5.25" disks. The Ultima series continued to innovate with the release of each game in the series. With this 4th game, the genre was taken to bran new places. There is no evil big bad enemy to defeat, and the point of the game is not to take advantage of people to get stuff to go defeat the enemy. Rather, the point of the game is for the main character to become a champion of virtue. The goals are literally honesty, humility, honor, spirituality, valor, justice, compassion, sacrifice, courage, truth, and love. Actions, inactions, even words can have less than apparent unhelpful or helpful consequences. Yes, there are still monsters to fight and treasures to find, but this makes up less than 1/8th of the game and the care and purpose in handling these things is more important than the end result. The [i]Ultima IV Construction Set[/i], [b]not official[/b], was available not long after the game's release. While the title would suggest it is a legitimate level editor, the package is in fact an illegal bootleg of Ultima IV. It even includes digital versions of all materials of the game. This overly complete violation of copyright does also include a level editor. [Zerothis] | labelimagesubject |
| Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness | Origin | 1986 | MSRP: $39.95 As the story goes, the wizard Mondain was intent on world domination. Over 1,000 years ago, he created the gem of immortality and granted him invincibility. Mondain is evil. The gem of immortality is evil. These are indisputable facts because it says to in the playbook. However, you won't be seeing Mondain doing anything evil in the present world and time. The player controls a stranger from another world (Earth) come to the land Sosaria to save it and its people from Mondain. The fact that Mondain is immortal and invincibility makes this a difficult task. So the stranger will travel back in time to kill Mondain before he creates his gem. A remake of the first game in the The Age of Darkness trilogy from the Ultima series of games. This is the version included with the Ultima Trilogy package. Origin rewrote the original Ultima in assembly language and updated the graphics. Some minor changes to place and people names were also made. This version would be ported to many other platforms and the various collection packages included this version or a port of this version. The game did not have the "Age of Darkness" title, it was just plain "Ultima I". But a book was includes with the title "The First Age of Darkness". In the box for this version was the 5.25" disk, The First Age of Darkness book, player reference card, four cardboard maps, and a cloth bag of coins, 1 gold, 3 silver, 1 copper (not the real minerals). This version was published by Origin themselves. [Zerothis] | labelimagesubject |
| Ultima II: Revenge of the Enchantress | Origin;Lord British (Origin) | 1989 | Requires 64k. Optional Mockingboard for music during Exodus portion. This collection and the Apple II platform is notable for having an enhanced version of Ultima II not available in other publishings. It is further notable because it was sold for less than 2 months before being discontinued; making the enhance version of Ultima II a very rare and exclusive Apple II product. Enhanced Ultima II is readily distinguishable by having a blue boarder around the picture. There are many improvments as well. Additionally, the version of Ultima III was enhanced, but this version was also available in other packages. Finally, Ultima I that was ported from BASIC source code to pure assembly code is available in this package (but this Ultima I was released on it own in 1985). This package is the only way to get the Apple version of the Ultima II remake. Origin briefly had a publishing arrangement with Sierra On-Line. It went badly. Ultimately it was Ultima II royalties (as in, not being paid at all for non-Apple version sales) that pushed Ultima's creator into exiting the agreement and founding Origin Systems. However, royalties were far from the only issue. Numerous disagreements over Ultima II's publishing where especially memorable to Lord British. Sierra fought efforts by Origin to republish Ultima games. In the case of Ultima II, they succeed in blocking Origin from using certain art that Sierra actually couldn't legally use themselves (but they didn't let that stop them from using the art anyway). Moving ahead; By 1989, management at Origin was no longer interested in investing effort or money into the Apple II platform because it would not make a worthwhile return. No one at Origin was forbidden from making Apple II games; some personal projects were completed for it. Ultima VI was started for Apple II, then changed to Apple IIGS, then abandoned in favor of the IBM-PC version. Many of the features that were possible on the IBM-PC could have been done on the Apple II (witness that the Commodore 64 received two ports of Ultima VI), but the dwindling Apple II market did not justify the effort. However, Lord British just had to do something about Ultima II for Apple II. It received a makeover much as the original Ultima for Apple II had. It was packed with the Ultima I remake and Ultima III with enhancements, presumably to make it more valuable with very minimal additional investment in the Apple II market. The Ultima Trilogy package would be offered in this form to other platforms as well. However, The FM Towns version of the trilogy contained 3 re-remakes. [Zerothis] | labelminimizesubject |
