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Ultima VI for the Apple 2?


HuckleCat

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I know it never "officially" came out, but hear me out for a second here...

 

Back in the 80s I was a total Apple 2 freak. I played all the time. I'd also get anxious about any news of anything coming soon. See, back then, there was no internet, and no decent Apple 2-only games magazines that were any good at passing along news I cared about. Due to this, I would actually call up companies for news about what was coming out, and when.

 

Companies I would regularly call were Electronic Arts (When is the Wasteland 2 / Bards Tale 4 coming out?) and Origin (Will there be a sequel to 2400 AD / when is Ultima 6 coming out?)

 

Okay, onto Ultima 6, see, back before it came out, Origin had started blitzing magazines with advertisements for U6, and some early ones even showed up in A+ magazine, stating at the bottom an Apple 2 release. After awhile, the ads stopped showing up, and ads in other magazines dropped the Apple 2 name.

 

So, I called Origin. Again.

 

I talked to a female, who put me on hold for a bit when I asked her about the Apple 2 release. She came back and told me that they actually were making it for the Apple 2, but that it took up both sides of nine disks. This, combined with the declined state of the Apple 2 as a game machine at the time, led them to ultimately decide against releasing it.

 

So, if this is true, I'm wondering if out there, somewhere, is a beta/prerelease version of Ultima 6 for the Apple 2 in some ex-employee of Origins garage? How would one find this out?

 

Anybody know Richard Garriots' email address?

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I also heard that it was once in development for the IIgs (which would have made more sense) but scrapped. If they could do it on the C64 then they could probably have done it on the Apple II. Would have been neat to see for sure.

 

Tempest

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I was so certain that it would be released for the Apple II, that I pre-ordered it. :ponder:

 

But I doubt that an Apple II version got anywhere near beta. Had Origin committed enough resources to develop an Apple II version to the beta stage, they would almost certainly have followed through with a commercial release. However, I suspect that even a technically inferior Apple II version of the game would have sold enough to justify its development costs.

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IIRC from reading the Complete Book Of Ultima, I gather the AppleII platform was abandoned very early in development (possibly before any actual coding took place), because the environment was too constrictive. The only way that it could keep pace would be to upgrade the hardware...and that would limit the user base at a time when it was risky to do so.

 

At least that makes sense from how things progressed for earlier titles (i.e. designed around A2's capabilities and being ported to other systems). 'Course, the NES had watered-down versions, so it could have been done that way.

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Given that the C64 release of it blew hard, I am kind of glad there wasn't an Apple ][ version finalized and released.

 

It would have been a giant disaster, people would cry, and it may have induced suicide.

 

Consider it a blessing that the Apple ][ wasn't defiled.

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I think the Apple II was capable of running the game but the graphics would have required a lot more work than for the other platforms.

The IIgs could have supported the same graphics as the Atari ST or Amiga but it didn't seem to have a broad consumer base needed for a game. To make matters worse, Apple was clearly pushing the Mac, and Origin probably didn't want to support anything but the most popular platforms.

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By that time the PC with VGA and sound cards were taking over....not to mention the still huge Commodore fan base at least here in the states. (C64/C128 was disappearing but the Amiga crowd was pretty big).

 

It would have been interesting to see but Apple was too stubborn in those days in my opinion.

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