I’ve been counting down through my favourite Origin games for the last 4 posts and now we finally get to the top 10. It should be obvious enough which 10 are left so lets put them in order.

10.Autoduel

This was the only game that Lord British would put his name on the box that wasn’t an Ultima in nearly 20 years at Origin, although it was mainly worked on by Chuck Beuche. It was another adaptation of a Steve Jackson game which apparently wasn’t too popular with the man himself as it strayed so far from the source material. It’s those changes that made Autoduel such a success as it could truly taking advantage of the different medium.

In Autoduel, Origin created one of the more unique RPG’s of the 80’s in which the player has to drive around a Mad Max inspired post apocalyptic America earning money to upgrade their car in order to survive in the dangerous wastelands. Car combat was handled in real time arcade segments that could be approached very differently depending on exactly what upgrades you had made to your vehicle. The whole thing has an extremely open world and unusually for me in an RPG, I actually liked the combat.

Autoduel certainly isn’t forgotten but it should be more celebrated than it is. I’d love to have seen some sequels and it’s a game crying out for a modern remake.

9.Wing Commander 3

It won’t be any great surprise that most of the top 10 games are Wing Commander or Ultima titles. Wing Commander 3 was a technological marvel in the day to such an extent that as impoverished student, I had to combine the best components of my PC with 2 of my housemates in order to create something that would even run it. It still took several minutes to load each mission and the planet missions were nearly unplayable even in VGA so we kind of missed some of the impact. It was a great experience despite all of that.

The heritage to WC2 was a lot clearer than it would become in WC4. The movie sections were clearly replacements for the animated equivalents and for better or worse didn’t take over the game in the same way as the sequel. The in-flight SVGA engine was a little monochrome if I’m honest and I was slightly disappointed with it after playing Armada prior to this. It was the epic quantity and quality of all the movies that really kept me going on that first playthrough. You no doubt had to be there at the time to appreciate this of course, in the same way as the digitized speech impressed so much in WC2.

When I finally got a machine capable of playing it properly the combat sections came into their own and I could finally see the whole package in all it’s glory. Arguably the combat had been a little more fun in WC2 but this was a new and different experience that I replayed far too many times back in the 90’s.

8.Ultima 6

Ultima 6 marks the best middle ground of the main series for me between the hardcore RPG’s that preceded it to the almost statless and adventure game like Ultima 7. The dialog was expanded hugely and conversing with the many NPC’s is one of the largest and most enjoyable parts of the game. The combat was still much the same as Ultima 5 except all on the same map now and I only had to worry about controlling the avatar. This speeded progress massively and was a vast improvement. For anyone who really didn’t like combat, it could be largely avoided throughout the game and you wouldn’t be punished. There is precious little in Ultima 7 that wasn’t already in Ultima 6 outside of the fancy full screen graphics.

The plot while at first appearing standard RPG fare wasn’t quite what it appeared in one of the better twists of the series. About my only complaint with Ultima 6 was how dark it got at night. Origin really knocked it out of the ballpark in 1990 with this and Wing Commander 1 both coming out. These games heralded the shift in power to PC gaming in what was a long overdue change in focus from the Apple II for Origin.

I did miss the 3D dungeons a little but we got Underworld not long after which made up for it and then some.

7.Wing Commander 2

This was the first Wing Commander game I ever played and was by far the most impressive thing I’d ever seen on my PC at the time. It was an incremental improvement over the first in the series but it all added together to that much more of a satisfying experience. The cutscenes had far more animation and variety, the explosions were a little bit prettier, the music a little more varied and of course there was the speech dotted throughout that so impressed all the Soundblaster owners back in the day.

Even the ships had more variety from the nimble Ferret to the ponderous but extremely satisfying Broadsword. Capships could no longer be shot down with anything except torpedoes and these tense bombing runs are some of my fonder memories of gaming back in the early 90’s. It didn’t have the branching mission structure to the same extent as WC1 but since near enough everyone always replayed until they won I don’t think it was too much of a loss.

6.Martian Dreams

This is probably a controversial choice to place so high but I’ve always loved Martian Dreams from the first time I played it. This was long after the original release as it’s the game that got me into collecting in the first place. I’d been something of an Origin fan from about 1992 after playing Wing Commander 2 and Ultima Underworld in fairly close succession. I kept up with most of their newer releases after that but never really got into the Ultima series until the Ultima Collection was released in 1998. This was of course missing Martian Dreams (among others) so I thought I should do something about it and I kind of kept going from there.

The game has one of the least likely plots ever to come out of Origin with the Avatar joining a bunch of historical characters in the past to journey to mars via a cannon to rescue yet more famous historical characters and ultimately revive a long dead alien race…and you get to take Warren Spector along for the ride. What should be a ridiculous plotline works brilliantly and disbelief is entirely suspended as the story gradually unfolds before drawing to a fitting climax. The sci-fi nature of the plot is right up my street as I’ve never been overly keen on fantasy by comparison. The reskinned Ultima 6 engine never looked better and fitted the game brilliantly. I even love the music (especially the credits theme). Even better, it’s free on GOG these days rather than the silly money I paid back in 98/99.

5.Privateer

I rushed out and bought Privateer when it was first released, more or less ignoring the required specs on the box which my PC barely met. The result was an impressive intro but an unplayable game where my framerate led to me not being able to land any shots whatsoever. I ended up returning it to the store and never played Privateer again until it came around on this blog. I should have given it another chance years earlier.

The start of the game is certainly unforgiving but that’s what makes progressing so rewarding later on. Origin created a compelling universe to explore on that large pile of floppies and it takes a little perseverance before you can branch out to its furthest extents. The engine was arguably a little dated at the time given that it was still using pre-rendered sprites. These looked much better than they ever had in WC2 though and the music created an extremely effective atmosphere for the game. I especially liked the jump drive mechanic in which the player would have to reach a blue cloud of gas marking a jump point before being able to leave the sector. It led to lots of tense moments when trying to escape enemies. You could argue that Privateer was just an updated version of Elite but I don’t see anything wrong with that whatsoever. It was far more fun than Elite 2 ever was after all.

4.Wing Commander 4

Wing Commander 4 probably holds the record for the game I’ve played through more times than any other. Any time I’ve started to play it, I’d invariably be there several hours later trying to complete it in the one sitting. The snag with that is that I know the game all too well these days and can’t really go back to it any more.

The movie sections provide a compelling sci-fi action romp through the galaxy and were a huge improvement over WC3 in every aspect. WC4 really was an interactive movie in every sense with the story driving the missions rather than the other way around. The British press almost universally panned it at the time for having too much movie and not enough game but I don’t agree with this at all. The flight sections were arguably more challenging here than in WC3 and there was more branching and variety in the ship types so I thought it stepped things up a notch if anything. I even reckon the game flowed quite smoothly between flight and FMV, especially in the climactic later sections. I liked this game so much I bought a Creative DXR2 just to get the DVD version back in the day.

3.Ultima Underworld 2

Ultima Underworld 2 was a rushed sequel released in very short order to capitalise on sales of the first game but you would never know it (unless you run into a certain game breaking bug). The viewing window was substantially larger, the creatures far less pixellated, the worlds more varied and it was simply superlative at the time of release. Nothing else came close except Underworld 1.

The increased size of the game did have some pitfalls and there were parts that felt less polished than UW1. The varied worlds of UW2 didn’t hold together as a cohesive whole in quite the same way and there were some parts of the ethereal void especially that I wasn’t a fan of. I also didn’t like the music as much and the intro/outro were less epic. There are minor points though in a game of this size and scope. It’s probably the better game of the series but I can’t really give it the top spot given that it didn’t innovate in the same way.

2.System Shock

Splitting the Underworlds is the ever popular FPS System Shock. This is another game that I couldn’t get into on first release. I really wanted another Underworld and the lack of NPC’s and conversations was something of a gamebreaker for me. Also, lets face it that control system takes some getting used to but it works well enough when you have the hang of it.

It probably didn’t help that I had the floppy version. System Shock didn’t really come into its own until the CD release some time after. This was done so well and fitted so perfectly it’s hard to believe now that it wasn’t released in that format in the first place. The atmosphere of the game is intense, the action and story extremely well presented and in some ways it’s a template for many games that followed it. I wish more of those games had more of the freedom and exploration of System Shock instead of the on-rails FPS’s that are so prevalent these days.

1.Ultima Underworld 1

It may not be a coincidence that my #1 game on the list is also the first Origin game I played. Playing UW1 was an experience unlike any other with its true 3D world making a huge impression on gamers like myself who were not used to 3D. I’d compare playing this in 1992 to anyone trying VR for the first time now. It really did feel like being there with the sudden switch to combat music making me jump out of my chair on numerous occasions if a denizen of the abyss had crept up on me. The music and visuals created an incredibly dark and foreboding atmosphere of the sort that I’ve only experienced since in games like Amnesia.

Beyond that, the dungeon was such a compelling place to explore with loads of inhabitants to meet (both hostile and friendly), a damsel to save and ultimately a demon to banish. Each level would bring something new and there were so many ways to approach the challenge. The simulation aspects that Looking Glass brought to this on top of the 3D visuals were the cherry on the cake. It’s ridiculous how advanced the game engine was compared to everything else on the market.

After days of traversing the abyss, there is a closing passage where the Slasher of Veils is banished and a breakneck run through the ethereal void with him breathing down your neck. It’s probably my favourite endgame of all time in what could well be my favourite game of all time. Looking back at this 30 years later, it would be impossible to play it with the same perspective but I have never been as immersed in any game before or since.

So that’s my top 55 Origin games. Hopefully, I’ve not annoyed too many people by putting favourites low down the list. I’d certainly be curious to know what anyone else’s top 10 would have been and the reasons why. I can’t say I found it all that easy to compare many of these titles and my list would no doubt have been different on another day. I was heavily influenced by the games I played nearer their release date which I’m almost always going to remember more fondly. There is also a tendency to avoid clumping all those Ultima/Wing Commander games together and even then I ended up with a top 10 that was 40% of each.

The irony isn’t entirely lost on me that my top three games were all developed by Looking Glass rather than Origin but Underworld was always going to win out in my case and the other two are built from similar moulds.The good news for me is that they all have sequels on the way so let’s hope those can live up their predecessors.

Continuing my list of favourite Origin games, let’s see which games didn’t quite make the top ten.

20.Bioforge

Starting us off is Origin’s answer to Alone In The Dark in the shape of Bioforge. It was a fantastic looking game in its day, with a warped sci-fi plot and some decent puzzles to break up the action. The basic game mechanic may have been borrowed but Bioforge was very much its own beast and presented an alternative approach to the interactive movie which Origin never really pursued any further. Bit of a pity really as it’s one of their better told stories provided you don’t object to reading the lengthy documents you pick up along the way. The main things holding Bioforge back are the lack of an ending since the sequel never happened and the clunky combat. The combat is awkward enough that I strongly recommend playing this one on easy which makes it play more or less as it should in the first place as far as I’m concerned.

19.Privateer 2

This is the Wing Commander game that wasn’t really a Wing Commander being headed up by Erin rather than Chris Roberts and set in a separate universe. The FMV portions had one of the best casts ever assembled for a video game but were a lot less Hollywood and more original series Doctor Who in terms of style and presentation. This didn’t bother me one bit mind you.

The in flight engine was quite a bit smoother and better looking than the Wing Commander 4 equivalent if less satisfying in combat. Flying the ships in Privateer 2 was a very different experience all round but one I always enjoyed. It’s a game that seemed a little under-appreciated in my eyes and might have been better off without that Wing Commander branding that got applied at the last minute.

18.Serpent Isle

Ultima 7 and Serpent Isle are two games that I really should go back and play again one day as I don’t feel I spent enough time with either. Both used the same engine but had quite different structures with Serpent Isle offering a more linear experience to Ultima 7’s open world approach. I’m usually all for a strong storyline but in this case the latter appealed to me more plus the slightly unfinished nature of Serpent Isle was apparent at times. I’d never played this prior to the blog and definitely rushed through it too much – I may well appreciate it more second time around but it still gets a lofty place in the list.
17.Ultima 9

It may be a contradiction but I’ve never been more disappointed by a game than Ultima 9, yet I still enjoyed playing it immensely. The seamless open world and the accompanying music were a revelation back in the 90’s. The dungeons were challenging and varied, the world itself beautiful (for 1999) and I can’t say I ran into half as many bugs as other players were reporting at the time. The disappointment came from aspects of the storyline, voice acting, general treatment of the series legacy and especially the ending with its almost mocking techno-stones music. You would have thought the story should have been the easiest part to get right, at least where they referred to previous events. Overlooking this and all the pregame hype, there was still a great game here that was years ahead of its time. More development would clearly have helped and it’s not how the trilogy of trilogies should have ended but I’d never played anything like this in the 90’s.
16.Crusader No Regret

An RPG engine shouldn’t ever have worked as the basis for a running and gunning action game but in the case of the Crusader games they would turn out far, far better than Ultima 8 whose engine they shared. A few extra years of PC horsepower allowed the move to SVGA which didn’t hurt of course.

Both Crusader games had near identical gameplay in which the silent and conspicuously red silencer would roll around various locations mowing down enemies and searching for keycards and buttons. The controls really took some getting used to but became second nature after two or three levels. Near enough everything in the environment could be blown up, there were a plethora of weapons to choose from and I can’t think of any other games that play quite like them. The ar 15 parts is what you can get when it comes to weapons.

No Regret was the sequel and introduced some new weapons and enemies but dialled back a little on the copious FMV of the original. Since I’m a sucker for FMV, I’m placing the sequel slightly behind in this list.

15. Ultima 4

Ultima 4 has to be the most significant game in the series. It was where it truly became the franchise we are all hopefully familiar with by now introducing the virtues and Britannia. It’s also the entry in the series to introduce the name, job, bye conversation system. Talking to the characters in the world is undoubtedly my favourite part of any Ultima and started a welcome new aspect to the gameplay learning all the clues needed to beat the game by asking the right people the right things.

Playing the game now, the simplistic mechanics are readily apparent and it’s perhaps hard to appreciate its impact at the time. Despite this it remains approachable and far more relevant than any game over 30 years old should be. I’d prefer a slightly smaller party size if I’m honest but Ultima 4 is a true classic.

14.Wing Commander

Chris Robert’s seminal space shooter heralded the start of PC gaming becoming a serious force back in 1990. It was one of the first games that would have made an Amiga owner jealous after Commodore’s machine had led the way for years. Amiga owners did get a decent version of their own some years later but by then the Amiga had truly lost the race.

The sprite scaling engine behind Wing Commander does show it’s age these days but the rest of the game still looks and sounds as good as ever. It’s all the extra effort that went into Wing Commander that really impresses. Origin could just have put out a basic shooter with the same engine and it would have sold by the bucketload. Instead we got a space epic with flashy cutscenes, brilliant graphic design, a branching mission structure and even lip-synced dialogue (for the very few who noticed). It epitomizes what Origin were all about and why I bought so many of their games in the 90’s. I do think later games in the series improved on the formula so it just fails to make the top 10.
13.Crusader No Remorse

As already mentioned there wasn’t a whole lot to choose between this and No Regret. No Remorse included a section where you got to return to a rebel base between missions and talk to all your comrades, buy armour from a shady character (in more ways than one) called Weasel and generally have a good time with the b-movie cast. Origin got everything right first time around in the Crusader series so with the FMV in No Remorse providing a good bit of incentive to progress and getting some extra points for getting there first, No Remorse warrants being a couple of places higher on the list.

12.Wing Commander Prophecy

Prophecy is a game I have mixed feelings about. The FMV sections were a huge step back from Wing Commander 4 or Privateer 2 and a real disappointment. The script for these was similarly average at best. The 3DFX powered flight engine on the other hand was simply stunning and the combat in this game is as good as it ever got in the Wing Commander series. I also loved the new alien ships which all had plenty of character and unique traits. Looking back at it now, I can’t think of an arcade/action space shooter that plays better to this day. The fan enhancements and games that have been made since using this engine take it even further and show a glimpse of where the series might have gone next had it got the chance. As an overall package the FMV, storyline and the fact that I didn’t get to play Blair keep it out of the top 10.

11.Ultima 7

Ultima 7 arguably remains the seminal open world RPG to this day. Having said that, it’s debatable how much of an RPG it is with the stats and combat really taking a backseat to world exploration and conversation. The overall storyline is a little simplistic involving a chase around Britannia but works very well within the open world allowing the player to wander off course at will and take on all the side quests. The full screen engine used for this and Serpent Isle was visually a huge leap forward from Ultima 6, if notoriously fiddly to get running for years prior to Exult/Dosbox. I did find the inventory system quite frustrating it has to be said – give me Ultima 6’s slot based approach over the disorganised piles of things in a backpack any day. The combat became a little random also but not to the extent that it ever felt frustrating. Other than that I think Ultima 7 succeeded at nearly every thing it went for. I’m surprised it didn’t end up in the top 10 but something had to give.

I’ll count down the top 10 in the next and final post. I expect the final 10 will have been largely predictable for anyone who knows my tastes but there are possibly a couple of surprises.

Part 3 of my countdown of Origin games brings us to the middle of the pack.

30.2400AD

Starting us off is the last of Chuckles’ Origin games. 2400AD is a sci-fi RPG with an engine bearing striking similarities to Ultima 4/5 although I gather that it didn’t use either. It’s a simpler and smaller game than the Ultimas in which the player has to help the underground resistance of Metropolis fight back against the invading Tzorgs. 2400AD really didn’t sell especially well at the time but was something of a hidden gem in the Origin catalog as far as I’m concerned. Origin’s early output was extremely heavy on the fantasy RPG’s so a futuristic setting was a pleasant change of scenery if not genre.  A sequel called 2500AD was planned at the time but was canned after the poor sales as were most of the home computer ports.

29.Super Wing Commander

Super Wing Commander almost didn’t make the list but since it’s got a different name to the game it was based on it gets a spot of its own. In some ways Super Wing Commander is everything that was wrong with the early era of CD gaming. I.e. pointless lengthy cutscenes and truly horrible acting. I can’t say I was exactly a fan of the new artwork – it takes a bit of getting used to after years of playing the regular Wing Commander series. It’s still Wing Commander underneath though so how bad can it be and the flying sections when you get to them did look a good deal shinier than the already aging original. My main complaint is the lack of proper analogue controls with the 3DO joystick support or this would have been considerably higher up.

28.Abuse

This has to be the only game I’ve ever played that was programmed in LISP. It was developed and sold by crack dot com before being published by Origin around the mid 90’s. I seem to recall it being described as a 2D platforming version of Doom but I reckon it would be closer to say it’s Robotron from the side instead of overhead. It uses mouse/keyboard rather than twin stick (since none of us had twin stick at the time) but the same principle is there. The gameplay is polished but there is little variety and no plot to the game so it doesn’t build toward any sort of climax as such.  If Abuse had incorporated some of the Origin flair for presentation it could have been a bit of a classic.

I gather this is quite a rare and expensive title these days having seen it on a list of the 10 most overpriced retro games recently. All I say is this definitely wasn’t the case when I picked up my copy as I don’t think they could give them away.

27.Wing Commander Armada

Armada was an attempt to turn Wing Commander into a multiplayer game. This was long before the internet was in common usage and I remember playing this one over a null modem cable back in my student days. It was the first Wing Commander to be in full 3D coming out shortly before Wing Commander 3 and I have to say that the graphics in Armada really looked glorious in their day. They were far more colourful than Wing Commander 3 in fact although only in VGA rather than SVGA.

A basic strategy element was added to the game involving resource mining and ship building to break up the combat. Prowess in the cockpit would always win out in the long run but I had some fun with this at the time. Maybe it was just the way we played it but combat was in essence a series of head on chicken runs and did show the limitations of Wing Commander physics in a multiplayer environment. It still bridged the gap to WC3 far better than Academy managed.

26.Shadow Caster

Shadow Caster was a strange game developed by Raven that could perhaps be described as a first person slasher as much as an RPG. It was based on the Wolfenstein engine but you would be hard pushed to tell as it was quite the looker back in 93. The unique selling point was the ability to morph between different creatures which was required to get through the varied worlds in the game as each creature would have different strengths and weaknesses. I can’t say the gameplay was ever truly successful with too much melee combat but it got away with it largely thanks to the presentation and I did play this quite a bit at the time. It’s probably doesn’t hold up especially well today though.

25.Savage Empire

I always liked the Ultima 6 engine which for me marked something of a sweet spot between the pure RPG’s of Ultima 3-5 and the more adventuring/exploring nature of Ultima 7-9. As such I was always bound to like the two spin off games using it which proved to be the case. Savage Empire was designed from the outset to be Ultima-lite though and the setting never quite gelled with me. The plot is fairly lightweight with a lot of individual quests but not that much of an overarching plot. There is still a decent RPG here and as an introduction to Ultima it did everything it needed to. Ultima 6 and Martian Dreams had more meat on their bones and are much higher up the list.

24.Wings Of Glory

Wings Of Glory was the last in the “Strike” series moving further back in history once again to WW1. The simplistic nature of the planes actually made the game more approachable and showed off the 3D engine far better than Strike Commander in the process. The tacked on plot was hokey and clichéd but the gameplay lifts it above its two predecessors as far as I’m concerned. Wings Of Glory had one ace up its sleeve with head-tracking support on the VFX-1. This sort of game is a perfect match for VR since the in-game player never gets out of their seat. I’m hoping some of these old VFX-1 games can get modern VR support one day.

23.Ultima 5

Ultima 5 was the last in the series to be what I would consider a traditional RPG, i.e. heavily based on character stats and combat. It continued to iterate the previous formula with larger conversations, a bigger game world and introduced the famous day/night cycle for all the residents of Britannia. The plot was much better developed than Ultima 4 with more subtlety and this is undoubtedly a great entry in the series. It no doubt deserves a higher place on the list but doesn’t get one for the sole reason of the pace of combat which just dragged the whole game down for me. Every other aspect of Ultima 5 shines through and for anyone who can enjoy that combat, this could easily be the best of the series.

22.Space Rogue

It may be almost entirely forgotten now but Origin’s first attempt at a space sim wasn’t Wing Commander but was in fact Space Rogue coming out a year earlier. Paul Neurath’s Space Rogue is something of a cross between Elite and Ultima 5 consisting of 3D space flight/combat sections and tile based RPG sections when you land on planets and stations. The difference between the two components is jarring but I still love the whole idea of combining these gameplay styles and Space Rogue succeeds in creating something not quite like any other game I’ve ever played. It’s something of a prototype Privateer with added RPG.

21.Cybermage

Cybermage was an FPS designed by DW Bradley (of Wizardry fame) around the time of all the Doom clones hitting the market in the mid-90’s. It distinguishes itself from the pack by being in SVGA, having a plot told throughout the game and including vehicles that you can drive/fly around the map which was a real novelty at the time. The comic book plot is fairly nuts and largely delivered in one go by a bipedal talking tiger but I still reckon this game was way more fun than nearly all of its contemporaries. I’ve always had the feeling I’m about the only person who likes it so you may not want to trust that opinion.

Just 20 games to go now and part 4 will get truly into the big hitters in the Origin back catalogue.