I was searching for a comparison between the DOS and Amiga releases of Civilization and ended up on your website, and then proceeded to binge all your content. I absolutely love that you use original hardware and a CRT when recording and taking screenshots - it's a completely different look than you get with modern screens. (There are some shaders that can get close with 4k monitors, but it's still not quite there.) Keep up the fantastic work!
Thanks. Might start to look even better with the Amiga soon, as I've been considering hooking it up to a CRT television as opposed to the RGB CRT it is currently hooked up to. The RGB look is better for some things, but my work with the C64 recently is pulling me toward the composite look for the Amiga.
There's an Ultima IX? I've never played Ultima, so it was nice to see this. What I like about your reviews is that it is a combination of a Let's Play with a documentary of the history of the game, and commentary of your personal experience. It's unique, and I don't see anyone else doing it like this. And I've always loved the name, Lord British. 😂
Ultima IX was born of that final stage of the inevitable EA takeover, if you know what I mean. The giant eats you up, but at first they throw money at you and your company (Origin in this case) stays where they always were, operating separately. So your first stuff with EA on board tends to be good (Wing Commander 3/4), but after a few years EA slowly takes control, firing more and more of the original staff before moving the entire company to California, demanding certain projects get worked on over others (Ultima Online), and setting strict release dates for others. The result was an early example of what is so common for EA today, they release a game way before it's ready with too many bugs, and in the case of Ultima IX it couldn't even be completed if I recall. We got shipped a patched CD for free at some point, that's how embarrassing it was for them at the time, they paid to send everyone a patched version. Also, that one tended to insult the intelligence of the fans, kind of written for the newcomer while throwing in all this fan service, kind of like Star Wars now, so it angered the fans. Since I had never played the other games much and it was really the first time I played an Ultima, I didn't feel any of that stuff, I liked it. And the gameplay itself, once patched, was fine. Less of an RPG and more of an action RPG, like this first game actually. It looked beautiful, I mean some of the graphics wouldn't be out of place today. Late 90's, probably going for the console market. Not a bad game, but it is truly hated by the fans of the series.
No thoughts in particular, I've never been into MMORPGs, especially the recurring price. I don't like how it's portrayed falsely as the first one, Neverwinter Nights was the first MMORPG. Other than that, I've only caught the smallest of footage of it over the years.
The one that started a legend. Not just the Ultima series, but along with The Temple of Apshai and Wizardry an entire genre. A journey through space and time. My written review with loads of pics/gifs/5000+ words: shot97retro.blogspot.com/2023/04/blog-post.html
Really fun review that took me waaaaay back. I played this (briefly) on an Apple II+ with a green monochrome monitor. Man - the C64 version looks SO good (sounds kinda brutal, though). I like how you compared the dungeons to Vectrex graphics, as I was thinking the same thing. I've never played the original Wizardry game but I know it took a similar approach to its dungeons (and both came out around the same timeframe I think). One of my favorite games as a kid, Legacy of the Ancients, was based off an engine later billed as an Ultima clone - to the point the people who made it were sued by Richard Garriott and settled out of court. LotA looked and sounded leagues better but the similarities were there. What I liked about it circled my mind during your review: a mix of fantasy and science fiction (check), relatively short game (check) and made to win and enjoy without too much difficulty (check). Makes me want to try out Ultima I some day even more now. 👍
I didn't get into it because a good game is a good game, but this series not getting more polish on the 64 is shameful. The one excuse that straight ports have for the Amiga is that you'd be doing extra work for a system that wouldn't be selling as much as others... Well, I'm willing to bet most of the early Ultima's sold more on the 64 than any other machine, for Origin to do what amounts to straight Apple II ports to the 64 when that's your best selling machine, awful. And actually in the case of Ultima the Amiga actually got treated better than the 64 for the most part, there was often a little Amiga polish, especially the 3rd game. The 64 versions are still better than the Apple II, but that wasn't hard to accomplish for a system with 8 colors. Give me some tunes at least! Just that Garriot continued to use the same engine over and over again until 1990... I know why, it's because people that learned to program on the Apple II only ever programmed for the Apple II, learning on that machine did not translate elsewhere. There's a lot of famous developers that started on the Apple II, which is why there were still Apple II games coming out in 1990. Not because the machine was selling, but because programmers couldn't make the transition. They'd design it and then hand it over to a publisher and then others would port the game. People that started on the Atari 800 could go to 64, people on the 64 could go to the Amiga, people on the Amiga could go to DOS, people on the Apple II were often stuck there. But still, they're good games and unlike the Amiga peeps the people on the 64 didn't seem to notice they were getting straight ports. The sound though, sad. But the dungeons, great.. I guess different people were responsible for doing different areas of the 64 port. One guy did the Mondain fight and the towns, another guy did the overworld, one guy did the intro... Whoever did the dungeon did it well. I was reading that a Japanese company came to Origin because they wanted them to port a game of theirs to America or something. They're in the meeting room showing off the game and they go to the store, and it's a copy of one of the Ultima's designs.. So he goes "hmmm" but shrugs it off, not overt and after all they've come to them, inspiration is understandable. Goes somewhere else and finds an exact pixel for pixel copy of a pic or something and the guy doing the presentation panics, puts his head down and leaves. Origin ended up suing them. But I know Sierra made a couple games using the actual Ultima engine, but they couldn't be sued because of how the contract was worded for Ultima 1 and 2. Of course I know Sierra, they wouldn't have been able to push out their own versions of Ultima 2 for long without updating it a little, and they didn't have the talent to add to the code. I could imagine them selling the engine to others though and those people working on it more, ha. But I mean tiled graphics and 3D dungeons, I don't know how you copyright that.
