PC #1: Ultima

A couple of things happened to me here at the tail end of 2019 which really show off what a weirdo I am. After 20 years of computing I finally got my first PC. It’s not a complete transformation for me. I just needed a cheap laptop that I could use around the kids. Of course when I unboxed my new computer my thoughts quickly turned to games. There is a whole world of PC games out there that I have never been exposed to. So what’s the first game I bought with my GOG account? The very first Ultima. Yes, the first PC game I ever bought was the first Ultima game in 2019. It looks like I have some catching up to do with my CRPGs. It’s the kind of game that pushes all the right buttons for me. I love RPGs and the early history of media. I have seen dozens of silent movies and have sampled jazz music all the way back to the 1910s. How could I not want to play one of the earliest examples of my favorite type of game? I know that Alakabeth came out even earlier, but that one might be too archaic even for me. At this time Ultima is as far back as I can go. So how was my Ultima experience?

(Note the nifty air car. The graphics look so nice because this is the updated mid 80s version) 

Honestly I couldn’t believe how much fun I had playing this ancient game. It’s primitive and quirky as all get out, but Lord British was on to something. The story is about as traditional as it gets. There’s an evil wizard out there and you have to go stop him. How are you going to do that? By going to visit kings and doing their quests. The game has a surprisingly large overworld which is separated into four continents. Not bad for one of gaming’s first overworlds. There are also dungeons scattered throughout, and this is where most of the level grinding takes place. So we have quests, money and experience, an overworld with dungeons to explore, and a few NPCs to talk to. Most of the classic RPG elements are all in place, but there are still some quirks that would quickly be abandoned in the series but nevertheless make this game one worth experiencing. 

Experience points are almost pointless. Supposedly when you gain lev

(If stats went to 9999 I would still be reading this sign)

els there will be some different monsters and shop items, but I never noticed. Experience is more like a total score than anything else. I maxed mine out at 9999 which actually does make me feel accomplished. The stats are gained in unique ways. To gain HP you either pay a king or fight in a dungeon. Every time you leave a dungeon you will get an HP bonus related to how many monsters you defeated. You don’t really have a max HP, so you can stay in the first few levels of a dungeon and go up and down until you feel like you have enough HP to take on the world. The rest of the stats are increased by completing quests and finding signposts. Anytime I got frustrated in this game I would sail between signposts and raise my stats. I found it cathartic.

Oh and did I mention that you go into space and blast alien spaceships? Because you totally go into space and blast alien spaceships. It’s a bit hard to comprehend for people who are only familiar with the later Ultima games, but the first two games are sci-fi adventures. The shuttle that you see for sale all over the place is in fact a space shuttle. You use it to fly into space and play a simplified version of Star Raiders. The princess won’t help you travel through time unless you are a space ace. That’s fair enough I suppose. It’s jarring after hours of dungeon crawling to suddenly be in space shooting down aliens, but in a weird way it works. The hardest parts are remembering to wear your vacuum suit and managing your fuel. The trick is to not chase after the ships. I tried to do that thinking they would fly away and not come back, but every screen has a set number of ships so it’s best to just wait for them to come to you and conserve your energy. It took a while, but I eventually shot the required 20 and became space ace. I never get tired of saying that.

(Sadly most NPCs have very little to say. There's not even a button for that)

I did make it to the endgame and defeat the evil wizard, but it did take a little help from the internet. Still it’s not as confusing as many 80s RPGs. I’m surprised by how efficient it was. For such a large world it was easy to navigate. The caves are random grids, but even those could be traversed without mapping. Really all the quests can be completed in any dungeon so don’t waste any graph paper on this one. I did play it with a world map on the side of the screen, but even that was probably not necessary. I’m just not that good with directions.

I think I played this game for about 10 hours, and I enjoyed every one of them. It does a great job of capturing the time and place that it was created. Ultima was the beginning of more personal gaming. You can’t tell much about the creators playing an arcade game like Space Invaders. Even bigger games like Atari’s Adventure don’t paint much of a picture. However, playing Ultima really says a great deal about Richard Garriott. His interests and personality are right there in the game. At the time he probably didn’t know he’d be spending the next two decades making Ultima games, so he put as much of himself as he could into this first epic quest. Even after almost forty years it’s a journey worth taking