The Age of Darkness Trilogy
Ultima One
The Ultima Series of Role Playing Games began with Ultima I around 1980.
It was done in black and white originally, but hues were added to the IBM
version. Each of the towns fit onto one screen and the object was
to find and defeat the evil Mondain. The quest would take the adventurer
through several continents and dungeons and even into outer space
Richard Garriott
had developed the game from his original dungeons and dragons games that
he had written for the Apple II computer. He published the game under
the pseudo name of Lord British, a name he had acquired from his computer
friends for his quiet and polite manner.
The Apple II computer
had a graphics memory of only 5k, so some of you may have a very difficult
time even beginning to imagine what it was like to play the early games
on computer. The Commodore 64 became the computer of choice for most
gamers in those days. It came out shortly after the Apple II and
literally took over the field of computer gaming. The Apple had a
price tag of around $1500 and when the more versatile Commodore came out
it sold for a mere $600. It was not long before the price on it dropped
to $129! All kinds of people were starting to write games for computers
and it was a very exciting time for small businesses in the field.
This was the atmosphere
at the time of the release of Ultima One. Those of us who were both
into programming and role playing games became intoxicated with the possibilities
and Richard Garriott quickly rose to the top of the field with his continuing
series of Ultima.
Ultima Two
Revenge of the Enchantress
Another company published
Ultima II. Garriott had wanted a cloth map and hard box to be included
in the packaging of the game. The original company would not meet
this request, so Garriott worked with Sierra to produce the next game of
the series.
Ultima Two had extremely
fast action to it. It had been written in machine language.
The object was to find the evil spawn Minax and wrest back control of the
planet. The adventurer was forced into outer space, through time
and into dungeons to complete the quest. When I bought the game,
everything else became immediately boring. Although, the plot of
the game was still rather simple by the standards of the later games, it
was infinitely superior to anything else on the market at that time.
Minax had to be killed twice (or should I say her twin also had to be killed)
in order to beat the game. I thought I had beaten it until a friend
pointed out the actual ending.
I played this game
while I was getting my college degree. My best friend and I were
both married and I am sure it drove our wives crazy. Everywhere we
went we simulated noises from the game.
Ultima Three
Exodus
In Exodus, the evil
spawn of Mondain and Minax had to be defeated. Instead of just one
character, the adventurer had a party of four to manage. The game
action was much slower than in the previous game, but the complexity of
the strategy was much deeper. In the final battle the adventurer
was even attacked by the bricks in the floor! I thought I must have
gone insane when I was playing the game. Where was the attack coming
from? What a challenge this game had become. It had grown from
a crude representation of a role playing game into a fantasy world within
itself.
Richard, along with
his brother, Robert, had taken the profits that were made from "Revenge
of the Enchantress" and formed the company: Origin Systems.
Exodus had become the premier game of the new company. What an incredible
leap had been made from writing the codes of dungeons and dragons for a
few of his friends to forming his own company.
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