Now that I have Ultima 7 working properly and know I can wander down memory lane, I wanted to yammer on about my memories of the series.

My mother and I played Ultima heavily in the 1980's to 1990's.

My first Ultima game was Ultima III, Exodus for NES. My mom and I had a surefire way of making money until we got far enough in the game - making new characters, selling all their equipment and then their blood, then deleting them. We called them "croakers". Took us forever to figure out to pray at the shrines in ambrosia.

My mother played Ultima 4 for NES, but I didn't find the whole "Being virtuous" a very fun game mechanic. I skipped it.

We got a 386 in 1990 (I was in High School) and Mom picked up Ultima 6. It was my first experience with a wide-open-sandbox game. I remember walking out of Britannia to see the "world map"... but I kept walking... and walking... until I got to Paws. Then it got dark and I was confused. I went to check the time on a nearby sundial - "Not at night!" D'oh! I played the game through several times, each time setting up a different "headquarters" for my Avatar, having endless fun putting furniture and things in it. I just took a house near where a red moongate would drop me off - killing the occupant and moving in. I had an extensive powder keg collection in Lord British's castle, lining the hallway - it was fun setting them all off at once. The pirate map made a great carpet! I always had Blaine in my party. He's a crappy character, but I had picked up juggling as a hobby and liked having a juggler in the party. I set up two candles for a "shrine of death", putting every NPC I killed between the candles.

We played both Worlds of Ultima and both Underworlds. My mother hated Shamino, and would deny him oxy rocks in Martian Dreams just to punish him.

We got Ultima 7 when I was in college. My mother (I went to college near my house) accidentally bought about a thousand dried mutton and only realized it when she was in a ship. She dropped all of the mutton on a nearby island near Serpent's Hold, and we called it "mutton isle". It was harder for me to set up a headquarters in U7 - the furniture was harder to move around - but I still did so.

Ultima Serpent Isle I was a little annoyed about the linear gameplay but still enjoyed the game. I set up the serpent road as my headquarters with barrels and chairs and candles - place looked like an Italian restaurant (with a snake motif!) I set up my shrine of death again... putting Batlin on it was a proud, proud moment even if... well, I don't want to spoil.

Pagan broke me. I didn't like the graphics or the lack of being able to move things around. My mother told me she didn't like it either (by now I had moved out and gotten married) Too much jumping. I never finished it. For Ultima 9 I didn't have a powerful enough computer - though I'd like to play it someday. Ultima Online ran slow on my computer, too.

So there you go. Anyone else care to share?

Wish my mom was as awesome as that

Here’s something about my relationship to the Ultima series.

I first got to know about Ultima games when I saw my friend playing one of them on his Commodore 64 in the 1980’s. I think it was Ultima V because I remember a talking horse and shooting cannons in Britannia. I was 7 or 8 years old and didn’t understand many words of English (just something basic like open, close, pick up, tentacle, chainsaw – thank you Maniac Mansion) but my friend was few years older and he played the game all right. I was immidiately impressed by the complex game mechanics like combat, huge and interesting cities full of people going about their business and generally a believable world. I had seen nothing like this before.

After that I tried some Ultima games growing up but never finished even one of them. I was playing with Amiga at the time (without a hard disk) so games like Ultima VI were essentially unplayable. IV and V would have worked fine, but I never found them anywhere in my home town and ordering from somewhere else was not very easy or common those days before the Internet. Ultima Underworld was different – it was just so mind-numbingly incredible experience that I just had to get a PC and complete it. It became the first Ultima game I had finished. Later I played through Ultima VII also using Exult but never any others.

During the early 2000’s I was in college and got a stroke of luck. I entered a competition held by the biggest Finnish gaming magazine Pelit and won a still sealed copy of Ultima IX Dragon Edition. It was rare even those days and had not been on sale for years so I understood I had a nice collectible item on my hands. Of course I opened the huge box (thus like halving it’s monetary value, but who cares) and was stunned by the nice trinkets, maps and other stuff the game came with. I just had to get all of the Ultima games in their original boxes complete with maps, trinkets and clue books if possible.

Progress was slow for a poor college student. I got a few of the easier and more common ones like V, VI and Underworld II but forgot my collecting hobby for years as a student obviously has much more pressing matters on his mind like partying and women. Later I graduated, got married and got a job so I realized I could carry on with collecting Ultima stuff.

Finally, last December, I got the last missing game Ultima I (Origin 1986 Remake) and my collection was sort of complete. Of course I bought every Ultima game GOG had released, too. Thanks GOG for my fifth version of Ultima I, if all the Ultima Collection and Ultima Trilogy –versions are taken into account. To celebrate I played through Ultima I reading the original manual and using the maps from my boxed game and investigating the nice coin trinkets that came with that particular version. It was good seeing the ending screen of Ultima I finally on my own computer, after all these years.

My collection is far from complete from a perfectionist point of view. Ultima I is the already mentioned Origin Remake. Ultima II is the newer ”grey box” version (still sealed at least). I don’t have all the different versions or even 1st versions of the newer Ultimas but at least all the ones I have are complete with trinkets and stuff. For Serpent Isle and VIII I have separate EU- and US-versions as the US-versions have better materials like the cloth map in SI compared to a paper map in EU-version. I have all the clue books except Ultima III and Martian Dreams, which are of course the most rare and expensive ones. Still searching for those.

I’d hope GOG will release the Worlds of Ultima games later because I have no way of playing my original versions as I no longer have a 3,5” or 5,25” disc drive. I have an ongoing project of completing all the Ultima games in chronological order but haven’t gotten around to starting even Ultima II yet as there are too many good games to play and very limited time thanks to this thing called ”life” (family, work, sleep and such).

My first experience was with Ultima III on a C64. My older brother had bought the game and seeing as I had to do EVERYTHING he did, I started playing it. I never finished it, but had a lot of fun. Then he bought Ultima IV. At that time, he started playing with his best friend. They'd take turns with one at the keyboard and the other drawing maps, taking notes (We had a monitor for the C64, but you could also put it out to the TV, so we had dual screens).

Unfortunately, you could only play one game at a time, so that meant I didn't get to play. Instead, I convinced one of my friends to buy it for his Apple II! After his mother looked through all the stuff that came in the box and made sure we didn't REALLY believe in magic, we finally got to play. He'd use the movement arrows and I took care of the alpha keys (we split duty on the notes and maps). This was right at the start of summer break. We played outside a lot, but when it got too hot (this was Texas), it was in to play U4. It became a competition with my brother to see who would win first. We beat him, but just barely. It took the ENTIRE summer.

The next year, Ultima V was out and the competition was back on. Unfortunately, about halfway through, my buddy's Apple II gave out and had to be repaired. Took months. When we finally got it back, school was in, football practice was on, so we didn't get to play much. We finally finished it after 8 long months (somehow my brother wasn't much better).

One of the things I loved about Ultima V was that it was the first game I figured out how to hack/mod. It was after we had won it, but I started playing around with changing various things, just to see how they worked. I dreamed of making my own games. While I didn't end up entering the industry, it did get me involved in programming, which I have used extensively in my career.

Ultima VI came about the next year and I think it is the one that I have the strongest love/hate relationship with. My brother and I split the cost to get it for our Dad's new ITT 286. Thankfully, buy installing it twice, we could each play. Unfortunately, my friend lost interest, so I was running solo. I remember being blown away by the graphics. Instead of just some monochrome pixels, the sprites and portraits actually looked like the things they were supposed to represent! Knowing it was Ultima, I went about exploring the world before really beginning the main quest. I love that open worldness, but unfortunately, I discovered a way to basically jump about 2/3 through the game using the orb. My brother and I shared about the game, so I told him about it. Neither of us realized that we were jumping so far ahead, we just thought we'd found something cool. But then we finished the game. It was far from satisfying though. I made an attempt to go back and play it properly, but it just wasn't the same.

At this point, my brother went off to college, so now I was really running solo, but then the coolest thing came out: Worlds of Ultima! The concept of playing new Ultima games outside of Britannia was awesome to me. I got Savage Empire as soon as it came out and I absolutely loved it. I loved the idea that there were limitless stories that could be told this way! I didn't like Martian Dreams as much as SE, but it was still a lot of fun.

By this point, I was entering my senior year of high school. While waiting for Ultima VII to come out, I picked up a copy of Ultima: Exodus for the NES. I finally was able to beat Exodus! While not as a great of a experience as playing on the C64 or PC, it was fun. I decided to pick up the First Trilogy release again (I had it for the C64, but we no longer had the machine) and tried I and II. Neither kept my interest though. Finally, Ultima VII came out.

I had convinced my father to upgrade to a 386, and it just barely met the requirement for U7. I rushed down to CompUSA as soona s I'd finally saved up the money for it, the fall after it was released. As blown away as I had been on Ultima VI, it did not compare one bit to Ultima VII. I was astounded at how realistic everything looked. I didn't like that I couldn't get a magic user to join my group, but overall, I loved it. I didn't have a lot of time, so I played when I could, taking months to go through the game.

Then I hit a fatal bug. It had to do with using the telescope north of Moonglow. Something in the code would just lock up my PC. Origin sent me new disks, but it didn't matter. There was no going past that part. Strangely, I don't remember being that upset about it. I guess I was so busy with a million other things, that I just let it go. Serpent Isle had just been released, but I figured I shouldn't get it if the first one didn't work.

I went to college the next year and bought a 486sx from the Dell Factory Outlet. Literally spent every last dollar I had just to get a PC for school. At first, I didn't have time for games, but once I adjusted to college life, I decided to fire up U7 again. I'd lost my saved game, so I just started from scratch. I was quite pleased when the telescope worked just fine! I was hooked in and finished the game and it was solidly my favorite game by that point. I didn't have the money for Serpent Isle, so that had to wait for the next year.

I finally got Serpent Isle the end of that next summer. I loved it, almost as much as Black Gate. I had a REALLY rough year in school that year, and I think losing myself in Serpent Isle was the only thing that kept me sane. The more linear nature of it, and less open, didn't bother me. When I finished, I started looking around to see if a new Worlds of Ultima, but alas there were no more coming out.

Ultima VIII finally came and I bought it a year later, but I don't think I spent more than a few hours playing it. It just didn't seem like Ultima! I got that they tried something new, but it didn't work for me.

I ended up beta testing Ultima Online. At first, it blew me away. It was just so incredibly awesome. When it went live, I started playing with a group of friends. Then summer vacation came, but we all had work at this point. The hordes of teenagers did not. Within a few weeks, you couldn't even leave one of the cities without getting player killed immediately unless you were fairly high level. I cancelled my account shortly thereafter.

I still held out hope on Ultima IX though. It looked amazing, but was taking forever. I picked up a title called Baldur's Gate to tide me over. The screen shots reminded me of Ultima VII. Little did I realize how much I would love that game! Finally though, Ultima IX came. But it wouldn't run. I finally got it to run a few years later, but it was just awful. There was nothing Ultima about it at all!

Over the next few years, I played through all the Infinity Engine games. They reminded me so much of the Ultimas I loved. When I was done with them, I finally went back and tried Ultima I again. This time I got through it, I think in about 4 hours. I tried Ultima II, but never got far.

I was ready to wrap up my love of Ultima and put it away. Occasionally I'd fire one up in DosBox, but never play for more than a few hours. Then, I heard about Ultima V:Lazarus, the Dungeon Siege remake. I rushed out to find a copy of DS (not easy to find, would LOVE GOG to get it here!). I never even attempted the DS campaign, just loaded Lazarus.

Lazarus was amazing! It captured the same thrill I had had nearly 20 years before playing the original. I thought it dragged a bit at the end, but it was faithful to the original. From there, I briefly got involved with the Ultima VI Project (just wrote a few lore books before I was unable to stay involved), another DS mod. When it got released, it was fantastic. I actually wrote the review over at rpgwatch.com for it!

Unfortunately, I'm only about 2/3 the way through it. At that point, my wife and I bought a condo and then she got pregnant and I really haven't had time to play anything since! I fully intend to finish it though.

Thanks to GOG and dedicated modders, Ultima, and my enjoyment of it, will NEVER die!

Ohhh, reading all that scratched another memory. When we played through Ultima VII, there was a bug where the Lich in Skara Brae would bug the game out. Happened to ours. Origin sent us a patch.

By diskette. Through snail mail.

Seems ridiculous now, doesn't it?

Sadly I don't have many nostalgic Ultima memories. I didn't discover the games until they were pretty old and didn't get to play them until DOSBox. I didn't really get into them until recently, partly because of The Spoony Experiment's Ultima retrospective. I did play a bit into Ultima 1 though back in the day. It came on a pc magazine disc with some other classic games like Monkey Island and Alone in the Dark.

Let's see... my first Ultima was 6. It was a revolution at the time - I'd read about it in a magazine, saw the pretty colours, and was wowed. But I couldn't afford it.

Eventually I pooled money with my brother and we got it - and deleted Star Control 2 to make space for it because I got sick of changing between floppies all the time. (back when harddisks with 8MB were considered 'out there')

Oh, the save scumming I did then. And I needed it - I'd get lost in a dungeon and NEVER find my way out, or do something stupid like bury a blue moongate Moonstone in a dungeon somewhere.

But the game caught my imagination - I could actually TYPE keywords in to talk to NPCs. I could move stuff around. I could cast spells, sleep, eat, camp, explore and loot. It was... genesis, for me.

Oddly, my first Ultima 7 was Serpent Isle. I remember it came on about 8 disks, but disk 7 was corrupted. The shop offered to replace it, but it took a week and I was a mess by the time it arrived. I'd read all about it in a magazine (PC Gamer, back when it was good), again, it felt like genesis. Hunger, weather, inventory shuffling (which I quickly learned to dislike), NPCs with 'barks', richer graphics, the works.

After SI came Underworld - it seemed like the innovations would never end.

Eventually I got Black Gate, Underworld 2, then Pagan (which, although not so wonderful still captured my attention).

All of these were amazing in their own ways, although I would only ever play Pagan to completion once.

Then IX came out. Let's just say I played it once, stored the box somewhere, and never touched it again. I loved it for what it promised, and was enthralled for the first few days (back when we didn't have a choice) - but it quickly paled once I'd completed it, because I realized playing it was a chore, not a joy.

To this day, U6 is my pick for craziest number of things possible, and U7 for that 'living, breathing world' Ultima experience.

All right, time for this old timer to stop...