Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny was first released in 1988 for the Apple II through Origin Systems. It was the last Ultima game to be developed for the Apple II and it comes on eight floppy disks. It is the second game in the “Age of Enlightenment” trilogy and is similar in style to the previous game, with character creation done by answering a series of virtue-based questions. You can also import a character from Ultima IV if you have one, which is an interesting new feature in the series.
Tag Archives: 8-bit
Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar, Atari 8-Bit
Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar on the Atari 8-bit was ported by David Lubar (who created the excellent Pastfinder) and first published by Origin Systems in 1986. It is an excellent conversion of a brilliant game and is arguably the best Role-Playing Game on Atari‘s 8-bit home computer.
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Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar, Commodore 64
The fourth game in the Ultima series first came out on the Commodore 64 in 1985 and the game was converted by Chuck Bueche, who also did a great job of porting the third Ultima to the C64. So it plays similarly to its predecessor. Ultima IV was also re-made by The Genesis Project in 2015, with superb new graphics, a trainer, bugfixes, a savegame editor, fast-loading d81 and CRT (cartridge) versions, and various other enhancements. If you’re playing the C64 version for the first time then that’s the version I’d recommend – unless you deliberately want to play the original version. I’m showing the 2015 remake here first, then at the end of the set I’ve shown screenshots of the original 1985 version, for comparison. It’s easy to tell them apart.
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Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar, Apple II
Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar is the fourth game in the Ultima series and was designed by Richard Garriott and first published by Origin Systems in 1985. It is the first game in the “Age of Enlightenment” trilogy, which moves towards a more ethically-led, story-driven approach. Rather than requiring the player to overcome a tangible evil the story instead focuses on the player’s moral self-improvement.
Ultima III: Exodus, Commodore 64
The Commodore 64 version of Ultima III: Exodus was first published by Origin Systems in 1983 and came on three floppy disks. There is a fan-made ‘Gold’ version of the game available, that has compressed these down to a single floppy disk file, which saves a lot of disk-swapping, and that’s the version that’s probably worth finding, if you want to play this game on the C64.
Ultima III: Exodus, Atari 8-Bit
The Atari 8-bit version of Richard Garriott‘s Ultima III: Exodus was first published by Origin Systems in 1983. It again uses graphical artifacting (which the first two Ultima games did on the Atari), which results in it looking very similar to the Apple II original.
Ultima III: Exodus, Apple II
Ultima III: Exodus is the third game in the Ultima series and the final instalment in the “Age of Darkness” trilogy. It was the first Ultima game that was published by Origin Systems and first came out for the Apple II in 1983. Ultima III was also the first game in the Ultima series where you controlled a party of characters, rather than a single hero, and the first Ultima game to use a line of sight/fog-of-war mechanic, meaning that anything that wasn’t directly within viewing distance was hidden from the player.
Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress [1989 remake], Apple II
Here’s a set of screenshots showing the rare 1989 remake of Richard Garriott‘s Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress for the Apple II. It’s considered to be rare because it was only ever released once, for Origin Systems‘ Ultima Trilogy compilation of the first three games. It was also Origin‘s final release for the Apple II.
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Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress, PC
Originally released by Sierra On-line in 1983, the PC MS-DOS version of Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress is pretty much the same as the Apple II original – except for the graphics which are four-colour CGA and look pretty awful. Thankfully there’s a fan-made patch, by The Exodus Project, that upgrades the graphics and fixes a few bugs and that’s the version I’m showing here. Note that at the end of this sequence of screenshots I’ve also shown the CGA version of the game for comparison.
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Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress, Commodore 64
The 1983 Commodore 64 version of Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress is a bit of a mixed bag in my opinion. On the one hand it is a gigantic, innovative, involving, and highly challenging Role-Playing Game, and a worthy sequel to the first Ultima (which was a great game). And on the other hand it is a fiddly, visually insipid and annoyingly vague quest into who knows what kind of fantasy, time-travelling nonsense…
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The King of Grabs 