Having acquired a CD32 in recent weeks, I’m about to start playing the port of Wing Commander which will be getting a write-up of sorts on here when I finish it. While that’s keeping me busy, here is another review of Ultima Online this time taken from the pages of the February 1998 PC Home. This is a lot less positive than others I’ve scanned citing the lack of European servers and bad lag at busy times:-
This is a review of Longbow 2 from the February 1998 PC Format. I would have expected it to get a great score in most magazines but it apparently falls well short of Comanche 3 in this reviewers eyes. I’d need to play Comanche 3 to be convinced of the validity of this comparison. I remember the original well and it was a fun arcade shooter but aiming at quite a different market. I can sympathise with the opinion though as that style of gameplay was far more up my street than a serious sim ever will be:-
It’s another Ultima Online review today, this time from the January 1998 PC Format. With the nature of Ultima Online, you would imagine it could offer quite a different experience to each reviewer but this is almost identical to the PC Gamer review right down to the last percentage point on the final score:-
I’ve not been doing so well at updating the site this last week. You can partly thank Telltale’s Walking Dead games for that as I’ve been hooked from the moment I started playing them. Due to the nature of the story, I wouldn’t say they were exactly fun but they are utterly compelling for all that. I still have one episode left but I’ve pulled myself away long enough to scan this Ultima Online review from the pages of the January 1998 PC Gamer:-
This is a preview of Wing Commander Prophecy scanned from the Christmas 1997 issue of Ultimate PC magazine. It includes an interview with the producer Rod Nakamoto who must be one of the very few people to work at Origin who could claim to have been in the industry longer than Richard Garriott having founded his first IT company (Sweet Micro Systems) back in 1979. They were most famous for developing the Mockingboard sound card for the Apple II which was used to great effect in Ultima 3 onwards. He was a year later than Garriott founding his games company (Interactive Designs) who developed for other clients with titles like the PC port of Defender Of The Crown for Cinemaware. That company was bought out by Sega in 1992, then Nakamoto was recruited by EA in 96 with his first job being overseeing the Wing Commander and Crusader franchises:-
