The Atari 8-bit conversion of Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress was developed and published by Sierra On-line in 1983, coming out not long after the original Apple II version.
Continue reading Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress, Atari 8-bit
Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress is the sequel to Ultima and is the second game in the Ultima series. It was first released in 1982 for the Apple II. The game was initially published by Sierra On-Line, but a dispute over royalties for the PC version led series creator Richard Garriott to start his own company, Origin Systems.
Continue reading Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress, Apple II
The first game in the Ultima series was initially released for the Apple II in 1981 by California Pacific Computer and was later completely re-coded and re-named as “Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness” for a re-release through Origin Systems. The 1987 MS-DOS re-code – shown here – is still available to buy as part of an Ultima 1+2+3 package on GOG.com (at the time of writing).
Although the first Ultima game was an Apple II original, the Commodore 64 version of this early RPG is arguably the best-known. Re-made and released in 1986, the C64 version of Ultima [one] features colourful graphics and absorbing gameplay that is pretty much identical to the Apple II remake.
Continue reading Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness, Commodore 64
This first game in Richard Garriott‘s Ultima series was initially released for the Apple II in 1981 by California Pacific Computer and was originally called just “Ultima“. It was later re-named as “Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness” when it was re-made and re-released by Origin Systems in 1986. This 1986 re-code features improved graphics and gameplay, with a number of significant changes made to bring the game up-to-date with market conditions in the mid 1980s, and that is the version I’m featuring here. If you want to see the original 1981 version (and an explanation of how to play the game), click here.
Continue reading Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness, Apple II
Released in 1983 by Sierra On-Line, Ultima on the Atari 8-bit is more archaic and frustrating than the original Apple II version. And it looks pretty awful too, with a real lack of colour – especially in towns where the game is in monochrome unless you play on a machine (and monitor) that supports “artifacting“. In artifacting mode the dungeon and town graphics look similar to Apple II graphics, but they don’t really take advantage of the Atari‘s superior graphics capabilities.
The original 1981 Apple II version of Richard Garriott‘s Ultima was the first version of Ultima ever released. It was published by California Pacific Computer and is a stripped-down version of the more widespread re-release version put out by Origin Systems in 1986 (which can be seen here).
Darkest Dungeon is a Roguelike Role-Playing Game in which you control a party of four heroes who must fight monsters through a series of procedurally-generated dungeons. It was developed by Red Hook Studios and was first released in 2016. It is currently (at the time of writing) available for Windows, Linux, Macintosh, iPad, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PS Vita and XBox One.
The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age is a turn-based level-grinder, developed by EA Redwood Shores and published by Electronic Arts in 2004, loosely-based on the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings trilogy of films. It is NOT based on J.R.R. Tolkien‘s famous novel, because the rights for the book were held by Vivendi Universal Games at the time, although Electronic Arts did hold the rights to make video game adaptations of the New Line Cinema films. Which is a little confusing, but the plot in this game is a non-canonical story that runs parallel to the narrative of the films. Anything from the novels not specifically mentioned or depicted in the films could not be represented in this game.
Continue reading The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age, GameCube
Athena is a platform action game featuring a female lead character called Princess Athena and was developed by SNK and first released into arcades in 1986.
The King of Grabs 