Comments on: Ultima

By: Avadon: The Black Fortress

Avadon: The Black Fortress — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 01:36:16 +0000

[...] they’re a somewhat nostalgic throwback to the days of the early Ultima games (I’ve talked about my hate/love relationship with those games in detail before). I hate them largely because the games UIs are just clumsy enough that I feel a bit like I”m [...]

By: Tea Leaves - New and Old

Tea Leaves - New and Old — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 00:37:46 +0000

[...] I think people like playing their favorite games over and over again. They get attached to the mechanics and the little rushes of satisfaction that the familiar brings. After all, why would you play WoW if you didn’t like repetition? Also, while the history of video games is short, not everyone has been in on the whole timeline. Therefore, there is a lot of utility in bringing older classic games up to the modern platforms where they can be enjoyed again by literally thousands of new addicts, er, fans, who missed out the first time and don’t want to go digging up a lot of hardware by buying it from peterb’s basement. [...]

By: Tea Leaves - Poor Fractured Tantalus

Tea Leaves - Poor Fractured Tantalus — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 11:22:07 +0000

[...] More on my obsession with Ultima. [...]

By: Gavin Bollard

Gavin Bollard — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 05:30:32 +0000

I started with Ultima V on DOS and it took (literally) two years to complete, but still managed to hold my attention.

You certainly had an advantage if you started with an earlier version with smaller maps and a less complex storyline.

Ultima 6 only took a few months of solid play, although I had to restart when I accidently killed a lot of the gargoyles that I needed.

U7 and U8 were a bit too slow on my PC then too, but with DOSBOX, I can try again. I’ve just finished playing U4.

By: Scott

Scott — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 21:43:44 +0000

I remember going to the software store in December of 19XX (I don’t remember) and looking up at the wall to all the boxes. My Mom took me there to select my Christmas present. She had no idea what to get, so she ditched surprise for accuracy, and just asked me to pick. I knew I wanted an RPG and my only real choices were Wizard’s Crown and Ultima III. Wizard’s Crown was cheaper, but just looking at the box picture of Exodus and reading the back, I was hooked. I had to have that game! I opened it Christmas morning and playing it into late nights more than I can count. The game probably took longer because everytime I was swallowed by the whirlpool, I thought I had just killed all my guys…and I did not want my guys to ‘save’ as dead. So, as soon as the whirlpool got me, I opened the disk drive door and pulled the floppy out. This worked, I would just go back to the last saved game. It was not until about two months later that a friend in school told me about what lies beneath the water.
Anyway, Ultima III started it all for me. I went on to play the Bards Tale games and actually have more memories of those…what can I say…just a real RPG nerd.

By: Quill

Quill — Sat, 19 Nov 2005 08:12:42 +0000

After reading this. I went through my very old CD case and discovered that I still have the complete Ultima VII disk on CD for dos.

Cheers

By: Keldryn

Keldryn — Thu, 06 Oct 2005 19:34:19 +0000

You had me until you started talking about Ultima VII.

“By the time Ultima VII came out, I was in grad school, and even three years after it came out computers still weren’t really fast enough to actually play it and have it be bearable. It’s only in the past few years, with the success of the open-source Exult project, that playing Ultima VII has become a reasonable option for most of us.”

That is such a load of crap. Ultima VIII came out in early 1992, and my current computer was a 386/33 with 1MB of RAM. Yes, Ultima VIII ran too slow on that, but a 386SX was the bare minimum system requirement anyway. If you made an alternative boot configuration (yeah you could use a boot disk, but config.sys and autoexec.bat could be used to easily create a multi-config boot menu) and loaded a disk cache, even the one that came with DOS, the game ran much better.

That summer, I upgraded to a 486/33 with 2MB of RAM, and the game ran perfectly — other than the disk access, which was still slow without a disk cache. Running it on a 486/100 or Pentium-class system in DOS made the game too fast, and we’re talking only 3 or 4 years after the game came out. So you’re really exaggerating here.

By: Scott

Scott — Mon, 03 Oct 2005 16:47:33 +0000

I played Ultima II on an Atari 1200XL.
I didn’t know it at the time (being only 12 or 13) but there was a bug in the program such that certain needed treasures (tassels and buttons, etc) were never given by enemies and thus I could never complete the game. I played for like a year. I had conquered so many frigates that I lined them up and made a bridge of them around the whole world. I probably should’ve been playing outside or somesuch but hell, I had a good time!

By: nxtop6

nxtop6 — Sun, 04 Sep 2005 03:25:39 +0000

Same comment as others here…long-time fan of Ultima series (esp. III my first RPG on the Atari 800). Would REALLY like to find this compilation and have searched long and hard to no avail. Where can I find the files?

Please email me if you can help: nxtop6 at gmail dot com

By: possum_vashti

possum_vashti — Tue, 24 May 2005 19:15:35 +0000

WTF did you get this great collection? Does it even exist, or are these people just fucking with us? I look EVERYWHERE. Nothing. Damnit.