Ultima Patcher 1.3

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I’ve uploaded a new Ultima Patcher. This doesn’t add Ultima 9 patching but does add easy MT-32 emulation for the remainder of the relevant games (Ultima 6, 7, Serpent Isle and Underworld 2). You will still need to bring your own MT-32 ROM’s however.

There are a couple of bug fixes as the previous build didn’t always allow users to change the sound settings in UW1 & 2. Also patching UW1 to use MT-32 would break UW2 since they shared a copy of DOSBox.

One thing to note, because of these shared copies of DOSBox if you add MT-32 support for any game that was installed with another title in the same package you will also add it to that other title. i.e. installing MT-32 support for UW1 installs it for UW2 and so on. I’ve attempted to allow for all possible combinations of patches in these situations and apply restrictions/fixes as appropriate. Please email or post on here with any bugs or if I’ve missed anything.

Unless there is a clear demand, I’ll probably skip Ultima 9. It’s a Windows game so it should be easier for people to patch and I’m not convinced anything further is needed with the work other people are already putting in. Also mods like Beautiful Britannia are fairly big and I don’t want to force people to download anything that size to patch all the older games.

When Games Attack – Top 5 Worst Video Game Celebrity Tie-Ins

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When Games Attack was a UK video game show that ran for one series on Bravo around 2004/5. It featured a top 5 that ran throughout every show and out of all those top 5’s there was only one Origin game to get a mention. People can check Video Production Services near me to record the best videos. Since it’s the UK press giving an opinion on Wing Commander 4 you can probably guess where this is going so without further introduction, here are their top 5 worst celebrity gaming tie-ins.

Ultima 2 Gamebook

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Today is the 30th anniversary of Ultima 2. It’s a game that tends to be regarded as the worst in the series but it gets a hard time if you ask me and needs to be seen within the context of what else was available in 1982. Ultima 2 was where Garriott first learned to program in assembly and gaining the skills needed at the same time as making the game was never going to be ideal. There were impovements over Ultima 1 with better dungeon graphics, characters you could talk to (albeit briefly), scrolling town maps and many different time zones and planets to explore. It did veer away from what is considered canon these days with the Earth/time travel elements but Ultima 2 introduced cloth maps, boxed Ultima games & moongates which were all staples from here on out.

If nothing else, the speed improvement from being in assembly was significant and if everyone had to play the original BASIC Apple II Ultima at the speed it ran on that system, I expect it would be Ultima I that dropped to the bottom of the favourite Ultimas list. I doubt I could ever have made it through that particular game without speeding up the emulator.

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In honour of the anniversary, here is a scan of the Japanese Ultima 2 gamebook. This was published on November 1 1986 by JICC and conveniently has a passage in English on the back cover so to quote:-

These days, this world goes mad! I was in New York city, or at least I believed so. Now I’m in a strange land trapped within time. And many weird things and monsters attack me!

Realizing Minucks, apprentice of Evil Lord Mondine, devised these things, I set forth to destroy Minucks, through the time and the space. But, what a terrible end! How could I imagine it, and Minucks is mad with joy!

Spelling differences aside, that sounds roughly like Ultima 2 to me but as ever I haven’t got the Japanese skills to say much more. A scan is in the downloads for people who have.

For the rest of us, there is loads of artwork scattered throughout the book which I’ve put into a gallery below:-

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Chris Launius’ Origin Artwork Photos

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Chris Launius has posted a large number of photos of the original artwork for various Origin games on Facebook. I’d normally leave news like this for other sites but this is too good to pass up with the cover art for Ring Quest, the Times Of Lore map, Ultima 5, Ultima 1 and many others. One of the most interesting items is a hand-drawn box art mockup for Knights Of Legend which is very different to the final version. Head on over to Chris’s Facebook album to have a look at the rest.

KnightsOfLegendArt

If that isn’t enough, he’s also got an older archive with drawings from Martian Dreams, Quest For Clues books and some early drawings of the Ultima 5 cover. Chris apparently saved all of this stuff and much more when it was going to be thrown out after Origin were closed down. All of it going into landfill is unthinkable but this sort of thing is hardly an uncommon story. Good to know it’s all in safe hands now although I inevitably wish they were mine.

On those lines, I agreed to buy most of the remainder of Rhea Shelley’s hoard of Origin memorabilia a couple of nights back. There isn’t so much left now so it’s not quite the bank account crippling expense of last time but it’s enough that I’m certainly going to notice it. There isn’t much documentation but there are some cool Origin nik-naks which I had to have. Expect photos in due course but I’m not even close to going through everything I got the first time around yet. If anyone wants a Crusader poster by the way, I should soon have far more than I could ever need.

Caverns Of Callisto Scans

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I’ve kept at least one reader waiting for 8 months for these but I’ve finally added scans of the Caverns Of Callisto documentation on here. Since these are probably going to be the only scans out on the web in the forseeable future, I’ve done my best to keep the quality as high as possible:-

Caverns Of Callisto Disk Caverns Of Callisto Manual

Caverns Of Callisto Map

There isn’t a whole lot to the documentation but I do like the hand crafted nature of the manuals in ancient games like this. I also love how the page of storyline attempts to explain every aspect of the gameplay and all things considered it doesn’t do a bad job of it.