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.
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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, Atari ST
Oh my goodness… This Atari ST conversion of Ultima II, by Robert Eric Heitman, uses a mouse-driven GEM interface as an “enhancement” over the original, and this – in my opinion – has turned the game into kitty litter…
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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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Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress, Atari 8-bit
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.
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Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress, Apple II
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.
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Ultima, Atari 8-Bit
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.
Ultima, Apple II
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).
Time-Gate, ZX Spectrum
Written by John Hollis and first published by Quicksilva for the 48K ZX Spectrum in 1983, Time-Gate was the first Spectrum game I ever played and is a simple first-person space shooter – basically a Star Raiders clone with a few differences.
The King of Grabs 