Sergorn Dragon likes giving me more work to do, it seems. Because really, a site such as this should put at least a bit of attention on games that are, either in whole or in part, clones of — or heavily inspired by — entries in the Ultima series. And while I certainly like the idea of occasionally making mention of all sorts of games like that…I am rather maxed-out as far as my ability to track and follow games is already.

Now, since you’re probably all wondering what the heck I’m on about, allow me to explain. This all stems from a question that Sergorn Dragon posed on Twitter yesterday. First, he asked:

So Internet, tell me: what games whether old or new, classics or unknown, full fledged, indie or shareware would count as #Ultima clones ?

— Sergorn Dragon (@UltimaReturn) January 30, 2012

And then he answered his own question, tossing out several possible suggestions. Along the way, his thinking morphed from looking at games which were straight-up Ultima clones, and turned into an analysis of games that had taken inspiration from the series:

The Magic Candle series is an one of of the most obvious one of course, you can’t get more classic Ultima than that!

— Sergorn Dragon (@UltimaReturn) January 30, 2012

Origin’s own Times of Lore and Knights of Legends albeit with their differences also had an obvious #Ultima vibe as well

— Sergorn Dragon (@UltimaReturn) January 30, 2012

What about Space 1999? It played more like MegaTraveller in a way, but it also reminds one of Martian Dreams

— Sergorn Dragon (@UltimaReturn) January 30, 2012

More recently Teudogar and the Alliance with Rome, is a pretty neat Ultima VII clone in ancient Rome

— Sergorn Dragon (@UltimaReturn) January 30, 2012

Obviously we can count some more recent endeavour as Gothic, Risen and Skyrim as Ultima-ish though I’m more interested in old school vibes

— Sergorn Dragon (@UltimaReturn) January 30, 2012

And of course Dragon Quest very much *was* an Ultima III clone in many ways, but let’s keep it to WRPG mostly…

— Sergorn Dragon (@UltimaReturn) January 30, 2012

Hmmm D&D Warrior of the Eternal Sun on Genesis/Megadrive had kin of a Ultima vibe in that it mixed overhead 2D gameplay with 3D dungeons!

— Sergorn Dragon (@UltimaReturn) January 30, 2012

Gaming journalist and freelance writer Rowan Kaiser jumped in next:

@UltimaReturn @ultimaaiera Magic Candle. Exile. Are we counting Ultima Underworld? Cause then you could make the case for The Elder Scrolls.

— Rowan Kaiser (@RowanKaiser) January 30, 2012

Sergorn replied:

@ultimaaiera @RowanKaiser If we count Underworld thought, we obviously *have* to mention Arx Fatalis !

— Sergorn Dragon (@UltimaReturn) January 30, 2012

To which the good Mr. Kaiser commented:

@UltimaReturn @ultimaaiera Yeah, there were others, too. Ravenloft/Menzoberranzan were UU with D&D trappings.

— Rowan Kaiser (@RowanKaiser) January 30, 2012

@UltimaReturn @ultimaaiera Well…all of those, including UU, come from Dungeon Master, but UU added the 360 movement.

— Rowan Kaiser (@RowanKaiser) January 30, 2012

To which Sergorn rejoined:

@RowanKaiser @ultimaaiera True but the movement, solo adventure and combat gave UW a unique feel different from Ravenloft and such

— Sergorn Dragon (@UltimaReturn) January 30, 2012

Finally, our good friend Dominus (of Exult fame) chimed in:

@UltimaReturn @ultimaaiera the early Spiderweb games series Exiles. Actually all their games

— Dominus of Exult (@Dominus_Exult) January 30, 2012

For my own contribution to the discussion, I told Sergorn I’d look up various iOS games (eliciting a “GAH!” from him in response) that might count as Ultima-inspired. Now, short of buying Akalabeth for iOS, there’s not really an exact match for Ultima to be found in the iOS app ecosystem. At least, I have failed to notice any such thing.

Still…I’ve come up with a few titles that are worthy of mention:

Companions

Featuring an extensive party system!

Perilar

Text and graphics!

RPG Quest

Kind of a JRPG feel, but also kind of an early Ultima feel.

Underworlds and Underworlds Ultimate Edtion

This one has a bit of an Ultima 8 feel, although a comparison to Diablo might be more apt.

Actually, Underworlds is worth a special mention due to the fact that former Ultima artist Denis Loubet is a co-owner of (and the art director for) Pixel Mine Games, which produces Underworlds.

Ravensword: The Fallen King and Aralon: Sword and Shadow

Aralon boasts a massive open world, and both games play a bit like Ultima 9.

Silversword

Comparisons have also been made between this game and The Bards Tale...

On the Android side, there are of course a couple different Exult ports in the works. In a search of the Android Market, I did turn up a few other titles that might be worth looking at:

Acedia RPG

It kinda has a very early Ultima look about it.

Gurk and Gurk 2

This one is kind of a boundary case...

Deadly Dungeons

More of an Ultima Underworld vibe here.

Warrior’s Oath

Tile-based, but the trees are much more detailed than in a tiled Ultima.

Endless Depths

Amusingly, the developer also makes a sex games app. This title could work for either app.

I also tripped across this Ultima Online “soundboard” app during my search, which claims to feature all the classic songs from UO. It’s free, and was listed as compatible with my Nook Tablet, so I’ll try it out and let you all know whether it’s worth a look.

Finally, and here again I have to apologize to someone, I’d like to mention Dark Disciples 2, by the oddly-named Dodgysoft. But, as a certain Mr. Steffen Hagen told me some months ago, when first he brought the game to my attention:

Dark Disciples II…is a tile-based RPG with some pretty extensive dialogues, [which] certainly has been inspired by Ultima. It looks quite a bit nicer than Ultima V, though…and it has an easy-to-use editor to boot. Just as NWN 2 wins because of all the premade objects, DD2 has a wide range of complex events predefined. So for those who’d like to create something on a smaller scale than Lazarus this would be definitely worth a visit…uh, and apart from that, it’s also a nice game in its own right.

Screenshot!

I think this is a dungeon...

So, yes…Dark Disciples 2. Mr. Hagen, my apologies for my tardiness in getting mention of that one onto the site. I have created a project entry for the game and its prequel, since the editing toolkit may in fact be of some interest to Ultima fans contemplating doing a project with an “old school” look and feel.

Anyhow: There’s a pretty exhaustive list of games, Dragons and Dragonettes, which either are or at least seem to be clones of and/or inspired by one Ultima game or another. If there are any others you can think of which you feel merit mention, please do sound off in the comments with your thoughts.

Bonus question: Which, if any, of these Ultima-inspired/Ultima-clone games do you think Aiera should either include amongst its listed projects and/or track news for?

I noticed several tweets over the weekend which linked to the various articles and podcasts posted here, on the MIT GAMBIT Game Lab website. The podcasts are interviews with various key people from Looking Glass Studios, the game development studio responsible for Ultima Underworld and Ultima Underworld 2 (among many other fine titles).

GAMBIT describes the podcast series thusly:

The Looking Glass Studios Podcast is a special audio series which features discussions with makers of some of the most influential video games of the last 20 years.

…

In this podcast series we hear from them, in their own words, how many of these titles were created, and what lessons they can still teach game designers today.

The podcast series currently has nine episodes:

1. Austin Grossman, with Andrew Grant and Sara Verrilli (podcast | transcript)
2. Dan Schmidt (podcast | transcript)
3. Tim Stellmach and Laura Baldwin, with Sara Verrilli (podcast)
4. Randy Smith (podcast)
5. Ken Levine (podcast)
6. Greg LoPiccolo (podcast)
7. Eric Brosius (podcast)
8. Marc “Mahk” LeBlanc (podcast)
9. Terri Brosius and Dan Thron (podcast)

The most recent entry in the series was posted just last week, so I’m assuming that the ninth episode won’t be the last. Be that as it may: if you want some good inside skinny on what went into the design of games like System Shock, Thief, and Ultima Underworld, don’t miss these podcasts! Download them, have a listen, find out where the person or people who brought you these classic games have ended up, and learn how their time at Looking Glass influences what they’re doing now.

So I was having a conversation with Bandit LOAF (from the Wing Commander CIC) and Sergorn Dragon on Twitter, concerning the PlayStation port of Ultima Underworld. Yes, such a thing exists. Sadly, it was only ever released in Japan, and only ever in the Japanese language.

Anyhow, LOAF mused thusly:

I wonder how hard it would be to put together an English language version of Ultima Underworld for the PSOne…

I offered to put up this article, an idea which LOAF welcomed, which brings us to…here.

Like LOAF, I’m essentially operating from a position of ignorance here. The PlayStation is (by choice) largely a foreign object to me, a “black box” in engineering terms. I’ve no idea what would be involved in cracking into a game for the system and editing its data files, nor do I have any idea how different those files might be (in terms of format) from the original game data files. Nor do I know if the game files can even be modified in the way LOAF is wondering about.

However, many Ultima fans are incredibly technically savvy, and it’s my hope that some of you have experience modding PSX games. If so…is what LOAF is proposing feasible? And if so, would you be interested in taking a stab at it, assuming that a copy of the game could be obtained or provided?

Akalaupdate: The patches discussed below for Ultima 1-7 are all covered by and automatically applied (along with necessary fixes — e.g. DPMI) by Pix’s Ultima Patcher (Windows-only). Xarton Dragon’s Portable Ultima Patches are also compatible with the GOG versions of the games.

Original Post: So, you’ve gone and bought and/or downloaded yourself a copy of some Ultima titles from Good Old Games, and you’re wondering: are there any updates for these? Any patches? Anything else I should know?

Well, as it happens, the answer might well be “yes”.

Good Old Games (GOG) is admirably committed to releasing games in as close to their original form as possible; they tend to eschew reworked versions of games which the publishers may have shipped at a later time with graphics updates and whatnot. And to be fair, that’s an entirely commendable position; these games were classics in their unmodified form, and people should understand that and enjoy the games in their original state.

But over the years, Ultima fans and developers alike have taken it upon themselves to publish little improvements to the games, in the form of patches, graphics updates, and suchlike. This article will attempt to outline what can be done to improve, enhance, or in some ways modify your Ultima-playing experience with your newly purchased copies from GOG.

Ultima 1

There isn’t much you need to do — or can do — for Ultima 1; there is only a single graphics patch available for the game, which is recommended as it corrects a known glitch in the original display driver executable.

Ultima 2

There are two updates for Ultima 2 that you should consider applying. The first of these is a maps patch, which corrects for a bug in the original version of the game caused by a file which was overwritten multiple times during the installation process.

Note: It is possible that the Good Old Games version of Ultima 2 has this patch applied already; this has not been verified.

The other thing you may want to consider doing is applying the Ultima 2 Upgrade in whole or in part. This comprehensive update applies some speed tweaks to the game and also improves the graphics.

Note: the upgrade patch requires DPMI, which is not supported natively in DOSbox (which the Good Old Games version of the game uses as a wrapper/launcher). To get DPMI working, extract this file to the root folder of the game.

Ultima 3

There are two updates for Ultima 3, both of which update the graphics of the game. As a result, you can apply one or the other, but not both at the same time.

The first update is the EGA graphics patch, a modified SHAPES.EGA file that incorporates a number of graphics from an enhanced graphics patch for Ultima 4. The second is the Ultima 3 Upgrade, which adds more colourful graphics and improved MIDI music to the game.

Note: the upgrade patch requires DPMI, which is not supported natively in DOSbox (which the Good Old Games version of the game uses as a wrapper/launcher). To get DPMI working, extract this file to the root folder of the game.

Ultima 4

There are a few different updates that can be applied to Ultima 4.

The EGA graphics patch improves the look of the game somewhat, although the more dramatic improvement comes from the Ultima 4 Upgrade package, which adds VGA graphics and the original (and better) musical score from the Apple and Commodore versions of the game.

Note: the upgrade patch requires DPMI, which is not supported natively in DOSbox (which the Good Old Games version of the game uses as a wrapper/launcher). To get DPMI working, extract this file to the root folder of the game.

Additionally, the upgrade can’t be installed under DOS, as one of its files, “avpatch.exe”, is a Windows console application. A patched, DOS-friendly version is available here.

Also, it is critically important that, in Good Old Games’ version of Ultima 4, you create and save a character before applying the upgrade; failure to do so will render the game unplayable.

Patches you may want to apply include this fix for the dungeon of Hythloth, and the runic font replacement patch if you are feeling particularly brave and want all the English-language signage in the game to be presented in a runic font instead.

Finally, if you feel like cheating, there is a character editor for Ultima 4, a cheat program for Ultima 1, Ultima 3, Ultima 4, and Ultima 5, and a savegame editor for the first five Ultima titles.

Ultima 5

There are a number of patches available for Ultima 5, including the comprehensive Ultima 5 Upgrade , a music patch, a patch that lets you use the numeric keypad properly, and (of course) a patch to remove the runic font used at various points in the game.

Note: the upgrade patch presumably requires DPMI, which is not supported natively in DOSbox (which the Good Old Games version of the game uses as a wrapper/launcher). To get DPMI working, extract this file to the root folder of the game.

Ultima 6

There isn’t much in the way of patching needed to play Ultima 6. If you configure it to use the PC speaker, this timing patch might be of use if you are noticing odd sound errors, and there are also patches for MTU-32 and Soundblaster sound, and for AdLib sound.

Use as necessary.

Ultima Underworld & Ultima Underworld 2

The Good Old Games version of Ultima Underworld should already incorporate the official patch for the game, and their version of Ultima Underworld 2 should include the official patch for the second game.

If you want a bit of mood music in the first game, there is a patch which adds a MIDI soundtrack, which I can only assume works with the GOG version of the game as well.

There are also Spanish and Portuguese translation patches available for Ultima Underworld.

As well, the GOG versions of the Underworld games are configured, by default, to use Roland MT-32 sound. If this causes issues for you (and it may), see this forum post at GOG.com for a workaround.

Finally, if you feel like cheating, there is a character editor for Ultima Underworld 2, and a general editor for both games.

That is the sum total of what can be done for the Ultima titles currently available on Good Old Games. If they release the rest of the series or the World of Ultima spinoffs at some point, this post will be updated with information about any other titles that come out.

Ultima 7 & Serpent Isle

A good and easy way to play Ultima 7 and Serpent Isle is with Exult, which is a mature cross-platform engine for the original game data files that incorporates a number of graphical scalers (so you can run the game at higher resolutions), bug fixes, and enhancements. If you use Exult, there’s no need to install any other patches.

If, however, you want to play the games in their pure form, they are well-supported by DOSBox, and the Good Old Games versions of the games come with DOSBox included as the “launcher”.

As far as patching the games goes, you shouldn’t need much in the way of patches to run the game under DOSBox. If, however, you want a bit of additional atmosphere in the game, there is a patch that adds support for MIDI music in Ultima 7 (and a similar patch for Serpent Isle). There is also an official patch from Origin Systems for Ultima 7, which might help if you find that Ultima 7 crashes.

The First Age of Update: Suggestions for Ultima 5 and Ultima 6 have been added. But as Pix’s Ultima Patcher (link above) has been updated as well, it is still recommended that you use it instead. Or Xarton Dragon’s Portable Ultima Patches (link above); those will also work.

Revenge of the Update: Suggestions for Ultima 7 and Serpent Isle have been added. But, again, as Pix’s Ultima Patcher (link above) has been updated as well, it is still recommended that you use it instead. Or, again, Xarton Dragon’s Portable Ultima Patches (link above); those will also work.

Courtesy of Pioneer Dragon, Ultima Aiera is pleased to present a technology report/industry brochure from Origin Systems — which has been broken out into over a dozen images — profiling the company’s corporate culture and spotlighting several of its new and upcoming games (such as Ultima 7 and Wing Commander 2).

This “software entertainment technology report” gives some details about the founding of Origin Systems and looks at the state of the company in 1991 (when the report was authored). It goes into detail about a number of new and upcoming games at the time — Ultima Underworld, Martian Dreams, Ultima 7, Wing Commander 2, and Strike Commander — and looks at the “electronic games revolution” and the changes in the gaming industry.

Much of the brochure is written in the form of a dialogue, posing questions and giving answers. Because it’s an industry-focused piece, the writing is a bit more technical and not quite as laden with sales jargon as one might otherwise expect (although it is not free from same, to be sure). It’s a fascinating glimpse at both the corporate culture at Origin immediately prior to their acquisition by Electronic Arts, and also a fine look at the development styles that they nurtured and espoused.

Anyhow, enjoy. Pull up the images or the PDF — although I would recommend downloading the PDF if your intent is to print anything — and pore over them. Find all the little details and revelations you can, and just enjoy reading about Origin in its heyday. Ultima Aiera is indebted to Pioneer Dragon for providing this material, and to everyone who worked at Origin Systems for creating the company they did.

Feed the Gamer looks at this very question and comes away with the conclusion that Looking Glass — the studio that developed both Ultima Underworld games — was very, very awesome indeed.

Founded in 1990, Looking Glass was not only responsible for some of that decade’s most innovative and memorable games, but was also a place where people like Ken Levine (BioShock), Warren Spector (Deus Ex) and Seamus Blackley (Xbox) all worked under the one roof.

The product of a merger between two companies, Blue Sky Productions and Lerner Research, Looking Glass Studios was based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Developing mostly for the PC, Looking Glass’ first few games were published by PC gaming giant Origin (Wing Commander, Ultima), but by 1995 the studio was developing and publishing its own titles.

…

Looking Glass’ first game (well, while its development side was still known as Blue Sky) was 1992′s Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss, a first-person role-playing game that not only broke from the traditions of conventional Ultima games, but in many ways blew right past them, its immersive setting and (for the time) amazing 3D graphics making it a critical success.

The games which came next read like a “greatest hits collection” of PC gaming in the 1990s…

Eidos — massively in debt at the time — shut Looking Glass down in the year 2000, a rather ignoble end for such a talented development house. One could almost argue that such was the curse that afflicted all developers who published Ultima titles, I suppose. But in their short span, the did produce some genre-defining — and genre-shattering — games, which frankly still hold up very well today.

Ever since the Underworld games arrived on Good Old Games, one of the more commonly-asked questions has been when System Shock and System Shock 2 will show up for sale. Indeed, the people at GOG rather pointedly referenced this series — the other two-part game series built with the 3D engine that also powered both Underworld titles — in a Q&A session, confirming that for now, there was no possibility of seeing either game arrive on GOG.

And in a lengthy retrospective, G4TV’s The Feed blog explains why that is.

For those who haven’t time to read the whole thing, here’s the basic summary (which I admit I did not entirely know, myself):

But even if EA wanted to publish another System Shock, the company didn’t have the rights to do so. Back when the original game was made, producer Warren Spector negotiated a deal in which EA got the trademark to the series, while the developers at Looking Glass Studios kept the rights. To create another System Shock game, you need both. “My thinking was it would force us to be married so it never would be that either party should be able to say we own that, we’re making the next game, screw you,” Spector told the San Jose Mercury News last November.

In hindsight, the deal only jeopardized System Shock’s future. Looking Glass Studios closed in 2000, a year after System Shock 2′s release, and the copyright to the series went into the hands of an insurance company. That left EA with only the System Shock name, but no actual development rights.

Since that time, EA’s trademark on the System Shock name has expired, mind you, and the article goes on to explain why that fact is as much an additional hurdle to the development of a new game in the series as it is an advantage. The legal issues surrounding both the name and development rights for the series are vexingly complicated.

Still: if you were wondering, you can now say you know what the issue with the creation of a new System Shock game is…and you can also quite safely infer that these same issues prevent the games from becoming available for sale through a digital distribution service like Good Old Games.

[Insert Paul Harvey joke here.]

The Wing Commander CIC is reporting that a custom build of DOSBox has been released, which incorporates the MUNT emulation patch to add true Roland MT-32 support to the DOS emulation environment.

Though it was intended as a prosumer-grade MIDI synthesizer, the MT-32 quickly became an effective standard for high-end sound in computer games, and several games were built which to this day offer the best possible sound experience to users with either an actual MT-32 setup or a decent emulator. Several Origin games — Wing Commander, Wing Commander Academy, Wing Commander 2, Savage Empire, Martian Dreams, Ultima Underworld, Ultima Underworld 2, Ultima 6, Ultima 7 and Serpent Isle — were released with support for the MT-32, and arguably sound their best when they are able to take advantage of that system.

Anyhow…some lion of technology who goes by the moniker Taewoong is responsible for the custom DOSBox build, and you can download it from his site. He has also uploaded a video of the first mission in Wing Commander to show off just what the custom build is capable of.

For you Wing Commander and Ultima fans who want the best possible sound experience when playing your favourite games in DOSBox, this is now officially your best available option; be sure to check it out.

Andrew writes in, asking a question that realistically I should have already published an answer to:

I want to play the Ultima games from beginning to end, but I have no clue how to apply the upgrade patches!

I’m not an expert or even a novice code writer, so please excuse me if I ask you to tell me what to do step by step.

If it helps, can you start with just Ultima 2?

I’m going to put my reply in an article, because that way I can add it to the FAQ as a link. If any of you have suggestions which you feel are better than mine, by all means give them in the comments.

Note: For the purposes of this write-up, I am assuming that everyone is trying to run the PC/DOS versions of the earlier games.

Akalabeth

Your best bet for playing Akalabeth (or Ultima 0) is Paul Robson’s remake of it. Or you can grab the iPhone version of the game.

Alternatively, if you want to run the original game in DOSBox, you should grab this patched executable which will enable the Ultima Collection version of the game to run smoothly under the DOS emulation software.

Ultima 1

There isn’t much you need to do — or can do — for Ultima 1; there is only a single graphics patch available for the game, which is recommended as it corrects a known glitch in the original display driver executable.

It is best to run Ultima 1 in DOSBox.

Ultima 2

There are two different approaches you can take to get Ultima 2 up and running. One method would be to use Ultima 2 for Windows, which is a front-end for the original game data files. As such, it should work with the various patches that comprise the Ultima 2 Upgrade (but that is untested). And realistically, I’m not 100% sure that the Windows front-end works under modern Windows environments, or on 64-bit systems.

So, the other option is to run Ultima 2 in DOSBox, and just apply the Ultima 2 Upgrade.

Ultima 3

There are two different approaches you can take to get Ultima 3 up and running. One method would be to use Ultima 3 for Windows, which is a front-end for the original game data files. As such, it should work with the various patches that comprise the Ultima 3 Upgrade (but that is untested). And realistically, I’m not 100% sure that the Windows front-end works under modern Windows environments, or on 64-bit systems.

So, the other option is to run Ultima 3 in DOSBox, and just apply the Ultima 3 Upgrade.

A third option, which Sergorn Dragon recommends, is to pay $5 to LairWare and grab their OS X port of Ultima 3. If you can get a good Mac emulator up and running (or an OS X virtual machine), or if you have an Apple computer already, this is easily the best way to go, as LairWare’s version of the game is easily the best out there.

Ultima 4

The best way to play Ultima 4 is using xu4. There is really no better way to do it. You might also want to grab this fix for Hythloth.

I believe that xu4 also renders moot the need for the Ultima 4 Upgrade patch.

Ultima 5

It is best to run Ultima 5 in DOSBox. There are a number of patches available for the game as well, including the comprehensive Ultima 5 Upgrade , a music patch, a patch that lets you use the numeric keypad properly, and (of course) a patch to remove the runic font used at various points in the game.

Alternatively, if you have an advanced TI calculator, there’s a faithful port of the game for that platform as well.

Ultima 6

I’m not 100% sure, but I don’t think you can yet complete the game using Nuvie. As such, it is probably best to run Ultima 6 in DOSBox.

There isn’t much in the way of patching needed to play Ultima 6. If you configure it to use the PC speaker, this timing patch might be of use if you are noticing odd sound errors, and there are also patches for MTU-32 and Soundblaster sound, and for AdLib sound. Use as necessary.

Savage Empire & Martian Dreams

Since Nuvie does not yet support these two games fully, it is best to run Savage Empire and Martian Dreams in DOSBox. There are no patches needed for either game.

Ultima Underworld & Ultima Underworld 2

The best way to play the two Underworld games is to just buy them from Good Old Games; they will run under pretty much any modern version of Windows. The GOG version should already incorporate the official patch for the first game and the second game. If you want a bit of mood music in the first game, there is a patch which adds a MIDI soundtrack, which I can only assume works with the GOG versions of the game.

If, on the other hand, you don’t want to buy the games off of Good Old Games, it is best to run Ultima Underworld and Ultima Underworld 2 in DOSBox. If you’re playing the CD-based versions of the games, you shouldn’t need the official patches; if you’ve got the game on ancient 3.5″ diskettes, you may need those patches.

Ultima 7 & Serpent Isle

A good and easy way to play Ultima 7 and Serpent Isle is with Exult, which is a mature cross-platform engine for the original game data files that incorporates a number of graphical scalers (so you can run the game at higher resolutions), bug fixes, and enhancements. If you use Exult, there’s no need to install any other patches.

If, however, you want to play the games in their pure form, they are well-supported by DOSBox.

As far as patching the games goes, you shouldn’t need much in the way of patches to run the game under DOSBox. If, however, you want a bit of additional atmosphere in the game, there is a patch that adds support for MIDI music in Ultima 7 (and a similar patch for Serpent Isle). There is also an official patch from Origin Systems for Ultima 7, which might help if you find that Ultima 7 crashes.

Ultima 8

A good and easy way to play Ultima 8 is with Pentagram, which is a cross-platform engine for the original game data files that incorporates a number of graphical scalers (so you can run the game at higher resolutions) and bug fixes. If you use Pentagram, there’s no need to install any other patches.

If you have a version of Ultima 8 that is on 3.5″ diskettes, however, you may want to install the official patch for the game from Origin, before firing up Pentagram.

And if you want to play the game in its pure form, they are well-supported by DOSBox. If you want to go this route, you may find the official patches from Origin Systems that add AdLib support and fix a few bugs and improve gameplay to be of use.

Ultima 9

Ultima 9, interestingly, will run even under Windows 7 (32-bit and 64-bit). To get it working, you just need to install the official v1.18 patch and the unofficial v1.19f patch. You may also want to install the Forgotten World v1.19g patch, which corrects a couple more bugs in the game.

And if you want to improve the look and feel of Ultima 9 somewhat, there is also the Beautiful Britannia R1 patch.

Be mindful of the fact that when you have the game fully patched, it will run pretty darn well for the most part…but you will encounter bugs in Moonglow, possibly in Yew, and possibly when trying to manually sail the boat around. You will also want to enable the flying cheat, because on most modern systems you will encounter the “floating runes and sigils” bug after cleansing each shrine.

One final note: Keep your eyes on Good Old Games as the summer progresses; it has been confirmed that more Ultima titles (beyond the two Underworld games) will be released through that service over the coming months. Which games, exactly, I am not yet sure of.

You’ve all been waiting anxiously to know what the countdown to the “biggest announcement ever” at Good Old Games (GOG) is, and now it can be told: the Origin Systems catalogue of games (among many other Electronic Arts titles) are coming to GOG, beginning with Ultima Underworld and Ultima Underworld 2, Dungeon Keeper, and Wing Commander: Privateer!

Yeah, really.

You can get the games at these links: Ultima Underworld 1 & 2, Wing Commander: Privateer, and Dungeon Keeper.

And as the summer progresses, Good Old Games will release still more classic Origin titles, including the rest of the Ultima series, the Wing Commander series, and even the Crusader games. Even if you own the games, I’d recommend taking a look at what the plucky Polish retailers have on offer as the weeks roll on by; they have worked hard to make sure the games play nice with Windows, after all, eliminating the need (hopefully) for jumping through all kinds of configuration hoops.

One thing: I would assume that the various patches and enhancements available here on Aiera for various titles in the Ultima series will work with GOG’s versions of the games, but I don’t know that for certain. I’ll be picking the games up over the course of the next few weeks/months, and as I have time I’ll test the various patches and updates against them.

But if any of you want to have a stab at doing that before I get around to it…please do, and report back!

Update: The Wing Commander CIC is carrying the news and offers a few other bonus posts as well, including: the introdiction of the Trilkhai in Ultima Underworld 2, a look at the Ultima Underworld/Wing Commander 2 retail box set, and a retrospective of GameTap’s abortive attempt to do in 2006 what GOG has just done.

Revenge of the Update: And the next titles coming up after these? Crusader: No Remorse, Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri and Magic Carpet!

Bandit LOAF (of Wing Commander CIC fame) alerted me over the weekend to the existence of this video from the 1992 Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago. In it, we see revealed the fact that a Sega Genesis-based port of Ultima Underworld was in the works for the Sega CD.

Wait for it; it happens shortly after the 3:00 mark:

Astute observers will also have noticed that another famous Origin title, Wing Commander, was also slated to be released on the Sega CD. Alas, while the Wing Commander port was released (and was evidently quite good), Underworld never saw the light of day.

Matthew Jason Weise, writing at Eludamos (The Journal for Computer Game Culture), looks at Irrational Games’ hit title Bioshock from a “critical historical perspective” (thanks for the link, Sergorn!), and notes that the game owes much to the two major franchises for which Looking Glass Studios is remembered: System Shock and Ultima Underworld.

How’s this for an opener?

According to Bioshock’s creators at Irrational Games, Bioshock is the spiritual successor to System Shock 2. Yet System Shock 2 did not originate all the conventions Bioshock employs. Nor did the original System Shock. To truly understand where Bioshock comes from one has to go all the way back to System Shock’s predecessor, Ultima Underworld, released by Looking Glass Studios. Though Looking Glass made games using the first person perspective during the same time period as Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake and Half-Life it never made games that could accurately be called first-person shooters. Looking Glass had its own trajectory of first-person game design independent from first-person shooters. Their games experimented with story, character, and immersion in ways first-person shooters did not. Bioshock would not be the game it is without Looking Glass’s innovations.

Long-time fans of the Ultima series won’t find much in the way of new information about Ultima Underworld, and those who keep informed about where new studios draw inspiration from probably won’t find much in the essay as a whole that is novel. That said, it’s a very good look at the historical progression from Ultima Underworld to System Shock to Bioshock, and the legacy and inspiration that those earlier titles gave to Irrational’s (actually quite awesome) hit game.

He wasn’t sure he was going to do it, and wasn’t sure he could secure a copy of the game, but Spoony evidently managed to overcome both doubts. Here is his (just shy of) ten minute review of Looking Glass Studios’ classic, Ultima Underworld:

Of course, it’s the first of a two-part series, meaning that at some point Spoony will get around to reviewing Ultima Underworld 2. I suspect that’ll be another lengthy review, akin to his summary of Ultima 7.

Just in brief, I don’t completely agree with his criticisms of the game (although the voice acting is rather awful…and something I don’t remember being present in the diskette version of the game), and I wish he’d spent more time on just what a technical marvel the game was in its day (as compared to its closest competitor in the first person realm, the first Wolfenstein game).

That said, the bit where he’s protesting in full medieval garb is rather funny.

Update: And just like that, a day later, he’s posted his review of Ultima Underworld 2:

A bunch of you have commented below — correctly, I think — that he really doesn’t get the game, and could should have had a nice warm mug of RTFM before he undertook his attempt to play it. In fairness, I can somewhat sympathize with how he struggled with the sewers, because I find them quite difficult as well. Still, it’s not like the fact that you’re supposed to circumvent the headlesses is any kind of arcane knowledge. Ditto the reaper guarding the armoury key. Both of these things are there for the truly hardcore gamers to try and beat — and good on them if they can. For the rest of us, there’s a side route.

Infinitron commented that after the glowing review Spoony gave Ultima 5, there might have been a reasonable expectation that his review of later games would have been similarly positive. I would argue that it became apparent with Spoony’s review of Ultima 6 that no such even-handedness was to be expected. Ultima 5 got a pass because it occupies a special place in Spoony’s heart and history as a gamer, but almost every other review he’s turned in has been of a decidedly modernist bent. He doesn’t review these games in their historical context; he reviews them (essentially) as though they were new releases in this day and age, and lambastes them accordingly. Game mechanics have changed, evolved, and improved since the halcyon days of Looking Glass Studios’ epic series and John Carmack’s raycast pseudo-3D imitations thereof.

Dan Schmidt, former Looking Glass Studios programmer, shares one other little story from the development of Ultima Underworld:

Jon Maiara (the same guy responsible for the Pac-Man homage) was writing the conversations for [the ghouls], and included all sorts of things like the opportunity for you to make fun of Eyesnackís name, to which he would respond by making fun of your name in return. You see the edge case, of course, right?

Do read the whole (short) thing; it’s just the right kind of amusing, and I’m pretty sure it’ll make you miss the days when games couldn’t utilize more than the first 640K of memory. Good times, good times.

Gamasutra is reporting that former Looking Glass Studios game designer Doug Church, who worked on the System Shock and Ultima Underworld games, has signed on with Half Life developer Valve.

No word has emerged yet concerning what project(s) Church has been assigned to.

And that’s basically it for today…slow news. C’est la vie.

(via)

One last awesome find made via Twitter (does anyone still wonder why I see such value in that social networking platform?) is this podcast of GAMBIT’s interview with Austin Grossman, a former designer and writer for Looking Glass Studios who worked on System Shock and Underworld games.

Enjoy! As a bonus, Grossman is joined on the podcast by two GAMBIT employees who used to work for Looking Glass as well; the reminiscing alone is worth the listen!

This article by Dan Schmidt was brought to my attention by the administrator of the Ultima Facebook Page, and man…it makes for one funny read. Mr. Schmidt was a programmer working for Blue Sky Studios/Looking Glass Productions at the time that Ultima Underworld was bring produced, and his post recounts some of the various bugs, and “bugs”, that were encountered during the game’s development.

I was particularly fond of this one:

We were working with a lot of pretty raw graphics technology, as you can imagine, and it created some unintended graphical results fairly often. The upside was that whenever we ran into some heinous graphics bug that resulted in crazy psychedelic effects, once we figured out what was causing it, after fixing it we kept the code that would make it happen and enabled it when you ate too many mushrooms.

…mostly because I remember subjecting the Avatar to mushroom abuse at least twice when I first played the game, and man did things start to look wild.

As they say on this here Internet: read the whole thing! Trust me, you won’t be sorry…it’s laugh-worthy to the very last sentence, and also a touching stroll into the history of what really should have been the defining 3D game of its era.

Want this? You can get it!

I just stumbled across this, and figured it’d be worth a repost, since it basically speaks most of my own thoughts about Ultima Underworld in relation to the first iD Software titles:

Some people still believe that DOOM was the epitome of early 90s PC gaming in 3D. They are of course wrong, for Origin’s Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss was the true king of the era. It also was the first truly (and fully) 3D game to hit the PC, an architecturally beautiful virtual world and a truly excellent action-CRPG. You too can now love it in the privacy of your home with a little help from this Ultima Underworld auction. It’s the complete and lavishly boxed edition of the game and the seller ships to N. and S. America, United Kingdom, Australia and Germany.

Currently going for a bit over $15 USD, it’s actually quite a reasonably-priced auction item. It is used, but the seller asserts that it is in excellent condition, and the picture supplied with the sale certainly includes all that I remember pulling out of the box when my grandfather handed me his copy of Ultima Underworld back in the day.

So if, good Dragons and Dragonettes, you’ve never played Underworld before, or if your Ultima collection is missing this key piece, why not stop on by the eBay auction and place a bid? You’ve got about four days left to do so.

Boxer, for those who don’t know the name, is a Mac port of DOSBox that claims to vastly simplify the process of playing DOS games using that software.

Having used it, I’d say that this is a reasonably truthful statement; I particularly like how it allows you to launch DOS apps off of your drive simply by double-clicking the EXE file. It can also be used to “wrap” (“box”, natch) individual games, which you can then treat as a standard Mac app for all intents and purposes.

That said, Boxer wasn’t this cool when last I downloaded it:

Boxer comes with 4 ready-to-play DOS games to whet your appetite: Commander Keen 4 and demos of Epic Pinball, Ultima Underworld and X-COM: UFO Defense. Bon appetit!

Ultima Underworld!

Yes, yes, just the demo. But still! It’s always great to see a classic get its due.

Do be sure to give the Boxer website’s main page a thorough look-over; Ultima Underworld isn’t the only Origin game they mention or provide a screenshot of.

Another excellent Unreal map created by Ryan “Zerker” Armstrong, this project is a re-creation of “the entire first floor of Ultima Underworld for Unreal.” The level fully supports all of Unreal‘s default gaming modes, including co-operative play and botmatches.

Naturally, the maps also require Unreal to play. Copies of the game for Windows and Mac can still be found online, though they won’t necessarily be cheap or in stock in large quantities. You can also find the game for direct download on Steam or Impulse/Stardock. (If you want to support Aiera a little bit, buy it through Stardock.) You can also get it at GOG (of course!).