You will most likely enjoy them then, these are the games that introduced tile-based graphics to the RPG genre. I was a C-64 gamer, never had the Apple, but I started on Ultima 3 and have enjoyed watching them get more detailed as time went on.

/long-winded bit : ON

Some history, the series went through changes that are best broken into trilogies, 1-3 were the ones that started the series with basic questing and graphics that rocked the Apple 2. 3 was the strongest as far as storytelling, the first and second ones were more about inventing the grind and doing basic 'good deeds' stuff for experience but by 3 they decided to try and tell more of a tale. 4-6 were the 'Avatar Trilogy', where they started playing with the concepts of morality in-game. The graphics stepped up as well, but they are all about your character being the Avatar and have a coherent storyline through all three as regards virtue and vice and how you as the player interact with it. 7-9 were intended to be more depth, and the game mechanics really started adding lot's of details like NPC life patterns and multi-stage crafting but sadly the original company had financial issues and ended up going under the old Electronic Arts family during the Ultima 7 phase. This was the bad old EA that still gets them hated today, for good reason in many cases, and so 8 and 9 were MOTS games instead of real continuations with more depth and detail and so they are generally not liked and gathered poor review scores.

/long-winded bit : OFF

tl;dr, 1-3 are old school, 4-6 defined a new genre, 7-9 dropped the ball. :)

I'd say it's "8-9 dropped the ball". The 7s were way ahead of anything else at the time (and largely done before EA took control).

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Separately, the Ultima Underworld games were made by Blue Sky/Looking Glass, rather than Origin, but they involved some of the same people and were largely true to the series lore as it stood at the time, and they also managed to capture the style/feel of the Ultima series despite being a different sort of game.

Yeah, the last bit was a bit too brief perhaps. :)

Ultima 7 can be considered the pinnacle of the series, it had two expansions due to the creator wanting to use episodic content to change/further the story before a full blown sequel and it was the design that eventually became one of the first MMO games ever made, Ultima Online, which was where Richard was heading from the beginning with trying to re-create the D&D sessions he loved as a youth. Warren Spector actually worked at Origin back in the beginning days, and was part of the D&D sessions as well so he really understood the whole Ultima thing when they tapped the company he was at for the Underworld games, thus making them canon as well as very good. He was trying to get the first person aspect to make you have the visceral reactions of the old pen and paper games as well as the fantasy role playing that Richard loved so much.

Yeah Alkalabeth was made by Ultima Creator Richard Garriott(Bioforge,which is also here, was also one of his works as well) interestingly enough he made that while still in high school and Ultima 1 was based on Akalabeth,so much so that the original Apple 2 version(the one released in 1980/81) actually shared a bit of it's(Alkalabeth's) dungeon routine. They also play similar with you going to get a task usually go here and kill this and find that and report back the only difference was Ultima 1 had more then simple wire graphics and a larger world

Probably, it was one of the bigger titles for the Apple II back in the day so if he grabbed a lot of them he would have had it for sure, the closer he was to Austin TX the more likely as well.

Let us know what you think of the games, I will have to look up some of my old books and see if I can pass on titles if you decide you want to go down the historical rabbit hole as it were. :)