Thanks to the efforts of Infinitron Dragon, A New Breed of Dragon’s Ultima: The Dark Core is now compatible with modern web browsers (or, at least, with Internet Explorer 8 — other browsers are as yet untested).

Grab the updated version at the project entry.

My apologies for the title; the pun was irresistible.

Anyhow, it looks like former Ultima developer Warren Spector‘s upcoming game for the Nintendo Wii, Disney‘s Epic Mickey, is getting the ol’ Collector’s Edition treatment.

Actually, this does look pretty cool.

The $69.99 bundle includes everything seen in the image above: A copy of the game, a pair of skins for the Wii, a faceplate for your Wiimote, a DVD containing behind-the-scenes videos and other marketing materials, some special packaging and a five-inch vinyl figurine modeled after the game’s falsetto protagonist.

I bought my wife a Wii for Christmas last year, and I honestly keep forgetting we have the darn thing (she’s the console gamer, not me). Still, I might just have to check this game out…and I have to admit that I am just a little bit tempted by this package. The Wii is aesthetically pleasant in its design, but its white shell is rather plainspoken, whereas this skin for it has all the right kinds of randomness and contrast.

Michael Hilborn — AKA A New Breed of Dragon — is a name well known to those who have played through (or who followed the development of) Lazarus. But before there was Lazarus, there was another fantastic work of New Breed’s Ultima-inspired storytelling, which was Ultima: The Dark Core.

What was arguably the first browser-based Ultima spinoff (take that, Lord of Ultima!) is once again available for download here at Aiera, and I have also updated the project entry with some notes and considerations for getting the game running on modern systems. Downloads to compatible Internet browsers (The Dark Core’s requirements are, sadly, very specific) have also been added.

The former Ultima developer is evidently a bit down on the approach many big-name game developers are taking these days:

…one of his main problems with games’ stories is their tendency to be dude-centric — he warned the Gamescom crowd “if we don’t break out of big buff guys with swords and guys in tights and space marines in armor, we’re going to get marginalized in the way comics have been in the United States.” He also warned about attempting to ape blockbuster films by filling games with obscenely expensive visuals, as “we still fall far, far short of what people expect from a movie.”

Ultimately, the only form of storytelling Spector thinks games should attempt to emulate is oral conversation, as the person interacting with the game is equally responsible for shaping its story. “Player experience comes first,” Spector explained, “we have to allow them to show their creativity. No other medium has allowed them to do this. We are unique in the history of humankind. Every player becomes an author when they play a game.”

I, for one, don’t necessarily agree…or, rather, I take somewhat more of a both/and stance rather than an either/or stance on the issue. I’m in total agreement in regard to the importance of good, interactive conversation in a game — an Ultima hallmark, to be sure.

At the same time, I don’t see what’s so bad about some of the conventions* (the epic hero, space marines, whatever) that Spector seems down on. Yes, they are conventions, and yes, Spector has a reputation for attempting to defy convention…but the beauty of many conventions is that they resonate with people. We crave the stories of the epic hero, because we find meaning in them, and we connect with them. Not because space marines or epic heroes actually exist, but because they represent ideals of form and philosophy toward which our minds and imaginations are naturally, as if by design, drawn. (If you haven’t read John C. Wright‘s various essays on this topic, you’ve been missing out.)

Nor do I see what’s so bad about developers who have the solid foundation of a compelling, conversation-driven story adding in the cinematics and other visuals. Granted, if all a game has to offer are good visuals, there’s a problem there, sure, and I’ll grant Spector his point in that regard. But the visuals/plot dichotomy is not an absolute, and there are lots of great games out there that offer both. Granted, the visuals don’t quite aspire to the quality of Hollywood movies…but is that such a bad thing? I can’t be the only one who’s noticed that the overall quality of Hollywood’s productions has been in steep decline over the last decade**, whereas the quality of games has been on the rise, overall, over the same period of time. These days, I’d much rather play a game like Mass Effect than watch the latest piece of sci-fi drivel to appear on the big screen, or the television.

And what about games like Starcraft — a great game, by any metric — which use visuals and cinematics to great effect in order to drive the plot of the game forward? Starcraft‘s mechanics really don’t allow for a lot of conversation in the first place, yet the game is both fun to play and tells a good story (again, thanks to its expensive, but well-made, visuals).

As to the “still making cartoons” bit…this is the man who is helming Epic Mickey. As in this Mickey. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course — Epic Mickey is actually a very interesting concept. However…

* To be fair, some conventions (heroines with DD cups and combat uniforms that fail to rise even to the level of undergarments) could probably be done away with.

** Much the same can be said for the quality of Marvel and DC comics, and then over the same time frame, and then precisely because they abandoned the conventions that really resonated with their fanbase in some misguided effort to become more gritty, edgy, and politically relevant. Captain America getting bagged by that sniper was Stan Lee‘s shark-jumping moment, if ever he had one.

This is a browser-based parody of the early Ultima games, and looks very much like them, though it purports to be set in Britannia post-Ultima 9.

So…check thou it out!

Feel like rescuing a princess again? Or maybe taking a space shuttle mission to a distant world? Has it been too long since you journeyed into the Abyss?

Ultimoid appears to be a browser-based parody of the Ultima games, constructed with the GameBuilder service. As such, it’s not a particularly lengthy adventure, and its control set is pretty simple.

Its appearance draws heavily on the tiled graphics of Ultima 1 through Ultima 5. Timeline-wise, it claims to be set in a post-Ultima 9 Britannia.

The former Ultima developer and Epic Mickey mastermind is, apparently, very interested in doing something with the Duck Tales franchise next:

In a new interview with Industry Gamers, he now says that, “A day does not go by where I don’t tell somebody at Disney: ‘Uncle Scrooge, come on! Donald! Huey, Dewey, and Louie! Come on, let me do a duck game!’ So yeah, I would love to do a duck game.”

Of course, being the animation geek that he is, Spector prefers the Carl Barks version of Uncle Scrooge and the nephews, so we probably won’t get any Fenton Crackshell cameos (even though that would be awesome). If Epic Mickey does take off, you never know what franchise Disney may let Spector put his own spin on next.

It would seem that if he is able to have his way — which is, I suppose, to say “if Epic Mickey doesn’t bomb” — Warren Spector will be sticking with Disney for a goodly while, and bringing his unique brand of warped awesomeness to whatever other franchises Disney is willing to hand over to his care.

Personally, I think a Darkwing Duck game headed by Spector might be interesting. Or something set in the darker Gargoyles universe.

Work is once again sending me to the field, this time to the town of Paulsboro, New Jersey. Actually, I find it quite amusing that the airport I’ll be touching down in — in Philidelphia, of course — is literally just across the Delaware River from the site I’ll be working at.

So if there’s any of you Ultima fans out the Philly (or Paulsboro) way who’d care to meet for a beer or suggest a favourite cheesesteak joint…let me know, eh?

Yeah, yeah, I know…it’s barely playable, and really isn’t an Ultima at all, except because Sierra slapped the name onto it as a marketing ploy.

Be that as it may…Telemachos’ PC port of the game is once again available for download.

And from the sound of it, all the various bits of downloadable content (DLC) will be included in the box.

Not that this has even the first thing to do with Ultima…but I like Mass Effect 2 (though not as much as I like Mass Effect), and therefore count it worth remarking on.

(via Joystiq)

Yeah, I know, there’s nothing particularly Ultima-related about BioWare‘s Dragon Age series of games. At the same time, I would be remiss if I did not point out that the Dragon Age toolset is ludicrously powerful and would, I think, be well-suited to developing an Ultima adventure in.

And hence, I’m reporting this, because as I previously noted, my goal was — and continues to be — to expand Aiera‘s scope somewhat to serve as a kind of developer connection for people wanting to tell an Ultima tale. Keeping abreast of available engines and toolsets is a big part of that.

And who honestly doesn’t think that Dragon Age 2 won’t have a wicked toolset? Update: I have been informed by JasonNH that Dragon Age 2 will not have a toolset. Which, frankly, sucks.

(via Joystiq)

Thanks to Matthew Johnston, the download archive for this interesting Ultima-inspired tale is no longer corrupt.

Though incomplete, this Morrowind total conversion would one day have served as a fine basis for Ultima-themed mods. It was a project in much the same vein as Project Britannia or Realms of Ultima.

And it is once again available for download, in its incomplete state.

Some of you may recognize Arkane Studios as the developer of Arx Fatalis, the game that many considered to be, unofficially of course, Ultima Underworld 3.

Well, they’ve just been purchased by Zenimax, who are also the parent company of Bethesda Softworks.

Here’s the interesting part:

Arkane Studios is already working on a project with Bethesda Softworks, though no specific information about the game is available, yet.

The most optimistic appraisal of this news is that it hints at a return, by Arkane, to the RPG genre, which would be nice to see. Not that their proposed shooter, The Crossing, didn’t sound interesting, of course. But Arx Fatalis was pretty amazing, and very clearly Ultima-inspired, and it’s really pretty to think that they might be returning to those roots…with help from the Bethesda powerhouse, no less.

Spoony has continued his hilarious, if profane, reviews of the different games of the Ultima series, and has added reviews for Ultima 2 and Ultima 3 to his site.

Check thou them out!

(hat tip)

This is just a Photoshop job, not a real screenshot. Sadly.

I was told the most interesting thing today.

As the good reader is probably aware, a port of Akalabeth was recently released on the iPhone (or, more correctly, iOS) platform, Apple‘s mobile device operating system. The good reader is also probably aware that I’ve had some contact with Mythic Entertainment. Mythic, as most hopefully know, basically holds the rights to the Ultima name at present, and produced the most recent expansion to Ultima Online.

Well, it turns out that Mythic would be very interested in any effort made to port Ultima 4 to the iOS platform, so much so that they would work to get any functional, well-implemented port published on the Apple App Store under the EA Mobile label.

So…if anyone out there has some experience with development on the iPhone platform, and if such a person would be interested in creating a port of the original game, which offered context-dependent controls not unlike how the Akalabeth port does: here’s your big chance. Not only to remake an Ultima title (and a darn fine one, at that), but to get it officially approved and published.

As Aragorn, son of Arathorn, asked: What say you?