Ultima 3 Review – Computer Gamer

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I stumbled across this review of Ultima 3 on the C64 in the World Of Spectrum archives this morning. There isn’t anything especially interesting in the review although it does mention that it was the first part of US Gold’s “All American Adventures” series over here in the UK. This series included games from a diverse range of developers such as Ulysses and the Golden Fleece from Sierra or Screenplays Warriors of Ras. For anyone who thinks games are expensive these days, it also say that Ultima 3 originally sold for £50 on Apple or IBM in the UK.

My favourite part isn’t the review but that Ultima 3 was the featured game in this issue meaning that it got its own original cover art.

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More Avatar Adventures

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This was published in 1993 by Prima and as the title suggests is a follow-up to Avatar Adventures. It covers Ultima 7, Forge Of Virtue, and Ultima Underworld, with appendices for the early stages of Serpent Isle and Underworld 2.

The formula is the same as Avatar Adventures with long walkthrough novellas for each game, followed by shorter walkthroughs with maps and tables of all the game information. The main selling point of the book is definitely the novels which are extremely faithful to the games right down to using identical dialog.

The story is told as though the Avatar is recounting it to Carlotta, at some point prior to Underworld 2. It sticks to the shortest route through the games, meaning that Underworld surprisingly gets more pages than Ultima 7 despite having a simpler narrative. There is a town plots section at the end of Ultima 7 to make up for this, briefly covering all the local quests that don’t play a part in the main story.

For such a large and complex game, it’s surprising just how short the Ultima 7 story is when it’s written down like this with all the side quests removed. Because of the rigid structure it’s having to follow, it’s nowhere near as good as a novel as books like the Technocrat Wars series. Despite that, it’s still great fun for anyone who played the games. Books like these always makes me want to go back and play the game again and Ultima 7 isn’t a game I’ve spent enough time with.

Ultima Underworld on the other hand is a game I know inside out. It’s plot wasn’t its strongest point, although it was streets ahead of its rivals such as Dungeon Master or Eye Of The Beholder. I did wonder if I was perhaps too familiar with the game to enjoy the novella, but I needn’t have worried. Out of the two games it was probably the better of the two simply because it doesn’t miss anything out. Also with knowing the game so well, I could picture every corridor as described and it was almost like replaying the game.

There are 3 appendices at the end of the book. The first two of these cover the early stages of Underworld 2 and Serpent Isle. I don’t know if this implies that a third book in the series was planned, but if so it was never published which is a shame as this and Avatar Adventures are both prized by Ultima collectors. The Underworld 2 section is extremely short but does have maps of all the sewer levels. There is a little more for Serpent Isle but it still only goes as far as arriving into the first city.

Right at the end of the book is a very nice extra, a 13 page interview with Paul Neurath and Warren Spector. It’s shorter than I would have liked but there is some information about the founding of Looking Glass, the development of Ultima Underworld and what they thought would come next. Paul Neurath talks about his hopes that the industry won’t end up like Hollywood (which it clearly has), and Warren Spector says he needs to do a cartoon game (which he did but only very recently). Something I didn’t know is that between being called Blue Sky and Looking Glass the name of the company was briefly Flying Fish.

I’ve added a scan of the book to the downloads. This was, as far as I know, the last Origin novel, clue book or manual that wasn’t available on the internet (not including all the various ports and foreign languages) with the exception of the ever elusive Caverns Of Callisto. If there is anything else missing, then I want to know about it. This was definitely a great book to finish on anyway, which is why I saved it for last. I do still have Pilgrim Truth to read though, which I should be starting next.

I’ve put a load more game manuals into the downloads page in the last week or two. I’m not going through all of these here but the highlights in my opinion are the Stonekeep novella Thera Awakening, and the Elite Plus manual which also has its own novella. There isn’t anything Origin related although Chris Roberts did name Elite as his all time favourite game in one of the magazine scans somewhere on this site. I’m sure he was referring to the original version which I’m sorry to say I’m old enough to remember playing on a friends BBC back when I was still in primary school. It certainly impressed me at the time but not owning a BBC myself, it wasn’t a game I spent any real-time on until Elite Plus came out years later. I played it enough back then to achieve the coveted elite status, to absolutely no fanfare as I recall, and it remains a personal favourite. It’s a game that had a clear influence on Wing Commander, and especially Privateer.

Wing Commander 3 On GOG

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Today is the final in this latest batch of EA releases on GOG. After a vague hint on the forums, I had the idea that it was going to be the Worlds Of Ultima games, but instead it’s yet another Origin game in the shape of Wing Commander 3. GOG (with more than a little help from the guys at wcnews I gather) has pulled out all the stops with this one and the extras are worth the money on their own and then some.

The biggest surprise is the inclusion of Fleet Action. The Wing Commander 3 novel would have seemed more appropriate but even so it’s a great extra, not to mention the various guides, deleted scenes and all the rest. I expect I might recognise a few of the guides but $6 is clearly a giveaway so if you don’t already own all of this stuff, I highly recommend going over to GOG and buying a copy or two.

I was wondering what I could post with a Wing Commander theme so I’m taking a leaf from the barrage of posts on wcnews and posting a few photos. They have a post with a picture of Wing Commander 3 Premiere Edition, which came in a film can with numerous extras over the regular version of the game. I don’t actually own this, and probably should have it on my shopping list now I think about it, but I do have a copy of the Deluxe Edition:-



One of my rules of game collecting has always been that if it’s not in an oversized cardboard box, it’s usually not worth having and they don’t come much more oversized than this one. I’ve put it next to the regular WC3 box for comparison. The regular box could never have been accused of being small itself.

Inside is a film can, sat on top of a WC3 T-shirt. The label on the can is slightly different to the premiere edition. The T-shirt is the same design however (I’m informed by Loaf that the photo on wcnews is actually the developer edition).




The T-Shirt looks like it would take some serious ironing after 17 years in a box, with a film can on top of it. I actually still get the smell of new T-shirt when opening the box up.

In terms of the rest of the content, this edition falls way short of the premiere. It does have the making-of CD and a couple of extra manuals but everything else is missing. In its favour, the giant box was only included with this version. Both versions pack the CD’s into jewel cases and don’t have the folding card sleeve that came with the regular WC3.

As far as I know, neither this or the premiere edition are especially rare, and I don’t think I paid very much for this when I bought it some years back. They are both decent collectables provided you have large enough shelves to fit them on.

Ultima Patcher – Fixes

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I’ve had chance to test the patcher more thoroughly and sorted out a few issues:-

  • There were problems with Ultima 4 and both Underworlds when the games weren’t installed in the usual directories. It would ask you to choose the directory but then not open the form for that game. This is now fixed.
  • I’ve tidied up the player transfer substantially for Ultima 5. It would previously never find the correct Ultima 4 directory automatically unless you happened to have the same username as me. To make this simpler, you now just need to specify where you installed Ultima 4 and it does the searching in virtualstore automatically if required. It probably isn’t needed but I’ve made the same changes for Ultima 6 also.
  • I’ve added links to the websites of the various patches, where I could find them.
  • It shouldn’t crash any more if expected files are missing.
  • I’ve added an about page + a version number. I’ve nominally called this version 1.0.

To the best of my knowledge it’s working correctly now. It’s still ugly but I’ll leave it as is unless anyone runs into problems with it, or has good ideas for things I should change. If GOG releases any more Ultima’s, I’ll add them in as well. I think there is just the one more release due in this batch from EA. We’ve had far more Ultima games than I expected already but I’ve still got some hope we might see the Worlds Of Ultima games next week.

Ultima Patcher Update

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I’ve acquired a copy of UW 1 + 2 from GOG, thanks to the generosity of Loaf, and have added both games onto the patcher. Apart from the various patches, I added in a toggle for sound devices. I’ve also included a couple more Ultima 4 patches. The U4 form is looking a little crowded so hopefully that’s all of them.

I’d just about got that ready when GOG surprised me with more Ultima games in the form of the second trilogy. This time I’ve bought them myself and although there aren’t as many patches available for these, what there is I’ve added into the patcher. GOG aren’t supporting character transfer at the moment which isn’t any fun, so I’ve included an option to mount your savegame directory for the previous game to allow the in-game character transfer to work correctly.

There are a few things to note:-

  • The Spanish translation patch for Underworld included a replacement .exe. This has been altered to give loads of experience so you are level 8 by the time you walk down the first corridor. As far as I can tell, the .exe isn’t needed for the translation and only affects the messages during start-up so I’ve not included it.
  • The Ultima 4 Music Patch has some serious slowdown in-game, so I tell Dosbox to run with maximum cycles to improve it. This isn’t exactly ideal and even then it slows down when playing PC speaker sound. I don’t know if there is a later version available which would improve this, or possibly some alternative DOSBox settings. The VGA version certainly doesn’t have this problem. As it stands, I’m tempted to remove this patch.
  • For character transfers in Ultima 5, the PARTY.SAV in the game’s directory is not the one that is used when you save your game. It will no doubt be different on XP but on Windows 7 it uses the directory “C:UsersRichardAppDataLocalVirtualStoreProgram Files (x86)GOG.comUltima 4” or a close equivalent depending on where the game is installed. When asked to choose your save game directory, you need to make sure you get the right one although the patcher will probably select it for you if it’s in the default location. If you have the free Utlima 4 and the one in the trilogy, then you have two lots of savegames. These are never deleted when uninstalling, no matter what you select when asked.
  • Finally, these latest additions are a rush job to get it done before I head out to watch the rugby tonight, so there may be problems. If it all works then I just need to plug the holes and possibly improve the interface next. Please let me know if something doesn’t work, or you have any suggestions.