does anyone know good games like this to play.. i never had computer before 2004.. so in gaming clubs, most people in my country played just the usual competitive games like quake2,counterstrike classic,wc3,RA2,starcraft etc.. and the Runescape open beta craze in 1998 ;DDD and Planetarion (browser tick game.. wich had 120k players at one point... cant still believe everyone thought it was super good and interesting game.. alliances, diplomacy, war and backstabbing thru spreadsheets loool... :D ) rpg games like this werent a thing in my culture
@@Microphunktv-jb3kj You could just play Ultima 7 and Ultima 7 Part 2 (pro tip for those games: organize your inventory!), since we are already in the Ultima series here. Those were the two best games in it (opinion) and started a new trilogy (which ended in disaster for the series, thanks EA). But other than that are we talking about good rpgs from 1985-2004? Because that's a lot of games and "good" is relative, most didn't age very well. Most of them I would put squarely into the "It's interesting because it's history now" camp. I'm sure there are tons of lists on the internet.
I can't believe you don't have more views. The research, structure, delivery, never downplaying or overblowing your subject matter. I mean, yeah, 2 hour video essays about decades old games is a niche interest, but there should be a much larger niche for your stuff
@@MrEdders123 Every one of your vids bears a strong seal of quality that I do not find in other reviews/retrospectives. The OP is right: you deserve way more views!
this was one of the games that really helped me learn to read as a kid. i never beat it because it was too complicated for my little kid brain but i did explore a ton of the map
My man, you don't know how much your videos help me to sleep. I know it sounds bad, like: "It's so boring I snooze to it!", but I mean that I love falling asleep listening to something I want to hear, the history of old games more than anything. It's like falling asleep while someone tells you a really good story, you always want to go back to the video and hear the rest when you're awake again
The Xenozoic was always an interesting take on the "Lost World" theme as it takes place in the future instead of the past. Turok was also neat in how it mixed stuff from all over history.
There's a particular charm to games like this. I think it's how little they hold your hand - here you are, stuck in a vast jungle. You're not told where to go, you don't know where things are, you just have to... figure it out. And that gives exploring the world a feeling of discovery.
Check out Denis Loubet's site (he actually does commissions, though isn't taking any new orders last I checked), or some of Keith Berdak's other fantasy work.
Ultima is one of those massive blind spots I always meant to catch up on as foundational building blocks of videogame history go, so I'm definitely looking forward to watching the rest of this soon! Great video as always so far.
6, 7, and Underworld at the very least are definitely worth playing as actually great games, outside of any historical context. You're probably better off using Exult for U7, and Nuvie for U6, if you're not accustommed to playing older games, though.
@@neddymerrill I'm an Ultima fan going back to 1 on my C64. I can't stand 7. Its a tech demo thats not remotely fun to play if you like good combat or character advancement. If the bugs don't count i honestly consider 9 a much better game.
My little brother and I played the crap out of this game as kids. Ugyuk and Kysstaa were two of my favorite characters back then, probably because they were super unique and having a caveman and a lizardman in your team just seemed cool to me back then. For some reason I always hated Dokray, don't remember why.
Phenomenal work. It’s amazing how many early PC games have been forgotten and basically disregarded due to how much PC gaming has changed and advanced over time
Ultima, including these spinoffs, is very far from being forgotten as CRPGs go. It's just that the market has grown exponentially, so most people nowadays may have never even played an actual PC game. I don't think the games themselves "evolved"; large studios stopped making PC games a long time ago in favor of console games that can be easily ported to PC.
PC gaming hasn't advanced in any way except graphically. If I could have seen the future of gaming when I was a kid, I would have been super disappointed. And I am now.
I get the impression that people do know that Ultima exists and that it was an influential series, but at the same time it seems like barely anyone plays it nowadays even when other old games (DOOM, HoMM, Fallout) still have a relatively strong playerbase
YES! He protecc, he attack, he with two hour vid bacc! And it's obscure Ultima shit. This'll be great! Especially since I need to write some 35 applications in the next few hours!
I can definitely see what the cover artist was going for, and I think he did a pretty awesome job. I love all those old pulp covers, and Frazetta's work is so inspiring. Anyway great job on the video, I have no idea how you get these out so fast, but I'm loving it!
1:57:10 lmao!! I had to rewind and listen to that again. I thought, "Wait a second, was that a Cleve reference??" Hilarious! Excellent video, as always.
Oh man, a Worlds of Ultima game set within the Arthurian legend would have been awesome. It's a shame that the Worlds series never caught enough traction. The imagination runs wild at the many adventurous possibilities.
There's some contention over whether it was technically a "Worlds" title - Spector specifically labelled it as such, but other Origin staff say it was a standalone title. Maybe there were two different projects. 😶
@@thecappeningchannel515 Originally Ultima was more strongly influenced by LOTR and D&D - Ultima 0/Aklabeth was version 28B of Garriot's "DND" project. There's some controversy concerning the origins of the eight virtues, but I'd rather not comment on it having not researched the subject too thoroughly.
@@thecappeningchannel515ltima is more of a mashup of all sorts of different influences. In addition to the traditional fantasy and medieval tropes the series has featured space combat, an evil supercomputer, laser guns and several interdimensional conflicts. Admittedly the majority of the pulp science fiction content is in the first three games, with Ultima 4 as a bit of a reboot which removes most of the anachronistic content in relation to Ultima's medieval aesthetics, but even though the series as a whole pulls a lot from the book A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (your character being a person from modern day who travels to the world of Ultima) it's only really the base concept that comfortably maps on to the inspiration. Were an Ultima game to explicitly reference Arthurian legends it would be a quite significant divergence from the established setting. Ultima 6, the game that this game is built upon, is a story about how (in service to Lord British's ambition to create a religious order to establish the player character as a religious figure in Ultima 4 who should be held up as an ideal for the people of his kingdom to emulate in light of the service you have given his kingdom) the codex of ultimate wisdom was stolen from the inhabitants of a parallel dimension, who have the appearance of biblical demons but wouldn't have been motivated to do anything to aggress against the Britannian state and its people if they had been left alone and hadn't had an interdimensional traveller burst into their sacred temple and murder the people there in cold blood before absconding with their most important religious text. Honestly, I do kind of respect the fact that Garriott created a universe where his self-insert is arguably a horrible despot who uses the player character's expectations in relation to his role within the game world to further his agenda (though this mostly applies to games 4-6, with 7 onwards featuring an unambiguously evil antagonist who just wants to dominate the multiverse and destroy any and all worlds that won't bend to his will. It's less of a critique of Lord British and more of a dark counterpart to the player character, kind of like a canonical version of the type of players who use the freedom afforded by the game to inflict horrible acts of cruelty on the people of the world, or would focus their efforts on learning the spell that kills everyone else in the world. Ultima 8 follows through on the idea by having the player stranded in another universe which the player must destroy in order to return to save Britannia, which is a great setup for the 9th game but is unfortunately walked back and not really explored as much as it should be. The player character finished the last game with a genocide that literally tore apart reality and it's not really mentioned in Ultima 9, instead being a more by the numbers story of The Avatar saving the kingdom from being destroyed by a big evil red guy who just seems to be standing around, waiting for you to come get him for the majority of the game)
I don't know why, but I have watched this upload twice now. There is just something to it that makes it very enjoyable and soothing. Maybe because The Savage Empire reminds me a bit of Secret of Evermore and that game was super nostalgic for me.
Honestly i love this channel even though i have never played most of the games you cover and the fact that they are almost all older than myself i love learning about gaming history and your voice is just so nice to listen to while i work
Thanks! Yeah I try to aim the videos at both people who might play the games one day and people who have never and will never play them. There are an almost infinite number of retro games out there, so memorializing some of them is better than nothing :)
Another splendid video, thank you for all the time and work put into it. I was never the biggest Ultima fan, but Lost World concepts, adventure/rpg hybrids like quest for glory, ERB novels, and art by Frazetta, Valejo, and others, or anything of that ilk, are all right up my alley. Savage Empire may not be my dream game in such a setting, but I'm certainly glad that someone tried at all.
You may have already seen it, but Troika's Tim Cain recently made a short video talking about the abandoned Arcanum 2, which would've been a hollow world magic/science setting.
i dont understand how you can be at under 7k subs, your content is extremely well structured, researched and put together! Keep up the great work, your channel is a hidden gem (for now!)
glad to have found ur channel dude , subbed ; absolutely enjoyed your reviews of BG1/2 and ID1/2 ; the fondness in my heart for the Ultima series is hard to put into words
MrEdders knows what he's doing with that Thumbnail lol. But I have to say, on top of the general high quality of the research that goes into these retrospectives, I love how you choose games that have something of name value but are obscure enough that they aren't on GOG. This encourages retro-players to wish-request these kind of games and try and breathe interest to the ones that are long forgotten.
I know i say this in literally every comment section for your videos but...These reviews are always so ridiculously detailed and well done, you deserve more success even if you want to keep it as a hobby and not a job.
What a great and in depth video! I've been trying to get into the Ultima series for years after seeing the Spoony videos, and after getting this and Martian Dreams for free on GOG, I'm going to try booting this up tomorrow!
Very nice retrospective! What I like most about this game is the "lost world" setting, because it is a breath of fresh air in the world of RPGs, so full of medieval or sci-fi fantasy.
Can't lie, i love watching your retrospectives, they are great. I guess i just like this type of content, when ever i work or do any thing instend of listing to music, i lisen to video like thos, a your channel sir is one of my favriets. Thank you so much for meaking vidoes like this.
Just found out your channel few days ago and really admired your contents. I hope you will keep doing them and cover those gems (especially huge respects for İcewind Dale reviews)
I'm subbed b ut never get notifications that you've posted for some reason (this randomly showed up in my recommended, at least) - but i just want to say thank you for the time and work you put into these old games. In some way, i feel that you're keeping the history of gaming alive, in a way that supplements a 'long play' of a game, by giving more 'behind the scenes details'
I think you have to subscribe and "ring the bell" or whatever. It's a common issue with RU-vid. I don't really bother mentioning it in my videos as I personally find it a bit pushy/annoying to hear it in the videos I watch lol
I try to jump around from early 90s to late 90s and sometimes early 00s. Pre-90s games can be tricky to translate to videos because of the limited production values - some only have one music track and barely any audio. I'll probably have to rely a bit on the Amiga port when I get round to doing Pool of Radiance, for example.
@@MrEdders123 The VG&CE mention just reminded me that Kunkel, Katz and Joyce left VG&CE by August 1992 and the magazine stopped covering computer games altogether by August 1993. Some of the last crpgs they reviewed were Wizardry 7 and Darklands in late 1992, and Ultima Underworld 2, U7 Serpent Isle and Betrayal at Krondor in 1993. Most of the games you've done so far haven't overlapped with the interval spanned by VG&CE.
Ultima 6 was my absolute favorite. I must have played that from beginning to end at least three times. 3 times seems like a short number, but that game was MASSIVE!
Remember playing this alot as a kid. I never got anywhere in it but it was fun to just run around in. Great video and looking thru your released videos I'm going to be watching alot of them!
Your videos are exceptional. I appreciate you refusing to bow to the modern hand-wringing over things from the 90s, even if you took a while to get there.
I absolutely adore your “trailers” for every game you cover. Reminds me of the wonderful sense of pace that another youtuber also manages to capture via his editing: Oliver Harper, although he does it for film.
Wow this was absolutely excellent. I covered this one about a year ago and you just absolutely blew me away with even more details on the background than I had. Excellent stuff, I hope I can make videos a fraction as good as you do some day!
Thanks dawg! I watched your video as part of my research - didn't do much work myself other than emailing Contato to clarify a couple of things. I aways try to make my videos comfy longform things for before bed or whatever - I think most people would prefer a more concise and informative version haha (one Ultima fansite called my video "overly academic"!!!!). Will hopefully be making a Martian Dreams video this year, though I'd like to try emailing a few people as I'm not sure I have enough to say about the background without repeating stuff from this video 🤔
@@MrEdders123 I'm actually almost done playing Martian Dreams so I may send out some emails. I'll let you know if I find out anything interesting. I agree that Contato's book doesn't have much on Martian Dreams. And it means a lot that my video was an inspiration for yours. I love the long form style that you do though! Anything to learn a bit more and get some different perspectives!
Thanks! I don't have TTMG in front of me but I recall one of the writers saying he had a vaguely cyberpunk-ish bent with early drafts of Martian Dreams. I also remember one point of contention was who actually wrote the original design doc ("Victorian time travel" iirc) before the producer swap. If you haven't read it already, you could check out the Digital Antiquarian's Martian Dreams review from a few years back, I think he was much more interested in it than he was in Savage Empire @@MSDOSProject
I self taught myself how to play this game around ‘97-‘99 It came on a disc with a sound blaster sound card It was fortunate I’d played the wing commander series first. With that “n” was navigation, “g” was guns, “s” was shields etc So “m” for move, “t” for talk, “a” for attack mode made sense But man these controls were hard to master
Thanks! There are some interesting essays and such on the topics. Unfortunately you have to be very critical of everything you read about the authors' views on race, as people writing on the topic are often either ridiculously sensationalistic and liken them to Nazis, or downplay their actual views due to their admiration of them (e.g. a lot of essays at ERBzine).
@MrEdders123 The Virgin Romanticisation of the Mighty Whitey versus the Chad Understanding how savage many of these tribes were (in some cases, diplomatic envoys got eaten!), and knowing where the whole idea of the white man's burden came from.
@@KopperNeoman they are both the same thing. with the next major collapse of the global empire we will se how biology is more determinstic than current day political fantasies about how we are "all equal" lmao.
Having never played any of the Ultima games, I'd be really, really interested to see you cover Ultima VII, as the CEO of Larian, Swen Vincke, has multiple times said that it's his favorite game and the one which inspired him to do Divinity: Original Sin 1 and 2 and Baldur's Gate III and push the boundaries of what games could do. Love the way you cover games from unearthing their background and history to looking at the game itself. Keep up the good work!
I was just old enough to be aware of magazine ads and box arts but didn't own a PC. As a later member of the UO cult, you have scratched a particular itch I couldn't explore with modern sensibilities. The ins and outs of game teams who operated as a strange mix of cottage industries and rock stars (Origin, Sierra) is especially interesting history. Thanks for your thorough research and keen observation.
Thanks Andrea! I just finished reading Part II of Through the Moongate :D I'll undoubtedly be consulting it again the next time I cover an Ultima game :D
I had to come back to this multiple times, but it was SO worth watching. (Also a great many thanks for making most of the sections self-contained and ordering them the way you did, that also made watching it in big segments easier!) For the neanderthals, I think that what the manual was awkwardly saying was that they're looking like pop-culture neanderthals (short, brutish, gorilla/orangutan-like, kinda look like they got an ACME anvil dropped on them and they got shortened and widened) as opposed to what archeology already knew neanderthals were like (most likely not very different from humans, and definitely not anything like "ape-men"). It very much sounds like their research partner gave them The Lecture on Neanderthals and Misconceptions, and they all nerded out and tried to shove that into their professor's analysis without putting the entire lecture in as a cool "LOOK WHAT I LEARNED TODAY". (I love it when nerds just go LOOK WHAT I LEARNED, drop a fact, refuse to elaborate, and then leave.)
I’ve beefed playing through the Ultima series and am just blown away at how good these games are. I’m currently playing through Ultima Underworld and can’t get over at how amazing it is.
[A low-content comment] I'd never heard of this game before, and I don't have a lot of knowledge about Ultima in general, but this was a really nice video! Enjoyed it for sure.
This was a fascinating watch, thank you As for recommendations: Albion (1995) could very much fit into this kind of category. I never actually played it particularly far, but ever since i played a demo of it as a kid, it's been in the back of my mind
Boy you put a lot of work into this. I watched it not because I like this game at all or the series. I put it on thinking it was about a comic 😂 but your passion for this game really pull me in. I remembered in the past... 2005 or something, some people wanted this game removed off some site because of racism. It was this one or a similar older game like this one. It was a long time ago. Funny how people got mad in the 2000's & not when it first came out
The lost world literature part of the review was very very enjoyable, informative and interesting. I find quite interesting to learn of another side of this Rubix cube we call life and history, just to glimpse your minds eye towards the past and learn q bit more about why and how the they thought the way they thought, which even in the worst scenario seems adequate in a very grand scope of things to me, it has to happen tho few psychos wish for it. I also enjoyed a lot your neutral tone towards that subject.
Honestly, I can never get into the Ultima lore, even though it basically an important history for PC Roleplaying game that is not Japanese. Still an interesting spin off where instead of medieval fantasy period, set in modern day
I didn't grow up with the Ultima games, and by the time I started playing PC games, their fourth-wall-breaking ye olde renaissance faire setting seemed a bit silly compared to the other fantasy games on the market.
@@MrEdders123 Yes indeed. I think Japanese RPG like Final Fantasy when it was officially released in US and European NES was much more popular among younger generation (our gen) while Ultima was more for adults, especially back when PC was uncommon device in normal households and really was for business people or rich nerds with disposable income to buy a PC.
@@hanchiman That was my impression when I was growing up, yeah. Although Might and Magic was still chugging along, Diablo, Fallout and Baldur's Gate seemed to make the WRPG "cool" again.
@@MrEdders123 As I mentioned, I grew up in Sweden and the game Nintendo distribution by "Bergsala" here in Sweden was a bit "dictatorship" in a way (not to mention they kinda price hike the price of Nintendo games, Sweden has the most expensive NES game compared to say in England). Alot of RPG games like Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest or even the NES version of Ultima was never released here in Sweden in the 1980 as they (Bergsala) think that kids in Sweden can't understand English and there is alot of reading so it will be boring. (Swedish schools during the 80's to 90's didn't have basic English lesson until you were in Middle School). Although Action "RPG" do exist as they call Zelda as an "RPG". Although during Super Nintendo time period they did release Final Fantasy 4 but it kinda flopped in sales. I think Final Fantasy 7 was the true "Mainstream" JRPG game that even in Europe starting to like and understand how it works and no longer the "reserved to nerds" where it also pave the way for Pokemon that was also released around the same year for Game Boy
The first CD game I ever owned had two games on it Ultima 4(?) And Wing commander. As a child I started both games over and over but even after puzzling out how to use the manual to get past the opening I never got very far before dying quickly and terribly. I've wanted to get into the series over the years. But after the initial excitement of an opening I'm quickly lost and confused with the expanse of choices surrounding me.
Didn't spoony say he was gonna cover this before? sad his craziness took over amongst other things, but it's nice to see SOMEONE covering Savage Empire.
Man, I seriously binge watched all your videos after I discovered your channel, it's amazing. You should seriously consider setting up a Patreon, even if the numbers doens't seem to be big enough to justify or warrant it( I do believe that youtube, especially right now, isnt kind to this type of content, so that may be why you dont have the numbers yet) Your content is as good as someone like Noah caldwell-gervais( I think he gets more personal and political than you though). That alone justifies a patreon so you can be compensated and appreciated for the work that you do. Hope you keep going cause you're really good at what you do.
@@MrEdders123 I justmean that my interest in Ultima starts mainly at 6, but I guess none of them are exactly... modern. Anyway, any Ultima content would be greatly appreciated. This is the best Worlds Of Ultima video I have ever watched. I'm a new subscriber, been going through your older videos. I love how much effort you put into it. Great work.
@@hannibalsolo4409 Oh right, I thought maybe you meant fan projects like Lazarus etc. I'll do a Martian Dreams video some day, but I'm kind of leery of covering the main series as there's the Spoony megavideo and plenty of other retrospectives of it, so I feel like I'd be retreading old ground (I already got Shanghai'd into covering all the Infinity Engine games). Who knows what the future holds tho 🤔
@@MrEdders123 I get that, I enjoy Spoony's video although his is more a of a comedy thing, at least for a lot of it. But you are right, the Ultima history is pretty well documented. Still, it's an important series and deserves thorough coumentation! Anyway, thanks for the videos and have a nice weekend.
Wonderful work, I didnt knew about this game but as a lover of old adventure and pulp novels I count be more surprise about this game, am really bad at old CRPGs but I will give a shot to the "Lands Of Mystery " books , also I really loved your comment on the jungle romance genere, and I knew that many people will not acept it but the "sword and sorcery" was also subject of modern criticism but during the last couple of years it has been evolving and becoming more and more acepted without betraying the origins, but only the future will tell us. Cant wait for the next vid.
Even though they come from a similar time period or slightly later, the racial aspects aren't as obvious in swords and sorcery for obvious reasons. Partly imo because S&S work is more likely to have been rewritten for the tastes of the contemporary audience (e.g. Conan), whereas Lost World stories were seen as "historical" fiction and thus not so often subject to tampering (except when aimed at children).
@@MrEdders123 thats the main issue, that It was labeled as historic fiction, here in México we do not have that problem but thats because se hace always labeled those stories as "fantasy" o "adventure", currently there Is a pulp revival, maybe we could get some un the near future but am being optimistic .
@@LaBibliotecaEterna I'd be interested in learning about how pulp fantasy/romance literature penetrated Mexico if there are any English articles or videos on the subject 🙂
The problem with "modern sensibilities" is that they're usually astroturfed. This is true no matter what era you're in. The general public aren't deeply offended by nubile jungle princesses being hunted by evil New Guinea-esque cannibals and being rescued by a foreigner with a shotgun, it's only the people who call the shots in the publishing houses who hate that. Those lower in the cult believe it to be "racist and sexist" and that it would be so much better if shotgun foreigner was the baddy getting stabbed by the not-so-nubile princess. Those with more understanding simply want to follow in Mao's Year Zero footsteps. These Modern Sensibilities were imposed quite recently too. Even Timesplitters 2 had the dashing explorer Captain Ash romancing the Jungle Queen. Of course, as a parody, she was more the Snu Snu type - but the key difference is that this wasn't done to appease pearl-clutchers, but to justify her being playable.
@@MrEdders123 sorry for the delay, It has been a long week, as far as I can see Mexican pulp was More popular in comics like "Kalimán :El Hombre Increíble" instead of novels but am still looking for more resourses and information .
I remember seeing ads in magazines of the time and thinking the VGA graphics looked absolutely incredible (compared to say, those of the Amstrad CPC I had in my room). At the time I only knew CGA and EGA on PC, and VGA was not that common yet. If I remember correctly it also supported Soundblaster audio cards 🎉
They stole our lesbian jungle pulp romance from us 😤😤😤 But fr, very happy to see that the game doesn't seem to fall into too much of the distasteful tropes this kind of story csn fall into.
Thoroughly enjoyed the review. These sorts of games are relics, though like most relics, underappreciated by those later. It is unfortunate that as you noted in the video, it is seen as rather controversial rather than appreciated as a genre-specific romp through old lost world tropes and ideas. One would dismiss these claims as being politically extremist as the game is noted as making efforts not to dip into the racism that it is nonetheless being accused of anyway.
