I’ve spent several hours revisiting Ultima 4 on the SMS now. It’s been a good number of years since I played U4 (NES version not included) and I’d think I’d forgotten just how good it was. It’s providing a constant challenge but there is always a goal within reach and enough variety to keep my interest going. A game this old is never going to be an easy sell to a younger gamer but once Ultima 4 grabs your attention it’s not hard to see why the game is regarded as such a classic in the genre.

The SMS port has been everything I could hope for with no concessions made in gameplay that I’ve been able to notice as of yet. After raising my humility virtue so quickly in part 1, I had thought I might be in for an easy ride but all the other virtues have proven to require just as much effort as on the PC.

The combat isn’t as slow going as I’d feared but controlling a party of 8 is undoubtedly going to be harder work than I’d like when I make it that far. My combat strategy so far is simply to arm every party member with range weapons and attack the nearest monster and it’s proven extremely effective, not to mention fast since I don’t have to manoeuvre each person too much. The combat system does have one tweak over Ultima 5 in that I can only cycle between monsters when chosing what to attack which is a real timesaver.

Another thing speeding things up is that I think that the PAL version I’m running appears to have been speed corrected. For those that don’t know, the TV signal here in the UK runs at 50 FPS instead of the 60 used in NTSC for the USA/Japan. Most of the consoles that made it over here were fairly crudely adapted for PAL which meant that we ended up with huge black borders and the top and bottom of the screen and a squashed up game to play in the middle. To make matters worse, many (probably most) games from other countries were not adjusted to run at the correct speed and simply ran slower when played in PAL. All of this led to many people (myself included) modding their machines to add switches to swap between 50/60 Hz and since I prefer a full screen I’ve been playing this at 60. From the speed of the music I suspect that it’s running a little faster than intended although the game speed is about spot on as far as I’m concerned.

My biggest problem so far has been getting a boat. They are incredibly scarce in this version and I spent at least 30-45 minutes wandering around coastlines before I finally saw one. Taking the moongate to Jhelom and walking back and forth was what worked for me in the end.

I eventually ran into another ship on the high seas and led it to what I thought was a convenient spot on the Cape of Heroes. Under the impression I had this backup, I didn’t think twice about sailing through the whirlpool when I happened on it later on thinking it was a good chance to get a boat ready for transport to Cove. I only realised after that my boat was in an unreachable spot so I’m once again landlocked until I manage to find another.

I’ve made steady progress other than this. I have all the runes and am now 2 parts Avatar and ready for all the other virtues except honesty. One thing to note is that every time I need to use a mantra at a shrine or elsewhere I have to key in it which theoretically means that this game may be completable without bothering with all the conversations after all which is a nice touch for experienced players.

I’ve slightly mixed feelings about the conversation system keeping track of everything for me. It saves keeping notes for the most part but it’s not unreasonable for a player to go around asking everyone about mantras and runes once they get the idea of how things work in Britannia. I do like the freedom of a text interface at times but the keyword system still represents an improvement on the whole.

I’ve still got work ahead of me before I venture into the first dungeon but I’m close enough to say that for the overworld part of the game at least, this has been my favourite version of U4. It looks, sounds and plays as well or better than any version I’ve seen and the interface is incredibly quick and easy to use considering there are just two buttons. It even has enhancements like 3 save slots which is a real luxury. It remains to be seen what I think of 2D dungeons and I intend to venture through several of those before the next post. That could be slightly delayed as I’ve just received a BBC Master and an Amiga 1200 today and I’m extremely keen to have a play around with them. You can guarantee I’ll have been playing some Elite before part 3.

There has been big Ultima news in the last couple of days with the release of Ultima Forever for Apple devices. If it was out on Android as well I’d be playing it right now but instead I’ll settle for it’s spiritual predecessor which is Ultima 4, this time on the Sega Master System. Sega consoles were never exactly well represented in the Origin catalog and off the top of my head I can only think of one other Origin game that got a release which was Wing Commander on the Sega CD. SMS Ultima 4 was ported by Sega themselves and came out in 1990, 5 years after the original. It was the last official port of the game on any platform other than the FM-Towns.

The packaging is the usual sturdy plastic case used for SMS games. It came with a booklet and paper map, neither of which are in the copy I’ve got but excellent scans can be found at SMS Power. The manuals are basically smaller versions of the Apple II originals which is in stark contrast to the NES game which included a full guide to beating the game.

I’ve played 3 Nintendo Ultima games so far and for all their good and bad points it’s fair to say that they have been a departure from the original source. Right from the start it’s clear that this isn’t going to be the case on the SMS and it is as true to the original as is possible. The graphics are a huge leap forward however and arguably better than those on the PC VGA patch. The original music is used throughout which is great for the traditionalists among us.

The full intro is present and looking as good as on any system I’ve played the game with the virtue cards being especially clear and colourful. I go for my usual route of playing a fighter which should help to a degree in the early stages.

Ultima 4’s myriad of key commands have been compressed down to a menu based system which is intuitive enough to use if a little slower. Conversations are handled in an Ultima 7 style with a selection of keywords where I’m not allowed to ask about anything I’ve not learned elsewhere. This is going to force me to play the game properly learning every clue and mantra which will be a novelty. As far as I can see, every conversation and person from the original game is present and correct and any differences if they are there are minor.

I may be forced to relearn all the mantras and clues but a little prior knowledge still comes in handy in this game and I’m soon collecting all the things I need to win the game. I briefly grind away on one of the guard conversations raising my humility and I’m ready to gain partial avatarship in that virtue in next to no time. This appeared to be way, way easier than on the PC version as I only went through the conversation maybe ten times. I have far less luck trying to raise my sacrifice by gifting gold coins to the beggar in Britain which curiously has no effect at all. I’ll have to try some alternatives.

Combat is where the first real change to the gameplay shows up as it uses the same system as Ultima 5 with attacking on diagonals allowed and any angle of attack using a range weapon. This does have the effect of slowing things down and it could potentially be worse in that regard than PC Ultima 5 with the option menu adding in an extra delay. The menu does default to attack which is going to be the most used command but with the hitch that it often makes strange choices on which monster to go for after this. The game really does love to select monsters that are out of range which may not be a problem when I get my party fully equipped with bows but is an issue right now. With a party of 8 I have concerns that combat could end up being extremely slow and I’m tempted to try to keep my party size down.

The combat is definitely not easy and starting this game is proving to be tricky. After breezing through NES Ultima 5 I think I’ve got a little too used to being mollycoddled. Here I’ve died numerous times already and really should be hanging around Britain taking advantage of the free healing and trying to raise funds for some decent equipment. That will be the next job on the list as so far I’ve just been getting ahead of myself running around the world exploring the towns.

I’ve not played for long yet but I’ll probably not have a huge amount to say about this port even when I have with it being so unchanged. It could well be the best version of the game I’ve played depending on how the dungeons work out but I expect it will require quite some time to play through.

Given how well the few that were ported turned out, you have to wonder why so few Origin games made it onto Sega consoles. Ultima 4 did come out relatively late in the SMS’s lifespan which certainly won’t have helped sales. It’s 1990 release was long after the Genesis had become available in the USA in January 1989 and the NES had been dominating the market prior to this. The SMS had far more of a market base in Europe though and since us Europeans had to wait nearly two years more than the USA before the release of the Megadrive this will have been a large factor in SMS Ultima 4 mainly being sold in Europe and relatively few copies ending up in the USA.

Stonegate proved to be tiny with little more than a room containing the sceptre so I was starting Shame within minutes. This was a typical dungeon and it didn’t take long to make my way to the field around Doom.

I’ll confess that this had me stumped for a while when using the amulet on it didn’t make the field vanish. It turns out I had to fly through it on the magic carpet? Not sure if this was intentional or a bug.

It was nightmarish on the PC but this version of dungeon Doom isn’t difficult as such. There are some fields at the start which can only be cleared with the sceptre but it’s more of the same after that. The path goes up and down more frequently between levels than any other dungeon but this meant that there was often only one choice of direction so it’s just a case of perseverance.

Right at the bottom of the dungeon is a small empty house. After a bit of trial and error I figure out to use the sandalwood box on the mirror. Not sure if there was a clue for this somewhere along the way but I would certainly hope so as this wasn’t obvious without prior knowledge. I never did seek out Captain Johne on this playthrough and there was a demon in Stonegate who refused to help me out without the information I would have got from him.

There is a short ending sequence which is true to the original with regard to the banishment of Blackthorn although here it’s watched by the Avatar in person. In the original of course, the Avatar was sent home in the same spell that transported Lord British from his prison only to receive an ignominious homecoming and discover that his house had been burgled in his absence. On the NES he is rewarded with a banquet in his honour first. Indeed!

So that’s Ultima 5 on the NES done at last. Escape From Mount Drash aside, it’s easily the worst Ultima I’ve played on any platform. Definitely not as bad as I feared going into it but not one that should be tackled by any but the most (fool?)hardy of Ultima fans. The series moved to the SNES for Ultima 6 which should prove to be a big improvement.

On the subject of Mount Drash,  The Digital Antiquarian’s excellent post on the history of the game must have stirred up some interest as I was asked about an article from Sierra’s Interaction magazine. There isn’t much of it but it didn’t take long to dig up. It’s from the Fall ’94 edition which featured a Sierra 15 year anniversary article including this:-

The scan is courtesy of Sierra Gamers run by Ken and Roberta themselves who have a full archive of Interactions on their site. Curious to see an admission that Sierra didn’t treat Garriott all that well at the time. There must have been some regret at this stage about letting the series go but I’m sure there was more to it than Ken Williams not liking RPG’s with the main grievance being the royalties on ports of Ultima 2 as I understand it. If Richard and Ken had got on better, Origin would never have been formed of course so it turned out well enough for us gamers in the end.

I’ll finish off with a quick plug for Retro Revival which I’m off to tomorrow. It sounds like more retro gaming under one roof than I can fit into one day but I’ll be giving it my best shot.

When I last posted about this game I’d come to an abrupt halt when one of the dungeon ladders went missing. At the time I wasn’t too keen to try again as I’d been playing most nights for a week to get that far. However, I wouldn’t be doing this blog without a stubborn/obsessive streak which took over a week or so later and I decided I should give it another go.

That still didn’t mean I was all that keen and it’s taken long enough since for me to get back to it. I’m now playing on a NES emulator and at 2x speed the game has proved to be a lot more playable than it was on real hardware. At this speed, the controls aren’t always especially responsive but movement is much improved and it’s a lot more like the sort of speed an Ultima should play at.

Retracing my steps was still a largely mechanical process but at least I knew what needed to be done this time around. I headed down through Covetous to get the mystic arms at the first opportunity before getting back to relearning all the mantras.

Something I didn’t try first time around was taking on more than one shrine quest at a time. I’m sure this wasn’t an option on the PC but after finding it worked here I only made two trips to the Codex which saved ages. What I really wanted to do was head into Deceit and see if my missing ladder would show up this time around and I’m relieved to say that it did. After putting off the replay for so long, I had a maxed out party and the first of the shards after maybe 2 and a half hours. That’s a lot of retracing but better than I thought it was going to be and it could have been a lot worse. From what I remember of Knights Of Legend, it near took that long just to get between save points.

I found that I was still missing the Hythloth dungeon password. One of the few places I’d not explored was Blackthorn’s palace which seemed like a likely spot so I headed there next. I was curious to see how this version would handle the encounter with Blackthorn. In the original release, Blackthorn would permanently kill off one of your party if you weren’t a member of the Oppression. His actions are less drastic here and he sets 4 demons on us instead when I can’t provide the password. At this part of the game it didn’t slow my group down a whole lot and I had free rein to explore after this.

I take the opportunity to grab Lord British’s crown and find the last member of the council languishing in the prisons who provides the needed word of power.

After this it’s been nearly all dungeon crawling. The dungeons can get extremely convoluted with many routes requiring constant swapping between floors but having a full set of maps before you even start the game makes it all very easy. It didn’t take too long to retrieve all the gems, banish the Shadowlords and grab the amulet.

The lack of challenge is something that’s really hit home playing this second time around. Combined with the lacklustre dialog and slow movement speed all the life has been sucked out of the original classic. What’s left is a game that requires so little thought that it can be played on autopilot while watching a movie – not a good sign when I’ve got it running at double speed.

Having said that, the gameplay is inoffensive and not that bad a time killer once that extra distraction is thrown in to keep your brain otherwise occupied. It’s just as well as even with maps, the dungeons are large enough that it’s taken me about another 90 minutes to get this far but all I have to do now is raid Stonegate and then head down through the final pair of dungeons.

I’ve still not managed to start up again on Ultima 5 so instead I’ve dug out the negatives and proof for another Ultima advert:-

This is dated 20th April 1992 which would have been 4 days after the game was released and sells Ultima 7 on the basis of it being easier to play than confront the Romans with elephants which is hard to argue with. Ultima 7’s all mouse interface was way ahead of anything else I can think of at the time and still holds up well today, inventory shuffling aside.

It’s quirky but I reckon this advert did a decent job of conveying several aspects of Origin’s latest epic in a small number of words. It was ultimately used on the back cover of Computer Gaming World and presumably other magazines at the time with an alternative all black advert following on some time later.

The proof is marked bad on the front of the envelope which usually means some of the colour separation isn’t correct going on those I’ve seen before. The negatives for all these adverts come in four plates (3 colour + 1 black) which clearly gave scope for things to go wrong if something was left off of one layer. In this case the animal behind the T of Today is far darker than in the final version which can be found on the Ultima Codex.