Ultima III: Exodus - Not-Ok Computer 

I don't remember how I beat this on the NES when I was a kid, back before there was even Gamefaqs. It was probably with the help of Nintendo Power.

@@MichaelCoorlim That'd be pretty good. I explicitly remember Ultima 3 not getting much coverage from NP.

I had the MS-DOS port as a kid. Never finished it. Took me months just to realize that Lord British would promote you if you talked to him after gaining some experience 😆 There’s lots to say about this game, but man was it bad at explaining its workings to the player. (Or maybe I was just a dumb kid, who knows.)

Won, without guide, just need paper to write down hints.

​@@astonmartin8537that's how those games were won The solution itself is really short, it just takes a long time to travel everywhere and grind levels

Sounds a lot similar to how deep I fell into Wasteland a few years later.

Glad to have been of help, and thanks for the Thanks. I'll be covering the others in the series gradually, and look forward to tackling IV after a short break.

@@MichaelCoorlimis the break over yet…

@@Beer4Breakfast I've got two non-Ultima games to cover - Deadline from Infocom this week, their first mystery interactive fiction game, and King's Quest from Sierra next week. Then it's on to Ultima four!

Space Rogue is on the list of possibilities. If I could find a good spin on Elite I'd add that too, but it doesn't have as much meat on its wireframe.

@@MichaelCoorlim Elite Plus was released for DOS in 1991, I think it is VGA at least. I've never played it though. I did play the DOS CGA release. I'm not sure I'm qualified to pilot a Cobra Mark III any more.

Oh wow I had forgotten Space Rogue. Goodness, I haven't thought about that one in years!

I'd seen the Apple II port of Ultima first when I was in grade school, but Ultima III was definitely the first one that I was able to actually finish - even if a lot of that was sheer luck!

I share that sentiment. A childhood friend had a copy of Ultima III on his Apple II and we would often load it up and spend a couple hours playing. We were basically just wandering around and getting destroyed by monsters. Seeing what is actually involved to progress in the game, I am convinced that we barely scratched the surface. Michael has edited out most of the grinding and I am still left in awe of the magnitude of grinding necessary.

I have a copy of it for nes, but like you i could never really figure out what to do. Imma watch this and then give it another go. I beat dragon warrior on nes, but that game is simplistic and easier to understand (still another great rpg)

I have a copy of it for nes, but like you i could never really figure out what to do. Imma watch this and then give it another go. I beat dragon warrior on nes, but that game is simplistic and easier to understand (still another great rpg)

I have a copy of it for nes, but like you i could never really figure out what to do. Imma watch this and then give it another go. I beat dragon warrior on nes, but that game is simplistic and easier to understand (still another great rpg)

Glad you appreciate it. My first big C64 RPG was Wasteland - I look forward to eventually covering that one as well.

Good NES specific tips!

It was one of those series you had to grow with to enjoy the early games - there wasn't anything better at the time.

It's a strong tactic.

C64 version was one I never played (despite having a C64) but I hear it was a good one.

Glad the format is working out for you!

I'll be taking a break to cover Infocom's Deadline and maybe something else, but then get back to Ultima IV.

@@MichaelCoorlim A rad "special feature" might be a Lord British character history/analysis, informed by or in parallel with the non-fictional counterpart's biography. Like plotting that long arc after or at a key moment in the series.

I remember Questron. I may cover it at some point... it's pretty obscure, and they ripped off Ultima so bad that they were forced to pay a license for the engine.

I think in Richard Garriott's case he was just coming up with gameplay challenges and not considering the moral reality of the setting. This changes big time in Ultima IV, and it's a big enough impact that it changes how a lot of CRPGs take those actions into account.

Not an actual thing you can do for more than a few reasons!

I was strongly considering a 2 Wizard, 2 Cleric party, but for showing off the tactical combat elements decided that the standard Fighter/Mage/Thief/Cleric party was better.

Those artifacts are gaming treasure.

Thanks! I'll be covering Deadline next, and at some point I'd like to touch on Lurking Horror, Suspended, Planetfall, and a few others.

Feels like I used to be able to talk for longer without getting tripped up. Part of getting older, I guess!

Hahaha! Lets not get ahead of ourselves ;)

Surprisingly most of the changes had more to do with the NES not having a keyboard and using the Dragon Quest style menu system instead. The NES version did have changed dialog - altered to make it less poetic and more straightforward where clues were concerned, but most NPCs had a lot more to say overall.

@@MichaelCoorlim Wow, I read the Fuzzy novels as a kid but never connected them to the Fuzzy race in the game. That's wild. I would never have imagined the NES port had *more* dialogue! The graphics and music were certainly different, but as I didn't own a PC at the time, I had nothing to compare them to. I do seem to recall there was a named NPC called Sherry, who if you brought her flowers, gave you a compass? Am I remembering that right, or was that from another game? My party was a Ranger, Thief, Cleric, Wizard, all equipped with the strongest ranged weapons I could afford- I never wanted to come to blows with baddies if I could help it. I let the Ranger. "Bcang" lead (don't ask me how I came up with the name, I have no idea, it may have been short for something?), but always let the thief open chests and pick locks, of course. IIRC, instead of a single character, the whole party was shown walking in a line- which meant monsters had a better chance of catching you, especially in dark forests where you couldn't see where they were.

@@NevTheDeranged Yes - Sherry was a NES exclusive character. The compass was a great item that would teleport you to the Castle at any time - even in combat or in a dungeon. Each character in your party could carry one at a time.

@@MichaelCoorlim It's also interesting that Ambrosia in the NES port used a totally different tileset, making it seem much more mysterious and special. I have fond memories of sneaking through the forest mazes, desperately hoping not to encounter too many demons before I could find a shrine, while the eerie music urged me onward. In fact, all the music on the NES version was a little bit intense, at least in my memory. Definitely a fantasy vibe, but with an edge of urgency and danger in it. I don't think ranged attacks worked in the overworld map on the NES port, either for monsters or the player?

Yeah, I'm covering Sierra's King's Quest next, then returning for Ultima IV.

You raise some good points. I was considering a sidebar on the screen with the map (and maybe hand drawn dungeon maps) but it would probably be easier to just buy gems to pop every time I entered a new area.

Oh yeah - early days PC versions were pretty dire. I had a C64 too, for a lot of the early games.

@@MichaelCoorlim Yeah I have a lot of affection for the C64. It was my first PC. Commodores custom graphics and music chips really were amazing for the day. I played Ultima IV on the C64 and had to borrow my friends floppy drive to play it. One of the best summer holidays ever :)

Glad to hear it!

Glad you're liking the series! There's more to come.

Yeah I think that was a "cheat" that a lot of us used in these games. I remember doing it in Might & Magic, and later Wasteland.

Glad to hear it!

Glad I could help you get a good look at them.

Back in the day we loaded games off of cassette tapes. You'd set a game to load, go have dinner, then come back and wait a little longer for it to load.

He really didn't start thinking about the moral implications of Lord British having a secret torture dungeon until Ultima IV.

Lord British was always kind of a jerk, charging you money so you can help *him*. Later on he becomes downright incompetent. Also Ultima III is the first Ultima (I think) where you can kill Lord British, I won't give the spoiler here but it's easy to find. Richard Garriott obviously could take a joke and either put that stuff in himself or later left it as an easter egg if his programmers did it.

This is the easiest way to grind for gold in the early game. The clerics go down easily, but there is still danger - the chests they drop can be trapped, and trapped chests do some serious damage. Since the towns reset upon exit and re-entry, this murder spree can be repeated indefinitely. This game requires so much grind that it encourages the player to be a murder hobo. Because the first three Ultima games had trained me to be a murder hobo, I had a bit of a tough time with Ultima IV at first until I figured out that the game requires the player to not be a jerk.

@@heatherharrison264 Roger that. I finished 2 and 3 and started 4 and 5 but never completed them … the difficulty to fun ratio was just too high for me. By the time 6 rolled around I was in college and didn’t have enough time to game by that point.

@@shinankoku2 I was in middle school when Ultima IV came out, so I had plenty of time on my hands. It took a while, but I finished it. The tedious, grindy, repetitive combat is its weakest point. I eventually figured out how to sector-edit the floppy disks to modify the world map in a way that bottled up a lot of the roaming monsters so that I didn't have to fight them all the time. I loved that game at the time despite the grind, but I've tried to play it recently and have a hard time tolerating it. I never finished Ultima V at the time - it was just too much trouble despite the excellent story and world building. I eventually finished it many years after it came out. Nowadays, I see little reason to play the original since a great fan-made remake - Ultima V Lazarus - is available as a mod for Dungeon Siege. There is also a similar remake for Ultima VI, though the original is still quite playable due to a much better game engine. These remakes are long games, with additional NPCs and quests that weren't in the originals, but they are great Ultima experiences, and while Dungeon Siege is a bit of a janky and primitive engine by today's standards, it is a lot more modern and streamlined than the originals. Combat in Dungeon Siege can be tough, but it is real time with pause, so it goes a lot more quickly than the original Ultima V, and there is an easy difficulty option for people who are more interested in the story and exploration than the fights. Ultima IV could really use a remake, but I haven't heard of any fan groups taking it on.

That seems to be a common sentiment in the comments that I'm getting.

Thanks for the kind words!

I've played Questron, but mostly I know it for being forced to pay Origin for the license to Ultima because it was so derivative.

I'm having difficulties with 5. Finished it, had some technical problems with the video, basically have to do it again and the thought of replaying it right away is painful. But we'll see what happens and how quickly.

@@MichaelCoorlim yeah Ultima 5 is a monster of a game, even with a clue book. The Underworld is a major pain!

Have to agree there - Ultima VII and part 2 were my favorite entries in the series. Traded a Death of Superman comic - still in the bag - for a copy.

@@MichaelCoorlim It's too bad that 8 was bad and 9 was a crime against humanity.

I want to think that giving 8 another chance will be worth it... but its production was rough so my expectations aren't high.

I love doing research, and it'd be a shame not to discuss it!

They're on the list of potential late 80s/early 90s games.

Very true. Given that he reconstructs the engine from scratch every time, it's impressive how long he goes as basically a solo developer.

Ah yes! I had forgotten you could import characters! I think that had a significant role in how I beat the game : somebody gave me a disc with a level 99 thief and I used it to train up my own characters

You get it.

@MichaelCoorlim in fact my UO account is still active today! I have a castle on Pacific.

OddWorld was really fresh feeling for just that reason.

Yeah, a few games have you send away to Origin when you win.

Good tip, but I just hate juggling gold.

@@MichaelCoorlimHate juggling gold? First Sosarian problems! [/jk]

Absolutely. Taking a break for an Infocom game and King's Quest, then back for IV.

I'm critical of Ultima III because that's what I'm doing - critical analysis - but I hope it comes across that I respect the game for what it does right, what it creates, what it adds to the CRPG genre. There are a lot of "firsts" in the games, for all their problems - they do have a historical place of honor. However, as fond as I am of the games, from the comments I'm getting it's clear that a lot of people would rather watch deep dives into these older games than play them themselves. And honestly? I respect that 100%. They're not easy to play, and some of the design choices make them not terribly fun compared to what comes after. That doesn't make them less important. Just not good for a casual non-nostalgia playthrough, I guess.

It's probably related to the removal of the other fantasy races after III then. Richard Garriott's Sosaria/Brittania became a lot less derivative as the games went on.

The GBA Ultima 3 port project has a part 2 that is much harder and utilizes some interesting features and commands. The FM-Towns version has an interesting ending and cinematics. I would love a remake of the entire series utilizing bits of each version and maybe more options like in Ultima 4-8.

Might be doable in stages... start with a game like Ultima 1, where you need to drop down in dungeons and kill certain monsters at certain levels. Then layer on some innovations from other games, stage by stage - more towns and NPCs, clue chains to follow to enable the end-game, etc.

Makes sense, since Questron basically licensed the Ultima engine (after they were forced to in court)

@@MichaelCoorlim Truth... but I didn't know any of that at the time, so the business and IP concerns were not thought of - I just enjoyed the game. :)

@@RPGMusings Sometimes that's all that matters!

It's really a nice patch, has a few other fixes possible worked into it. You can decide what parts of it to activate depending on what kind of experience you desire.

@@MichaelCoorlim I just downloaded the patch and tried it in DOSBox-0.74, I haven't tried the options yet. I used the Ultima Collection version for the patch and the Exodus Project patch recognized it fine. There are plenty of enemies with the patch, including ships. VGA and stereo music are nice. I keep getting lost though and had to dig out my moon gate and spell cheat sheet.

Look at those low rates!

NES version was probably my first exposure to III, but I'd played 1 on the Apple II at the library.

I never figured the logic of this one either. That reveal was like "Wait, what now?"

Nah, nah nah. All of that "child" stuff is misconception from unenlightened minds of their enemies. Which couldn't grasp the ultimate goal of Mondain after achieving immortality was to make an absolutely kickass gaming PC. Minax was there to help debug and optimize the thing. Using time travel for that might seem strange but CTRL Z wasn't invented yet. I don't know the specs but the whole thing was watercooled by the oceans of Sosaria and his controller setup was so amazing the gargoyles are still talking about it.

Quest For Glory was a good series. It's definitely on the list.

Death Gultch. You can bribe your way in, and steal some chests which sets off the guards. Skipped it because the PC version doesn't have any clues there, and grinding Snake Dungeon Level 1 is faster. Might be worth visiting for clues in the NES port.

Absolutely. And I'm not trying to recapture that experience; instead I'm approaching them as a game developer and narrative designer doing an analysis of the games' elements. I don't shy away from critical commentary but when I mention a flaw or a problem it's not because the game is "bad," it's because "this is where the state of game development was at this time." Obviously Ultima as a series has a long way to go in 1983, but I'm going to do my best to keep that historical context in mind.

@@MichaelCoorlimabsolutely, you’re doing a fantastic job and apologies again for my melancholic overreach. I will add however that sometimes the non-intuitive/obscurity of the mechanics and puzzles of these early games had a bizarre appeal in the pre-Internet days. Like it was some secretive, hermetic knowledge that when it became open to you, bestowed a special sense of ownership. A road no-one else had travelled. The secrets were so much more secretive back then.

I think that a big part of it was that the kind of person willing to get these games running on a PC in the first place had to solve a puzzle just to play, to get the game running with the right kind of expanded or extended memory and to get their sound card working at the same time as their other hardware. Just running programs in DOS could be half hacking.

@@MichaelCoorlim ha… very true. I have some fantastic memories of tinkering when I was a teen, installing cards and mucking around with DOS. The arrival of Windows took away some of that magic. Btw, would love to see a Bard’s Tale analysis, there’s not much up about it online. I’m a fiend for SSI Gold Box/Silver Box series but I feel that’s been covered more. Although maybe Hillsfar or War of the Lance could be an interesting aside. There’s definitely some more obscure ones but you’re not likely to get much interest if it’s too niche. Look forward to the next whatever it is!

@@The3Basics My secret evil plan is to lure in new viewers with the big popular titles then when they're good and hooked give them videos on the more obscure stuff, like Autoduel or Sundog: Frozen Legacy.

Yeah; gargoyles and Emps were the "friendly" races in U7.

I've got it down on my "maybe" list. It'd be higher if they'd actually made the other games in the series, but cancelled series depress me a little.

Back in the day we had no other choice!