Ultima I - The First Age of Darkness

History: After the success of Akalabeth, Richard Garriott wrote a sequel in Basic and called it Ultima. Compared with Akalabeth it was much more sophisticated. It has a large world with four continents and even allows space travel and fights with enemy spaceships. Now the cities and castles offer small graphic maps, too. The dungeons are basically the same as in Akalabeth, but contain a bigger selection of monsters. The original Basic version from California Pacific was slow, thus Lord British re-released a faster version in Assembly language under his new label Origin Systems for the Apple II and other platforms. Obviously, the sales have not been very good since Origin never bothered to re-release Ultima II, except in the Ultima trilogy. But Bill Heineman surprised the Apple II world when he announced that he wrote a GS version of this game with improved graphics and a musical soundtrack. It was first published by Vitesse Inc.

The hero is just being attacked by an evil hooded thief. A signpost and a dungeon entrance are near.

A ship is approaching a city near a castle. Another dungeon waits on a small island.

Background:
The world of Sosaria is threatened by the wizard Mondain, the first and most powerful of the triad of evil, a group of evil sorcerors. But before you can find and kill him, you will have to travel to four continents. You will explore for the first time the Lands of Lord British (which later becomes Old Sosaria and finally Britannia after several facelifts) or the Lands of Danger and Despair (which later becomes known as the Serpent Isle). Famous cities like Yew and Montor appear for the first time, as well as famous NPCs like Shamino and Iolo. Lord British and other friendly kings and lords give you quests which must be completed. You travel through dungeons, rescue a princess, fly into space to fight alien ships and finally travel back in time to fight Mondain himself!

The cities in Ultima I do still fit on one screen. Various shops offer equipment for sale.

The lords of the castles give you many different quests. But stealing from here may be risky.

Recommended Version: The original version still came in ZipLoc bags like the original Akalabeth and is now a rare collector's item. The Origin remake has a box with some "feelies" like four paper maps and a cloth bag with coins. By far the best version of Ultima I is the Apple IIgs version which also can be played on the PC with an emulator like KeGS. It is the only version with a wonderful musical soundtrack. It also has improved graphics, especially in the dungeons. While the dungeons have still vector graphics, the monsters are completely redrawn. Last but not least, this version offers on-screen mapping of both surface and dungeon locations. Ultima I GS is still supported and sold by Joe Kohn / Shareware Solutions II and certainly worth the money. It comes shrinkwrapped with a printed manual.

The dungeons are still black and white vector graphic but the gs version has completely new artwork for the monsters here.

Oooh.. scary! There are dozens of different monsters waiting for you like this wraith.

Statistics:

Single-player game
4 character classes, 4 races
10 different magic spells
Dungeons 3D, Outdoors/Buildings 2D
On-Screen-mapping: No (Yes in GS version)
Save game option available only on surface map
Four continents with cities, dungeons and castles plus outer space

Lord British had a space shuttle pilot in his family, so his Ultima game paid respect to him.

Medieval combat school has never prepared you for this!

Morale: The first numbered Ultima is a classic "kill the foozle" game with no embedded morale or story depth. Inspired works with a similar engine include Phantasie and especially Questron I, both by SSI.

Britannia