Ultima

[Nukey Shay]

It scored 6.8 out of 10 between the 6 reviews at Lemon64.

 

 

Not exactly high for an Ultima.

 

Screenshots

[cimerians]

The disk swapping was brutal on the C64 version of U5

 

Never played 6 on the 64.

 

U5 was the hardest one I played.

 

Anyone have a favorite piece of music they like?

 

I dig many of the tunes in 3 and 4 and especially the "overland music" in 3. I love the intro music in part 5.

 

I guess I be talking about the music done on the C64 although the C128 played music in Ultima 5.

 

(I'll never forget the combat music in Ultima 4 )

[tyranthraxus]

So U5 was still a swap fest with the old graphic system? As anyone who

can identify my nickname I was a big Pool of Radiance fan despite the

8 bloody disk sides you had to swap. That was my worst disk swapping

memory.

 

Anyone else seen the "Dragon Edition" of Ultima 9? It includes the

soundtrack on CD and is quite possible the most hilariously oversized

computer game box ever made. You will LOL the first time you see it

in the flesh.

 

John

[Nukey Shay]

Ultima V used 5 disks...Program, Outdoors, Underworld, Towne, and Dungeon (Keep). After loading the program disk, you'd swap between the other four (though if you had 2 drives, you could leave the outdoors disk in a drive and just swap between the last three).

[Ze_ro]

anyone who can identify my nickname I was a big Pool of Radiance fan despite the 8 bloody disk sides you had to swap. That was my worst disk swapping memory.

 

My brother played Pools of Radiance almost the entire way through before he realized that he didn't have the 8th side! Whoops! Similarly, a friend of his got all the way to the end of Ultima 5 before getting: "Hast thou brought my sandlewood box?" ... "Then we shall be here for a long time..."

 

By the way, Tyranthraxus shows up again in Pools of Darkness...

 

Ultima V used 5 disks...Program, Outdoors, Underworld, Towne, and Dungeon (Keep).

 

Are you sure about that? I have a bunch of .d64 images I use with VICE, and my copy of Ultima 5 has 8 disks... OSI (boot disk), dungeon, britannia, underworld, towne, dwelling, castle and keep...

 

However, my collection of Ultima 6 images is only 6 disks when I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be 8, so what do I know? Maybe after I check some other threads, I'll head downstairs and try some of these games out again. I keep a dartboard in the same room for long load sessions...

 

--Zero

[Ze_ro]

Well, that was a bust... I got through all the "create a character" junk, and the game just hung while trying to load before I could actually get into the game. However, for what I did see, the loading wasn't so bad I tried it on Vice as well, but the game hung at the same spot.... not so surprising considering it was using the same .d64's that I used to make the actual disks in the first place. One of these days I'll have to go out and find a non-broken Surface disk.

 

To be honest, I can't imagine Ultima VI being all that great on a system without a mouse. I know the mouse wasn't necessary in Ultima VI, but the menu system definitely begs for one (Or does it work with the 1351 mouse? Anyone know?). The graphics for the intro scenes were quite good... naturally, they're less colorful, and have less animation than the other versions, but as far as the C64 goes, they look great.

 

After failing to even start Ultima VI, I played a little Ultima V, but I couldn't take too much of the loading. Even with two drives, the loading is simply brutal. Not only that, but the gameplay is rather slow... even when you're talking to people, there's a noticable delay on your keystrokes, which gets really annoying. However, I did get the music, which was very nice. Only problem was that the mixing doesn't work well, and any time there's a sound effect, it makes the music skip. This wouldn't be a problem except for the fact that even the sounds of your character walking make it skip! Oh well, it's still better than silence. Frankly, I can't imagine playing this game seriously on the C64... especially when I have the PC version, as well as an Amiga in the basement.

 

--Zero

[Nukey Shay]

I dunno...I don't remember those problems on the actual C64 (?)

[Ze_ro]

Well, I never tried it in C64 mode, so it's possible that the slowness could have been due to the music, but who knows?

 

By the way, this guy seems to think that Ultima VI was quite good on the C64... and judging by the rest of the games on his list, he seems to have fairly good taste (Although I'm very surprised that he doesn't include any of the AD&D games like Curse of the Azure Bonds). That site shows a slideshow of screenshots from the game, and although small, they look surprisingly good. His download link also only has six sides, so maybe I'm not missing any after all.

 

--Zero

[Nukey Shay]

Nono...I never tried 6 on the C64, I was referring to 5 (2-5 are the only Ultima games that I like). Sorry for the mixup.

[Sharky]

I had a C128 and also Ultima 5, but I didnt know it was compatible with 128 Mode.

 

I play Ultima 5 to death in C64 Mode.

 

And I didnt enjoy it as much as the others because it lacked Music.

But i finally finished Ultima with the help of a Walkthur.

 

Then all of a sudden i left the Program disk in the drive and switched on

my 128 and OMG! Its bootable and it loaded quicker and WHOA!... Its got Music.

 

What a pity I didnt know this earlier!

[tyranthraxus]

That is a very good old school list. But it is surprising there is no AD&D

game or Might and Magic (my first RPG took me over a year to beat!).

Although he does have Buck Rodgers which was the AD&D engine. I

havn't played it but perhaps it managed to elevate the progress made

with Azure Bonds?

 

His love of Ultima VI is also interesting. I played the IBM version, and got

a fair way into it before being distracted by Wing Commander and

I can't see how this could be a good C64 game. I can take the stripped

down graphics but load times and disk swapping plus no mouse for

real time combat sounds like a patience testing game! 1, 2, 3, 4...

 

John

[Nukey Shay]

LOL

That explains it then...no C128, no music problems (no music at all, save for Lord British's harpsicord).

 

And I can't remember swapping 8 disks...I seem to remember just copying off 5 disks when I first bought it (backups, of course). I've got it packed...uh...someplace (all my posessions double as a box spring )

[Ze_ro]

Well, I tried Ultima V in C64 mode, and it didn't seem that much more responsive. Perhaps a little, but not enough to warrant sacrificing the music for a slightly faster game. Plus, the load times were still pretty horrid. I don't know if they were slower than 128 mode though. By the way, on a 128, this game will actually autoboot if you turn the computer on with the game in the drive (this might require a 1571). It's too bad that it won't read both sides of the disk with a 1571... that would have been a nice touch.

 

I also finally got Ultima VI to work, using the disk images from that link I posted. It's actually not too bad. Much better than I expected. The graphics are amazing for the C64, and almost as colorful as the PC version. Like the PC version, it uses icons for all your items, and their resolution is fairly decent. Animation is minimal, but slightly better than Ultima V. There is no in-game music, but the intro scenes have pretty much the same (crappy) music as the PC version). The interface isn't as clumsy as I thought it would be. you use Control to switch between the map view and the character inventory, which actually works fairly well. My only complaints about the interface is that the way you do things is different (For example, you don't Open doors anymore... you Use them instead) than before... although this is Ultima VI's way, so it's not the C64's fault.

 

As for load times, it's a bit of a mixed bag. There is a decent amount of loading, and quite a bit of disk swapping, but somehow it doesn't seem quite as bad as Ultima V. From 10 minutes of playing Ultima V, I think I used 5 different disks... whereas with Ultima VI I only used 3. However, the game has to load for almost anything you do. For example, while in the initial combat sequence, something like this would happen:

 

Pendragon

> Attack- with [LOAD...] a short sword

Target- [LOAD...] a gargoyle

[LOAD...] ... grazed!

 

I'm not making this up, it literally does load three times for every attack you attempt. As you can imagine, this gets old fast. It also has to load anytime you need to use things, which happens fairly often. You also generally have to change disks when you want to talk to someone, which kind of blows. Another complaint is that the movement keys are different. Instead of using @;:/ to move, you use an odd combination near the inst/del key. It's actually a bit better, since it allows you to move diagonally... but like the Use stuff, it's a little hard to get used to (By the way, don't even TRY to play this game on an emulator, as PC keyboards have much too different a layout to make the cursor keys work at all. I don't care what keyboard layout your emulator uses, U6 need about 9 keys between inst/del and 0/P, which PC's simply don't have). The keyboard handling is also a little wonky. While in battle, you'll sometimes have to hit a key two or three times before it'll register (which, along with the loading, make the combat quite clumsy), meanwhile when you're talking to Lord British, your keystrokes will often register twice! I suppose after playing the game, you'd get used to this, but I really don't understand why this would happen.

 

Long story short, if you can get used to the changes over the previous Ultimas, if you can tolerate the load times, and if you can get into the (somewhat preachy) storyline, then you'll probably actually like this version. I wouldn't recommend it over the PC version, but it's much better than I had expected.

 

--Zero

[AtariDude]

Did anyone ever get the Prima book for Ultimas 4 through 6? I like the way that they turned the game into a story. Made it more enjoyable to play the game as the characters had more of a life to them.

[Albert]

Did anyone ever get the Prima book for Ultimas 4 through 6? I like the way that they turned the game into a story. Made it more enjoyable to play the game as the characters had more of a life to them.

 

Yes, I have that book.

 

..Al

[AtariDude]

Did Origin ever fix the bug in Ultima II where you gave money to the clerk in the Hotel California and one of your attributes was reset to zero? I used to hate that since I would have to turn off the computer, reboot, and go back to the clerk and hope that this time my contribution would be used to really enhance an attribute. I was so glad that in Ultima III that you had to go to the mystery island and pay for specific attributes to be enhanced at specific altars although that had a bug too where they took your money even if your attribute was as high as 75 (you could not get any higher than 75).