Ultima Series - Retrospective

MetalJesusRocks looks backs at the Ultima titles.

The ULTIMA series consisted of 9 main games released from 1981 to 1999 and was an extremely influential Computer RPG series that is still remembered fondly today. Metal Jesus & Carlos cover the 3 Ages or Trilogies as well as some of the side games and even the MMORPG. It's a fun trip down memory lane as we reminisce about why the Ultima series was one of our all-time favorites!

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More information.

In Ultima VIII: Pagan you could massacre those weird kids. Nobody gave a SHT. Earlier in Wasteland 1 C64/DOS it was accepted and nowadays the devs said you could have avoided killing the boy, who shot you with a BB rifle. Then in Fallout 1-2 it was a major problem, maybe as internet became more widespread?

I need to replay all of these for the umpteenth time.
So sad that Lord British suffered brain damage from that falling plaque.

Ultima 3-7 are all classics

I was never a huge Ultima fan. Ultima III is the only one I've ever finished, but I still plan on playing through U7 someday.

I've also been thinking about giving the Ultima V and VI remakes a try.

We shall never see their like again. I'm also due a complete replay soonish, I did go through the seventh game again about two years ago, but some earlier ones are also well worth replaying.

I had remember some idea of the source code for Ultima 9 being released, and a quick search found that the Codex got a copy of it and archived it offline for preservation.

However, it hasn't been actually released to the public and it hasn't been leaked in its five years of existence.

It was discovered from the source code there were unused and unfinished areas that weren't connected in the release which are accessible with a little hacking.

https://ultima.fandom.com/wiki/Unused_Ultima_IX_Maps

Its also possible to reverse engineer Ultima 1's source code

https://ultimacodex.com/2011/11/how-to-see-the-source-code-of-the-original-ultima-1/

Its been known for awhile how to reverse engineer Apple Basic compiled code from machine language back to the original - or at least a reasonable facsimile.

LB also made his source control available for his 28th port of DND clone (which I'm pretty sure he wasn't aware that the original authors weren't pleased about. The idea of source code on a public computer being stolen was a fairly new idea. Right Werdna and Trebor?). The next version would be Akalabeth IIRC. He also said that the dungeon code in Akalabeth were used in Ultima 1 as well - they might be these ones here.

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?p=39149

Looks like the Underworld Ascendant team have the source code for Ultima Underworld 1 and 2

https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comme...rath_and_otherside_team_doing_an_ask/cob2gg7/

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The reason I bring this up, is it would interesting if someone could finish Ultima 9 or at least add more to the game then just the slapped together RPG that it is - mostly placeaholder stuff with the intention of filling in details later.

The Ultima series is very important but to me its sort of a mixed bag. 4 and 7 are great games and 6 is interesting, but 5 sucks hard and all the games from 1-3 are simply waaaay too old to be interesting today (also, 1 and 2 have a very bad design). Never played 8 or 9.

Ultima V is fantastic no way does it suck.

The remakes of V and VI in the dungeon siege engine are great too.

I really liked Ultima 7, had the nicest world, even if combat was always a little strange... Click the button, everyone storms off, then it's looking around for bodies afterwards... Or I was just too stupid for the game ;-)

But personally, I'm strange, since I also quite enjoyed Ultima 8, the world was smaller but had some interesting places and it's own flair, even though it felt "unfinished" in some places (for example, there was a cave north of the town which was furnished like a house, just in ruins... Never found out what that was supposed to be.

JDR13 said:

… I still plan on playing through U7 someday…

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U7 was the best of the series, and drew me in like no other RPG before or since.
IMHO, it is a MUST PLAY… You won't regret it!

I think I'm turning into The Master

Please
make
the drums
staaaahp!!!

Vindicator said:

U7 was the best of the series, and drew me in like no other RPG before or since.
IMHO, it is a MUST PLAY… You won't regret it!

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My only concern is knowing so little of the lore going into it. That's why I was thinking of playing V and VI first. I've heard mixed opinions of both games though, and even the remakes are quite dated at this point. Not sure if I could really get into them.

I'm surpised there's never been a remake of IV given how popular it is and being the first game of the Age of Enlightement trilogy.

I love all the extras included in the boxed editions. Would love to get my hands on all eight of them.

Vindicator said:

U7 was the best of the series, and drew me in like no other RPG before or since.
IMHO, it is a MUST PLAY… You won't regret it!

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U7 is more of an anti-RPG, what one might call the first meta-RPG. The combat is atrocious, the inventory system is unbearable and it requires more pre-knowledge of the genre to fully appreciate than probably any other RPG other than something like Undertale.

As such it holds a special place in the pantheon of RPGs, just like Plansescape: Torment does, and just like Underale does, but the extent to which it's a must-play will depend heavily on your desire to experience something that prefers mocking RPG conventions than providing a good example of the conventions.

And you'll notice a theme here with these kind of games, the anti-RPGs, yes, they don't tend to have sequels and copy-cats. Because if they did then they'd become their own conventions, which destroys the whole point of making something purely meta and mocking.

In terms of why some people really like it beyond the joke of joking, it's probably the most adventure game/sim version of an RPG you can buy, so if you like obtuse puzzles combined with excessive backtracking to specific NPC quest-givers with as little bother from combat as possible and you like the idea of that NPC possibly not being there because they've gone to bed or fancied a walk in the fields then, sure, this game is entirely your bag.

I liked the graphics a lot, I have a very big soft spot for the lovely bright and colourful isometric designs of the early 1990s, of which Heroes of Might and Magic 1 and 2 are probably the pinacle, so for me it angered me greatly that the game didn't provide the same quality of combat gameplay that those wonderful graphics deserved.

In terms of main quest, it's one of those games where you have to get a thing, to get a thing, to get a thing, to get a thing, to get a thing, to get a thing, like most of the really obtuse adventure games. In terms of sidequests it's a bit more fun, but the constant backtracking soon drains the enthusiasm there.

The things it brought to the table for future cRPGs are all those sim-obsession things like day and night cycles, NPC schedules, the joy of baking bread for the sake of baking bread, possibly the first game with genuinely interesting and unique companions with their own agendas etc etc, but all that stuff has never really mattered to me while some people seem to think all these distractions are the only thing that matters, so I do have a very strong personal bias against it historically, even though I did give it a fair shot of a good 20-30 hours, much more than I would any other game I'm not enjoying.

In terms of whether it's a 'must play' I'd have to disagree. Meta-games are usually very much stuck in the memes and conventions of their time even more so than regular games of the same era and this game is no exception. If you've already played a lot of games from that era and need some comedy light relief of the conventions of that era, but for some reason haven't played this yet, then, sure, it's probably got something to offer, but as your first or second delve into that era, then, no, you're not going to be getting most of it's point & you'll just be frustrated by the appalling gameplay and UI.

The only reason I'd recommend this game to a 90s era newcomer would be if they had a specific thing for meta-RPGs generally, like if they only really liked Undertale or Plansescape: Torment out of either the 2000s era or modern era respectively.

I'm a huge fan of the first seven Ultima games, yeah, especially the first four. Were any of those to be remade/updated in some fashion, I'd likely replay them but for now, I played them so much in the past that I doubt I'd play them now in their original state. Seven, eight and nine I played a lot less, so those are still ripe for replays, at least for me.

At the time of its release, I didn't get any sort of mocking/meta game vibe from U7. It was too groundbreaking on its own for that. In retrospect it may be easy to view it that way, but not at the time. (well it was meta in the sense you are someone from Earth that goes into Avatar form or something like that, through your computer, but the entire game is played in the game's world and the intro is forgotten by the player)

The inventory is tough but I didn't even consider that when I played it as a teen. You put things in bags, you have to sort through the bags if there's too much things.

Now, these days, of course, it's a tedious chore in a game. There's a keyring mod. Unfortunately it's tied to a difficult quest and in my replay I started a while back, I had already obtained a bunch of those little keys and still no way to organize them.

Ultima 5 is great and the best one. It blew my mind on the C64 when I was a kid. U6 pretty great as well, with the first graphical upgrade.

I never really finished any of them, although I journeyed far and wide in each, except I did finish the U5 remake.

It's in my head that some day I will replay the originals, at least 5 and 7, to completion, then U8 because I want to.

U9 was the one that sucked hard.

I was not into computer gaming back then when the Ultima games were popular. And I looked at gameplay on youtube videos, they obviously were a product of their time with archaic graphics and interface, and everything else.

That said, I would be interested to see them remade with modern graphics and game play. Not sure why the guy who made them, or whatever company that controls them now, has not thought about this and remade them by now.

I'm talking a AAA game, with millions upon millions of dollars for the game production available. Not some fan remake or small remake. Hell, just sell the rights to some huge computer game company at the very least.

They could make a lot of money if they did it correctly, because these games have a lot of "name" value with gamers, yea, although most are older gamers, I bet they could draw young gamers in too with a good marketing campaign.

The whole meta- thing was inspired by Adventure games and you really get an Adventure/RPG hybrid feel from those first 5 Ultimas because of its use of text and having a console and even the most rudimentary of parsers for NPC conversations.

We call them primitive now but RJ was always pushing the envelope and many of the designs we still see today are because of him. Sometimes it was too his detriment.

I couldn't play Ultima 6, 7, and the Underworlds because they pushed the hardware requirements to the point where I couldn't afford the machine that could run them. He did this again with Ultima 9 to the point they couldn't finish the game properly in time. Ultima Online couldn't handle the capacity of their users.

What's odd too is the first five Ultimas show such ingenious methods for optimization on such primitive equipment like, as one of the Wizardry developers put it, the creation of an early form of virtual memory. It would be somewhere around 5 years before virtual memory, using your drive to mimic RAM, was even invented.

The Ultima series will always be a favorite. It would be nice to get modern remakes, but I feel that's extremely unlikely.

I actually started the series with V and played the heck out of it right up to the end game sequence that involved trekking underground, and then I started to hate it. When I got frustrated with it, I went out and picked up IV and played through that quickly and was then able to go back to V and finish it.

VI and VII (along with Clouds/Darkside of Xeen) are probably responsible for me ending up as a programmer rather than a database admin. I spent more time hex editing and tinkering with game files in those four games than any others. I also had a friend that got copies of something called... QuestBusters I think... a mailed newsletter about CRPGs that often gave playthrough information, puzzle solutions, and cheat codes. In one of them they had the console/codes for VI or VII or both... you could move around components inside the game, including disassembling things like houses piece by piece and putting it back together in a different location. And of course teleporting anywhere in the world, which allowed you to find that developer stash of items hidden in one of the out-of-the-way mountains where you could find copies of everything needed to finish the game.

Hated VIII and never got IX to work. I even got the collector edition or whatever it was of IX as a gift.