/vr/ - Retro Games

>>5155569
if you're used to games that aren't 30 years old, it's gonna be a slog. And like many works of art that are foundational to a genre, you'll find many things to be cliché because of how many works imitated this one.
The Nintendo version might be easier to get through, I don't know, but good luck and godspeed.

> It's the one that's most readily available to me.
You can download the IBM-DOS version for free.
xu4 is available for various modern OS.
http://xu4.sourceforge.net/download.php

The Nintendo version is a cut down mess. Either play xu4 or the SMS port.

>>5155569
I suppose that U4 is good to start out with; U3 is not terrible and really is the first of the non-batshit insane Ultimas (As much as I love U1 & U2, those two really did have a "throw everything against the wall and see what sticks" attitude to it).

Also, what others have said: U4 is most definitely an older game and people who are used to Elder Scrolls and quest logs and arrows pointing you in the right direction are in for a culture shock.

However, it is also nice to see where a lot of RPG conventions came from. If not for EA torpedoing the Ultima franchise, we'd still be talking about it and not Elder Scrolls.

>>5155569
PLAY THE SEGA MASTER SYSTEM VERSION. USE AN EMULATOR.

>>5155569
The NES version is SHIT, SHIIIIT

play on Sega Master System or just the original Apple II one

>>5157164
It's really not that bad. The Sega Master System is just so much better.

>>5155569
I personally started out with:

Martian Dreams -> Savage Empire -> U7 -> U8 -> U6.

Haven't played U4 or U5 yet.

Ultima VII is the pinnacle achievement of western roleplaying games. It is the apex.
Everything since has been a decline.

>>5156395
That's a worse nes version, the nes version has best graphics and music of them all.
Still surprised how a nes games has better graphics than a sega game

>>5156010
>You can download the IBM-DOS version for free.
It's ugly CGA/EGA shit with bleeper sound. Go play the Amiga version or something.

>>5157662
There's a fan patch with music and VGA tiles if you don't want to play via xu4 with its even bigger variety.

>>5157636
Never mind that it's missing crucial parts of the gameplay.

>>5157567
The two world games and Underworld 1 are relatively detached but there's a clear continuity for 4->5->6->7->Underworld 2->Serpent Isle ->8->9. In particular all the later games built upon 4's foundation. Not to mention that you can import your avatar from 4 to 5 and from 5 to 6.

Just play it on the dang Amiga.

>>5155569
NES version not as good as SMS version

>>5155569
Play it on SMS

>>5157619
i agree but the combat is kinda shit

>>5155569
Take some acid and play the GoG version

Here...for you...
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1UEJ1m-L7J9LjBRFRUX2b5EnG7uI29hcE

>>5160653
You muse be really criminal to pirate gratis games.

>>5160675
>pirate
>the company is dead
And there sure isnt any royalties. Support EA all youd like, i won't.

>>5157619
This is true

>>5155569
There have been numerous undisputable masterpieces in JRPGs, such as the strikingly realistic classic Dragon Quest or its medieval counterpart Final Fantasy. Ultima IV will not join their ranks; its surface is too generic, its presentation too provocative and its messages too obscure. Its take on the abysmal is an illumination in one person’s despair, but a paroxysm of another’s perversion. It will remain underground – treasured by the most avant-garde among intellectuals for its edifying if horrifying insight into the fundaments of human morality. Philistines and self-proclaimed critics alike will shun Ultima IV, but you can’t fault them for that. It takes wisdom to appreciate its subtleties, and courage to side with the unpopular opinion. Sed domi maneas paresque nobis novem continuas fututiones.

Superficially, Ultima IV appears to be a game which caters to the most proletarian among men; aloof critics dismiss it as such often without a second thought. As complacent as these self-proclaimed "critics" are, they fail to realize that Ultima IV is a cult classic, a chef d'oeuvrea buried under false preconceptions and unfounded criticism. This gem is hidden because it does not shine; it is buried because its tone is that of abyssal black. Ultima IV pries into to the darkest corners of our subconscious, the most visceral of our cognition, the most carnal of our urges, and the most primal of our instincts.

As brilliantly put by Cattalus, "Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo"; to describe the artistic qualia of Ultima IV would be to describe music to the deaf, color to the blind or beauty to the philistine. The painting speaks for itself, and it is up to the player to fully absorb its depth. Its sublimity will ever be debated yet always remain objectively irrefutable; the fundamental insight it provides into human and perhaps animalistic nature may shape the basis of role-play gaming for centuries to come.

My problem with U5 was that it forces you to take too many notes in order to progress through the game, and I don't like to spend more time looking at the text editor than the game itself. Having to investigate and remember things is not bad, just the fact that you can't go further without making notes for everything you heard.

In that aspect, how does U4 compare?

>>5161804
Ultima IV was perhaps the ultimate rat-killing game of all time; hour upon hour was spent in tedious little battles that I could not possibly lose and that offered little reward for victory.
It doesn't really stand a chance against the greats of the genre from the later years.

>>5155569
Play the PC original
>How's the NES version?
Not at all the same game. It's nothing like the PC original
>It's the one that's most readily available to me.
The DOS version is a legit free download you retard

>>5161848
I remember playing Ultima quest kf the avatar, for NES. It's a damn good game and really made me feel like I was in the game.

>>5161804
>spend more time looking at the text editor than the game itself.
Your notebook is part of the game, you are part of the game. It's part of the immersive experience.
The two world games offer a quest log in form of NPCs and Underworld allows you to keep notes on the ingame map.

>>5161862
the original version is the Apple II one,and the best version imo.

>>5162106
Either way, any computer version is the way to play. The NES is nothing like them and OP is a fag for even considering playing it.

>>5162125
This , honestly. Anon even included it.

Take 1 second to download and 5 to install.

Why is Ultima IX so fun?
Not as an Ultima game but a random RPG

>>5162106
With a lot of multiplat games, the best version is typically the original one since that was the target platform. In the case of the Apple II, it was the target machine for games such as Ultima, Lode Runner, and Karateka so the Apple originals are the best versions.

>>5162470
Apple II has terrible graphics due to color artifacting as well as lots of disk switching due to low density.
For a series like Ultima they also turned out buggier than the later ports because Richard Garriott was a bad programmer.

>>5163174
>Apple II has terrible graphics due to color artifacting
Emulation always reproduces Apple II graphics horribly, they look much better on a real monitor.
as well as lots of disk switching due to low density.
Ultima IV is on two disks, the first three used one disk. Also the disk access on the Apple is lightning quick compared to most other machines the game is on.

The Atari 8-bit version uses four disks since they only hold 90k.

>>5163174
>Apple II has terrible graphics due to color artifacting
Emulation always reproduces Apple II graphics horribly, they look much better on a real monitor.
>as well as lots of disk switching due to low density.
Ultima IV is on two disks, the first three used one disk. Also the disk access on the Apple is lightning quick compared to most other machines the game is on.

The Atari 8-bit version uses four disks since they only hold 90k.

I thought the C64 had the best U4, except there's no fastloader so disk access is gruesomely slow.

>>5163189
>Also the disk access on the Apple is lightning quick compared to most other machines the game is on.
Not compared to the SMS or IBM/PC.

>>5163219
PCs never had as fast floppy access as an Apple II because they have to go through some really slow BIOS routines and the PC floppy controllers are not as simple and "bare metal". Wozniak's controller design was unbelievably simple and low overhead--seven ICs on the controller and six on the disk drive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ai9jtJHYow

Even the lowly TRS-80 Model I has faster disk access than a PC.

>three seconds to load the OS
>six to load the game

>>5163239
You don't need fast floppies when you have widely supported HDDs or SSD.

>>5163250
You might want to check what hard disks in the 80s cost (hint: out of home users' price ranges).

>>5163250
>SSD
>80s
Did you lose a piece of your brain at some point?

>>5163251

>>5163251
>>5163252
It may come a shock to you but it's no longer the 80s.

>>5163256
Yeah...that. It wasn't until you got closer to the 386 era that hard disks were reasonably affordable to home users. The Tandy 1000 for a while was the most popular consumer-level PC compatible and Tandy didn't offer any factory hard disk with them (you could of course add one yourself if you wanted).

Hard disks are cheap as water now and people forget how frighteningly expensive the things were in the 80s. I think IDE had a lot to do with helping lower the prices since it removed the need for a separate controller board, plus the drives were easier to set up and install (no low level formatting or other bullshit like that).

>>5163239
Byte Magazine did a benchmark test of an Apple IIe and IBM PC once and found that the Apple scored higher on routine I/O tasks like disk, keyboard, and screen access probably because the OS routines were simpler and had fewer layers of code to go through.

Ok bros wish me luck. This thread made me get ultima 1. Time to see what all the fuss is about

>>5163281
The original, original Ultima I was written in Applesoft BASIC. It's not much of a game and it runs at a snail's pace. Origin remade it some years later in machine language with improved graphics.

>>5163284
So should I not play it? Isn't it the greatest rpg ever?

Wizardry was more advanced than the early Ultimas, but they didn't modernize them and within a few years those wire frame graphics were very outdated.

>>5163291
Ultima 1 and 2 are archaic and should be skipped, same for Ultima 3
start from Ultima 4 and go up from there, brainlet

>>5163546
2 is the only one that should be skipped. 1 is so simple and short, you can just squeeze it in. It won't make much of a difference for the sequels but you get a better look on the history of RPGs and games as a whole.

>>5162464
What's a Paladin? Fuck Ultima IX.

>>5155569
The cover reminds me of Moses ripping the Red Sea a new asshole.

>>5163685
>>5163546
What is wrong with ultima 2? It does seem like an extension of the first game according to the history of brittania

>>5155569

Play the NES one, OP. The ultima purists hate it because its not like the other ones. Some elements were removed to add playability.

Good gameplay and graphics, and responsive controls. Gives you a taste of the universe without being overwhelming. A fucking fantastic game, its just these Dick lovers get their balls in a twist when you mention it.

>>5162464
I wanted 3D isometric Ultima IX so bad

>>5157619
The fact that no game has been able to surpass the interactivity of Ultima VII is a shame. It feels like the industry doesn't want to make EVEN BETTER games anymore and is content with making half-assed versions of older games forever.

>>5164473
I made stairways out of dead children just because I could.
I read somewhere that you could bake cakes with blood.
I'd be curious to see how much more interactivity people could come up with with custom usecode and mods.

Also in Exult you can shove crates through the gates (or toss them over walls) and leave Trinsic without the password

So I started ultima IV as my first game. And god damn do I find it absolutely horrendous. It is constantly having me to need to talk to each character an try out different words. Almost no central plot. Yes I understand I am supposed to find out about virtues, but I am given no clue where to go at any point. If I didn't look up a guide, I would have even less of a clue since I started in the land of justice, which is in bumfuck nowhere.

>>5164261
Because they completely retconned it to fit into a coherent history.
Ultima 2 wasn't even set on Britannia but on Earth with different time periods full of whacky shit.
But that's not really the problem, the game is just poorly designed throughout. You start the game in the American knowwhere and have to make your way to Rome over the Bering landbridge to even buy equipment.
Food consumption severely limits your income so the common approach is to hijack a pirate ship because you don't eat while at sea. You need to kill thieves to earn special items that enable certain tasks.
You can raise your attributes by giving money to the clerk in Hotel California but nowhere does the game explain this and the attribute that gets raised is kind of random.
Other quests also require you to give large sums of money to seemingly random people to acquire crucial items.

tl;dr: Richard Garriott wanted to expand Ultima 1 but had no quality control.

>>5164562
You talk to everybody about everything, you shouldn't need a guide for that.
You should have a map so you can plan out journeys to new regions. Using the moongates also helps.
Trinsic isn't bad as a starting point, imagine being a shepherd starting in Magnificia.

>>5164745
>You can raise your attributes by giving money to the clerk in Hotel California
Also I can tell that Garriot needed to work on his sense of humor.

>>5164759
I think he did. 3 onward weren't entirely free of references but they could have been added by other people.
The worst are the ones regarding EA because they are just depressing.

>>5164752
Not him, but Justice is tied to Yew, not Trinsic, which is the city of Honor. Yew is on the main continent, but it is fairly remote from things.

Garriot wasn't much of a programmer and from 3 onward as the games got more complex, he started needing other people to help with music, disk routines, and shit like that.

>>5164752
I tried doing that, but all I get told is to talk to someone who I don't know, go to a shrine for a rune that I don't have. I don't know where moongates are and what they do other than travel. Also what fucking map?

>>5164784
>Also what fucking map?
The map that came with the game.

>>5164785
You mean the one with absolutely nothing on it except for some dots and words in another language that is never taught to you?

>play a game that came with manuals that you had to read
>don't read the manuals
>complain

>>5164791
Learn to read runes. Later games also expect you to know them.
It's a variant of the Futhorc Germanic runes so the knowledge can be useful beyond Ultima.

>>5164793
I literally have read all the books for the game you fucking nigger ass eating aids faggot. Sorry that you can't handle someone not wanting to type the same 4 phrases to an entire town, every town he enters. It is absolutely useless. Plus nowhere does the manual or history of brittania tell you what you must do in terms of a way to start.

>>5164814
The game is from like 1983? Give it a break.

>>5164816
Sorry. Maybe I got a bit frustrated. It's just I have heard from so many people this is the holy grail of RPG games, only to have it be a mediocre old rpg game that is honestly alot worse than other games from its time. I think I must've had it hyped in my head and was ready to super immerse myself and enjoy it, only to basically have a 3 ton brick thrown at my head.

>>5164814
Because you can start doing whatever you want. Be your own boss instead of expecting to be spoonfed.
There are no roadblocks along the way so you practically have full freedom in your explorations.
Get yourself killed if you are completely lost, that way you return to Castle British.

>>5164830
>>5164810
Does the game have any music in it or is it ok to just play some tunes well playing?

>>5164837
The game has music, the IBM port left it out because IBM sound cards were rare to nonexistant. There is a patch to add it in but you are better off playing via xu4, you can even keep your save file.

>>5164837
>Does the game have any music in it
The Apple II versions don't unless you have a Mockingboard (U4 and 5). The C64 U4 has music, U5 needs a C128 for music. The Amiga versions all have music.

>>5164848
>>5164852
Is the GOG version alright? It doesn't seem to have music. Is it better to emulate it some other way?

>>5164858
No. Play natively via xu4.
http://xu4.sourceforge.net/
Get the Ultima patcher if you want to play the games without engine remake.
http://www.pixsoriginadventures.co.uk/category/ultima-patcher/

>>5164858
>Is it better to emulate it some other way?
It's called UAE and the Amiga, at least as far as U4 and 5 are concerned, U6 and up should be played on DOSBox.

>>5164864
What is this engine remake you speak of?

>>5164872
xu4 for IV, nuvie for VI, exult for VII and Pentagram for VIII.
They allow you to streamline the controls and the ones aside from xu4 allow to play at higher resolutions.
xu4 lets you finetune the gameplay.
nuvie allows you to include the voice acting and sound effects from the FM Towns port.
exult allows extra mods to fix broken aspects or play the game rotated by 45°.

Wait, should I play the Amiga version on UAE or xu4? I'm confus.

>>5164876
Amiga version looks worse, controls worse and you hit a block when you want to transfer your avatar to 6. Plus you'd have to restart whereas xu4's saves are compatible with the IBM version.
xu4 > IBM with patches > Amiga > IBM without patches

>>5164493
Mister Bogdanoff?

>>5164880
>Amiga version looks worse
32 colors versus the 16 color EGA graphics?
>controls worse
Doesn't it support a mouse though? The PC is keyboard only.
>and you hit a block when you want to transfer your avatar to 6
You don't want to play the Amiga U6 anyway, that one should just be played on the PC.

Isn't UAE extremely annoying to set up and configure?

Mobygames doesn't suggest the Amiga version supports a mouse. It says the Atari ST version does but not the Amiga.

>>5164902
>>32 colors versus the 16 color EGA graphics?
256 VGA colors with the patch. Several extra tilesets in xu4.
Mouse support in the Amiga and Atari ST versions is useless, they just mapped it to key inputs. xu4 adds more context dependent actions and crucial stuff like mixing multiple spells at once.

>>5164852
that's kind of a lie for the amiga version of U5

U5's amiga just plays one song through the whole game, it's pretty boring. U5 on the mockingboard or SID is great though.

>>5155569
Do not play the consoleshitports, they're nothing like the actual game and will give you a completely wrong idea.

>>5166359
but the master system port is almost exactly the same, it's only missing 3D dungeons

>>5166363
3D dungeons are a pretty big feature to miss

>>5157662
On the same note, the Amiga version has the wrong music

>>5166367
>On the same note, the Amiga version has the wrong music
Actually never mind, U5 is the one where they butchered the music, U4 on amiga is fine.

>>5166367
The important parts of the dungeons were 2D anyway.

>>5164852
Also the Atari 8-bit U4 could have had music except Origin were retards who insisted on coding it for the 48k Atari 800. If they'd been bothered to support the 800XL, there would have been enough memory to add in music.

>>5166582
I don't really know anything about the A8 versions of Ultima. What are they like?

>>5166591
They have music, at least U2-3 do, U4 lost its music because Origin were faggots. The graphics are mostly copypasted from the Apple II and don't really utilize the Atari's capabilities that well. Also U5 wasn't on the Atari but then I'd recommend playing it on a 16-bit system anyway.

>>5166604
Neat, he wrote all his code down and assembled it by hand. I've tried to do that before and it just locked up on me and I had no clue what I did wrong so I had to give up.

The games use the Atari's hi-res 320x192 mode which depends on artifact colors. Unfortunately this means that the colors will look different on different Atari machines/chipsets and you can easily end up with something horrible like red water and blue grass.

I can't get into games like this. My attention span as an adult is too short compared to what it was when I was 14 and I could become totally lost in computer gaming for hours.

>>5166598
Ultima 2 didn't have music.

>>5166615
I agree to an extent but the archaic controls and interface on Ultima are also brutal.

>>5166620
That is true. The things aren't mouse driven and you need to school yourself in how different keys/key combos perform some function in the game. I guess once you figure that out, it's not so bad.

The C64 Ultimas look nicer than the A8 versions and don't depend on artifact color that changes from machine to machine, but the disk access speeds hurt (it's better with a Fastload cartridge, still not as good as the Apple II though).

Ultima 6 made the interface vastly easier as they finally started supporting mice.

The NES Ultima 3 and 4 games are very good. They're a bit simplified, but they definitely manage to bring a worthwhile Ultima experience. Ultima 4 in particular is streamlined in a good way. Are they better than the computer versions? No. They are different flavors.

Ultima 5 on the NES is rare, and also more than a bit bad. Whereas on the PC Ultima 5 shared the same general engine as Ultima 4, on the NES the game uses a Ultima 6 engine and the result isn't pretty. I never liked Ultima 5 to begin with, and the NES version is borderline unplayable.

Ultima 6 on the SNES is a train wreck. The only reason to play it is if you're into masochism. The interface is completely unusable.

Ultima 7 on the SNES is even worse than Ultima 6. It's basically an extremely stupid and boring button masher.

How do the SNES ports compare to the PC versions? I don't know. Ultima 6 was where Ultima and I parted ways because I didn't like that installment at all. After Ultima 5, the series morphed into something I wasn't interested in anymore.

It was bullshit that they used the old piracy excuse to justify not putting out games on the Atari 8-bit or Amiga when you'd be hard pressed to find an Apple II or C64 owner who bought more than about 10% of the software he had.

>>5166638
To this day, I don't understand the piracy excuse that is still used by game companies to defend their delaying/canceling of PC versions of games. To me it should come down to are the expected number of copies sold going to generate enough revenue to make a profit on the port? If your break even point would come at 200,000 copies sold and 2 million people end up buying it and 10 million pirate it, the port is still worth doing.

>>5166640
The problem is modern games tend to have huge production budgets and lots of people involved.

In the old days the excuse was lame, essentially you were paying one programmer and optionally had a couple more doing the music some graphics.

All up, maybe 9 months labor time which would probably mean 10,000 sales to cover those expenses and maybe another 10,000 to recover marketing and distribution.

These days just the voice actors alone are probably making more money than the programmer was in 1985.

But the multi million $ budgets still don't stop them from releasing rubbish games. The overall percentage has decreased but still ever-present.

>>5166598
I don't understand why they had to cut the music out to fit in 48k. How big could it possibly be? I doubt it needed 16k of RAM.

>>5166631
U6 was also a lot more complicated with individual inventories etc and missing features like drag&drop.
nuvie is a godsend for that.

>>5166640
>>5166638
Also the C64 was a low cost computer so the user base was more likely to be of the cheap sort who wouldn't spend much on software.

>>5166662
In my experience, C64 owners were not as likely to have a modem--my dad never had one on his--while Apple II owners tended to be online a lot more, even in those days Applefags were a cult who had an extremely lofty opinion of themselves.

>>5164562
play SMS version. Really

>>5166701
Lyl even in those days they loved bragging about the thousands they spent on their overpriced shitboxes with green and purple graphics (or black and white in the case of the Mac) with bleeper sound. Have you even looked at video of Apple II games? It's not pretty.

>>5166656
The C64 U3 occupies just about 50k of memory from $400 to $CDFF. Several pages at the end aren't used for anything, and it also requires 1k for bitmap attributes. I don't see how the Atari U4 couldn't have fit music into 48k of space.

>>5164852
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FvHQI2qSKQ

U3 does support the Mockingboard. Though in my experience, the music does get grating after a while so you may end up eventually preferring it on the PC or an Apple II without a Mockingboard.