As with the vast majority of this SNES port, the latter stages played out much the way I remember so I’ll be keeping this post reasonably short. I got hold of both the lenses I’ll need for the end of the game then headed for Sutek’s castle to get hold of the balloon plans.

The castle was still guarded by murderous rabbits but there was a slight change as I’m sure the original game needed a telekinesis spell for lowering a drawbridge. This port has no such spell so it’s just a case of blasting the front door open with a powder keg.

Once I’ve fetched the plans, I travel around Britannia collecting the various parts to make my balloon. In part 4 I was concerned about not picking up the fan but it turns out that it’s not needed on the SNES and I can move wherever I like freely. Building this is arguably something I should have done much, much sooner as it’s a great way of getting about.

That only leaves the vortex cube to be fetched which is in Stonegate. I balloon my way there and locate it in the cellars of the former home of the Shadowlords. Around this time, I realise that I forgot to pick up my balloon when I entered and return to find it has vanished. This leads to another journey around Britannia collecting everything I need all over again.

Being more careful with my new airship, I head for the Shrine of Singularity to get the final quest to go into each of the shrines of the gargoyles principle virtues. Two of these are relatively simple with only the Shrine of Diligence being a right pain until I eventually manage to figure out where the secret door is. Even then my party gets flattened by a horde of daemons on the second floor. I’ve found the combat against the stronger creatures in this version a little heavier going than I recall on the PC. I’ve still not invested in any equipment for my party so I could certainly have made life easier for myself.

There is no gargoyle mantra to collect in each of the shrines, I merely have to talk to them and then return to the Shrine Of Singularity to receive the final goal to go to the codex.

With everything in place, there is a show of swirling lights before the codex vanishes.

The final cutscene is there in full (with slightly altered graphics). The music is just one piece all the way through and it’s not exactly obvious to my ears that it’s the gargoyle music playing in chorus with Rule Britannia. This is a loss as it was a great little twist for the ending. I’m not asked to report my feat to Lord British but I imagine Origin would have run out of Ultima 6 certificates by the time this came out.

It must be about a month since I started Ultima 6 and all the gaps I’ve taken in-between are no way to play any RPG. I have still really enjoyed this port when I’ve had the time to get into it. It’s the sixth Nintendo Ultima I’ve played if I include the Runes of Virtue games and easily the best of the lot on it’s own merits. I’d prefer it if nothing had needed to be cut but I can’t say I missed anything that was left out all that much. The fullscreen graphics during daylight hours make up for it even if it does seem to be permanently winter in Ultima 6 if the length of the nights is anything to go.

Before I started I didn’t think the SNES would be up to a game the size of Ultima 6 and was expecting far more compromises. The irony is that for an Ultima fan who has already played all of the games and is looking for something different, this is arguably the least interesting of the Nintendo Ultimas because they changed as little as they did. It would be a great choice for playing via an emulator on your portable of choice if you want some Ultima on the go.

I’ll be taking a quick look at Savage Empire on the SNES next. It will have to be quick as I don’t speak Japanese and won’t be able to do a whole lot more than run around the map.

All the missing posts are back on the site now (minus some images) + I spent ages tonight fixing email delivery which I discovered was broken. Hopefully I can recover those images but everything else is restored once again. The last job remaining is to do another backup which thanks to a quirk in the software will mean downloading the entire site again. That’s scheduled to run overnight though which means I can at long last get back to the Ultima 6 playthrough. I’ve not touched the game in nearly a week while sorting this out but will do my best to remember where I’d got to.

To recap, the problem I’d run into some weeks back was dragons and lots of them. I couldn’t even make it to the entrance of Destard, let alone plumb it’s depths for the dragon eggs I needed to progress. I had to level up but rather than doing this through needless grinding I headed for the giant ant mount in the north-east to search for one of the other missing map pieces. This worked better than hoped as the ants offer little threat but plenty of experience. I’d got to level 7 by the time I left meaning I could cast the invisibility spell which I hoped would get me through Destard.

The invisibility spell did indeed stop all enemies from attacking my party while leaving me free to attack them back and as such did provide the means to tackle Destard. It wasn’t perfect though as it tended to wear off on my party members quicker than myself. Also all the enemies still followed me around even though they didn’t attack so I was soon surrounded by swarms of drakes and dragons. With no way to exit combat and run away the combination soon led to all of my party being killed off and the Avatar having to tackle Destard single-handed.

Thankfully, the Avatar is by far my most potent attacking force so this wasn’t all that much of a handicap. There was some reloading required when invisibility ran out at inopportune times but I managed to make it to the bottom level and purloin the eggs. A quick suicide later and my party were all resurrected and ready to search for more map pieces.

Destard has proved to be by far the hardest location in the game and gathering the rest of the map pieces was just a case of traversing Britannia completing the various quests. About the only difference I noticed was that on the PC I would have to move the harpsichord to reveal the trap door in the room above but with no move command on the SNES it had already been done for me.

Once I had the 8 pieces, I headed back to Buccaneer’s Den. I was outright told where to look for the island with the buried treasure which isn’t the way I recall it going on the PC as it completely removed the necessity to build the map at all. At any rate, I followed the directions and grabbed the other half of the tablet. Something I didn’t do in hindsight is pick up a fan from the same room to control the balloon later in the game. I don’t recall seeing this so maybe it’s not in the port but I expect I’ll be making another trip back down through this particular dungeon to retrieve it later.

I didn’t fancy dealing with more dragons so I skipped Hythloth and moon orbed my way to the gargoyle realm after speaking to Mariah. I’d got as far as recruiting Beh Lem into the party after eventually figuring out how to dismiss a party member to make room for him (this isn’t where you would expect in the conversation tree), and had submitted to wearing the amulet of submission.

There is still plenty to do but I’m closing in on the end of the game now. One more concerted effort should be enough to finish it off and I’d hope there won’t be such a big gap between posts this time.

I’ve been struggling to find time for playing this during the last week so this post is going to be brief. The plan was to get all the pieces of the map together before part 3 but I’ve only managed 3 so far. The first port of call was Budo at the thieves guild on Buccaneer’s Den. He won’t tell me anything until I join the guild myself which means retiring an existing member.

The member in question lives down in the sewers underneath Castle British. This was always one of those ambiguous moral decisions you had to make in the original version. Killing them reduced Karma but worked otherwise. The pickpocket spell could be used either or finally there was a trick where moving a man-trap onto them which killed them off without any loss of Karma to the Avatar.

The man-trap is still in this version but there doesn’t appear to be any way to move it so I’m stuck getting my party over it the painful way. There is no pickpocket spell either as it is one of a large number of spells cut for the SNES. You would think this only left assassination but to keep the port family friendly all I have to do is ask them to retire and they hand over the guild belt with no questions asked.

Now that I’m a member of the guild, I am told about the treasure map of which I need to find 8 pieces that will in turn tell me the location of the tablet. I recall where some of these are from the last playthrough and fetch 3 of the easier ones. The sticking point comes with dungeon Destard. I need to go in here to fetch a Dragon’s egg in order to get information out of a cook called Sandy. The problem is that it’s full of dragons and I’ve so far not even managed to make it to the dungeon entrance without my whole party being wiped out. This has called for something of a rethink of strategy.

I’m led to believe that mass invisibility is the best spell to use as I’m allegedly left able to attack at leisure while invisible. This meant finding the sole mage who would sell me the spell, Nicodemus. He is hidden away in the middle of nowhere and I couldn’t remember exactly where for the life of me. Much wandering around later, I’ve now bought the spell but I’m still one level too low to cast it so I’ll have to raid a dungeon or two for experience. I am moving forward but the end of the game could be some weeks off at the speed I’m going.

I’ll try to make some more time for this over the coming week although I’m going to get seriously distracted by the Telethon Of The Avatar which starts later today. I’d encourage one and all to get involved in whatever way they can to make it a success. It’s such a great idea and the effort being put into that by Rustic Dragon is unbelievable. I’ll put in a special request for anyone who fancies playing a bit of Ultima music to take up one of the available slots. So far I’m the only representative for Ultima’s musical heritage which can’t be a good state of affairs for anyone concerned. Speaking of which it might be an idea for me to go and get a little practice in.