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ULTIMA (1980): THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION OF THE COMPUTER ROLE-PLAYING GAME

The unprecedented success of Ultima surprised no one more than its creator, Richard Garriott, known by his friends and fans as “Lord British.” Released in 1980 for the Apple II, Ultima wasn't the first computer role-playing game (CPRG), but it soon became the one that all others would be judged by—the one that really mattered. The game and its sequels would become so popular and influential that it's hard to imagine the industry without them. The Ultima series would last for nearly two decades, and its pioneering online incarnation, Ultima Online (see Chapter 24, “Ultima Online (1997): Putting the Role-Play Back in Computer Role-Playing Games”) is still active today. The story of Ultima is primarily about one man's drive for ultimate perfection—or at least his determination to make the perfect videogame. Not all the changes that Garriott would introduce to his famous series over the years would meet with universal praise, of course, and many fans consider 1992’s Ultima VII: The Black Gate as its finest moment. In this chapter, we'll discuss Ultima and the vital role it played in shaping the industry—so, in the words of Akalabeth's famous card insert, “Beware, foolish mortal!”

Ultima was not Garriott's first attempt at a CRPG. His earlier game Akalabeth (circa 1979) was also released commercially, but he'd been quietly developing less-ambitious CRPGs years before. At this time, personal computers and commercial software were so scarce that it would certainly be a stretch to call it an “industry.” Software was typically sold mail order and in local, privately owned computer hobbyist shops, copied by the developers themselves, and packaged in plastic baggies with amateurish inserts. Such was the case for Akalabeth, a very early CRPG for the Apple II that featured first-person perspective and wireframe graphics, rendered on the fly. Garriott claims to have spent $200 on the plastic zipper storage bags and cover sheets, undoubtedly one of the most serendipitous investments in all of game history.¹

Screenshot from Akalabeth.

Screenshot of the self-running demo from Ultima.

According to Garriott, one of the eight copies he sold of the game ended up on the desk of California Pacific Computer Company. The publisher flew Garriott from Texas to California, where they worked out a deal for wider distribution. The game proved a success for Garriott and the publisher, but Lord British was just getting started. He felt that Akalabeth had been a hobby project, an amateurish production whose unexpected success owed more to luck than his own skill and talents. Nevertheless, Akalabeth provided him with the capital and confidence to pursue a more ambitious goal—a game targeted squarely at the fledgling computer games market. That project was Ultima, which—together with its sequels—not only set sales records but helped expand the market from a tiny niche to the multibillion dollar juggernaut it is today. Garriott's determination to up the ante with each new Ultima earned him a reputation as one of the world's best game developers, and his eagerness to take full advantage of the latest hardware and programming routines kept him (and fans) on the cutting edge of technology. In time, gamers and critics would look to the latest Ultima as a paradigm shift—not just a new installment in the series, but the next stage of gaming itself. Garriott's ambition and perfectionism often caused clashes with his publishers, who felt that his more radical ideas were unsound. Indeed, after Sierra On-Line failed to see things his way, he founded his own company, Origin Systems, in 1983, to publish Ultima III. Garriott proved himself an able publisher, selecting and releasing projects that were nearly as popular and influential as his own games.²

What was it, though, about the Ultima series that can explain its broad appeal? How did it rise to dominance over its contemporaries, which include Sir-Tech's Wizardry (starting in 1981; Apple II and others) and Epyx's Apshai series (starting 1979; TRS-80 and others)?³ Perhaps the best way to begin answering these questions is with a closer look at Lord British, whose flamboyant public persona and concern with such “trivial” issues as packages and packins helped make the series stand out against the competition.

Garriott's nickname was bestowed on him by some of his older schoolmates at Clear Creek High School in League City, Texas, ostensibly because they thought he spoke with a British accent. Although Garriott claims he never affected such an accent (at least not intentionally), it's easy to imagine that even at this early stage, he found many creative ways to express his keen interest in medieval life and fantasy fiction. Always a fan of role-playing, the Society of Creative Anachronisms (SCA), and renaissance fairs (one such festival even makes an appearance in Ultima IV), Garriott enjoyed re-creating the medieval life. He dressed up in medieval costumes for game conventions, and later bought a medieval-style castle, appropriately named Britannia Manor. During an interview with a public television station, Garriott remarked that “my gaming life and my real life are very related to each other,” an insight that goes a long way toward explaining the series’ unique appeal.⁴ It's hard to imagine a developer who could immerse himself as deeply in his subject matter as Lord British. The son of a noted astronaut, Garriott never lacked for encouragement or example, and could inspire other people as well. It's rare today for a developer to attain the personal fame and celebrity of Lord British—perhaps only Roberta Williams of Sierra On-Line loomed as large during the 1980s (see Chapter 11, “King's Quest: Quest for the Crown (1984): Perilous Puzzles, Thorny Thrones”).

Back of the box for Epyx's updated Temple of Apshai Trilogy.

Garriott's perfectionism extended beyond the game to the packaging and extras. He was convinced that the buying public would take games more seriously if they came in well-designed boxes and included memorable souvenirs or trinkets (called “feelies”). These included full-color cloth maps of Britannia and small metal ankhs. Most publishers were skeptical, because the quality box and extensive printed documentation would contribute to higher costs (which would ultimately be passed on to consumers, of course). However, few if any gamers objected to these materials. Indeed, it's important to realize that many of the joys associated with Ultima came from reading the well-written manuals, admiring the box and map art, and cherishing the feelies. Those who acquired the game illegally (or modern users playing them in an emulator) have missed out.⁵

Let's turn our attention, though, to the game itself. Though of course primitive by today's standards, Ultima helped lay the groundwork for most later CRPGs. Of particular note here is the top-down, tile-based graphics. This key innovation enabled Garriott to build what felt like a large, expansive gameworld, all represented onscreen. What's even more impressive is that Garriott and his friend Ken “Sir Kenneth” Arnold were able to achieve this using only Apple BASIC, a simple but effective programming language for the Apple II computer. The overhead view was used whenever the main character (known after the fourth game as “The Avatar”) roams outside or in towns or villages. However, when the character descends into a dungeon, the perspective shifts to the same first-person, wire-frame mode seen in Akalabeth; Garriott had recycled these routines from his earlier endeavor. Garriott also added plenty of new features, including quests and a definite ending. There was also a clearly defined mission: destroy the evil wizard Mondain, hated ruler of Sosaria. Achieving this goal required traveling back in time to destroy a gem that granted the wizard immortality. Naturally, traveling back in time wasn't easy—in fact, the player had to travel to outer space! The fact that the game included both fantasy and sci-fi elements generated a great deal of buzz; it was one of the most ambitious games players had ever seen.

The underlying role-playing mechanics were fairly simple. Players are given 90 points to distribute among six stats (strength, agility, stamina, charisma, wisdom, and intelligence), and can play as a fighter, cleric, wizard, or thief. There are also four races to choose from, one of which was hobbits—an obvious allusion to J. R. R. Tolkien's famous fantasy works.⁶ What is perhaps most unusual is that players had to either “buy” hit (health) points for the character, which were available from kings, or receive them automatically upon leaving a dungeon. The character was also in constant need of food and water; running out of these precious items would result in instant death. Thankfully, an option existed to resurrect the character, though he ran the risk of materializing on a water tile and being unable to move.

Screenshot from the Commodore 64 version of Ultima II.

Garriott turned to Sierra On-Line in 1982 to publish the sequel, Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress. California Pacific had gone bankrupt, and Garriott may have been intrigued by the possibilities of working with such a noted and innovative publisher. Although the relationship was short-lived and soon went sour, Sierra agreed to let Garriott include a cloth map within each box.

The new game offered several key improvements, most notably the option to talk to other characters. It was, like the earlier game, an immense undertaking that included both fantasy and sci-fi elements. It also marked a major leap for Garriott as a programmer, since he was now programming in assembly language rather than BASIC. The more advanced language allowed for far more efficient routines and much smoother gameplay. In any case, it says something about Garriott's personality that he would have risked creating a new game with a difficult language he hadn't mastered; indeed, he was learning as he went. As we might expect, the finished product had its share of bugs.

The game was successful, but Garriott had become disillusioned with Sierra. One problem concerned the IBM PC port of Ultima II, which hadn't been discussed in his contract, since that platform didn't exist (or at least wasn't viable) when it was drafted. Garriott thought Sierra was bilking him on royalties. Another problem was that Sierra felt its licensing agreement extended to making new Ultima games, even if Garriott wasn't involved in their production. This is the origin of the infamous Ultima: Escape from Mt. Drash, a 1983 game for the Commodore VIC-20. This wretched game added insult to injury with its storyline. The character had to escape from a prison, where he was being held by evil “garrintrots,” a word that bears a suspicious likeness to “Garriott.” However, Garriott apparently didn't hear about the game until after he'd broken ties with the company, and it sold very few copies.⁷ After breaking with Sierra, Garriott decided to form his own software publisher, Origin Systems, with his father, his brother, and a friend named Chuck “Chuckles” Bueche.

The first Ultima game to debut under the new label was Ultima III: Exodus. By this time, Garriott felt that he had at last mastered assembly language and was ready to put his freshly honed skills to the test. The third game, which became the company's flagship product, introduced a number of bold changes, including the ability to create and control a party of adventurers rather than the lone Avatar. In an interview with Shay Addams, Garriott acknowledged that he was inspired by Wizardry, the series that represented Ultima’s key rival of the early 1980s.⁸ Whether a player should create and/or control a single character or a whole party has long been an issue with the genre, though most modern games have opted for the former. The common belief is that the party-based games are better for sophisticated tactical combat, whereas single-character games give developers tighter control over the story, characters, and structure.

Combat was also altered, now adopting a turn-based system with time limits; if players didn't move fast enough, the monsters got a free swing at the characters. This model may have served as the inspiration for the Active Time Battle system of the Final Fantasy series (see Chapter 7, “Final Fantasy VII (1997): It's Never Final in the World of Fantasy”). There were also loads of new magical spells and weapons, including ranged weapons like bows. The dungeons, which were now central to the mission, had been upgraded from the monochromatic wireframe to solid color (perhaps the only similarity between this game and Escape from Mt. Drash). The story has the party chasing after Exodus, the child of Mondain and Minax (the villains of the previous games). It also omits the sci-fi elements that characterized the earlier games. Finally, Garriott incorporated a dynamic musical score that took advantage of Sweet Micro Systems's new Mockingboard card for the Apple II. The Mockingboard compensated greatly for the Apple's limited sound capabilities and is a good early example of how Garriott pushed the industry forward by catering to high-end gamers, rather than the far more numerous low-end gamers.

Title screen from Ultima III.

Exodus was a triumph for the series and a best-seller for Origin. It established the company as a world-famous developer and Lord British as a master craftsman of CRPGs. The game was ported to most of the popular platforms of the era, including the Nintendo Entertainment System, and is certainly the best of the early series. GameSpot selected it as one of its “15 Most Influential Games of All Time,” citing it as the inspiration for later hits such as BioWare's Baldur's Gate (1998; Apple Macintosh, PC).

The immense popularity of Exodus had made Garriott a powerful and influential figure in the industry, but he didn't necessarily feel giddy—indeed, he began to feel guilty about his previous work. To put it comically—in the Stan Lee sense—he felt that “with great power comes great responsibility.” He believed that most games, including his own, did little to promote good, ethical conduct in players, instead rewarding them for pillaging and plundering.

Box and contents from the Apple II version of Ultima IV.

The result of Garriott's soul-searching was Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar, a 1985 release that debuted the “Age of Enlightenment,” a trilogy of games exploring morality and society. The gameplay was reworked substantially from the previous game, and the difference was visible immediately. Rather than create a character or party based on stats, players were asked a series of questions pertaining to moral dilemmas. The system was based on eight virtues: humility, sacrifice, compassion, justice, valor, spirituality, honor, and honesty, each of which was linked to a particular character class. The goal was to let the player make a character that would truly conform to his or her own outlook and moral values, as well as take the game well away from its roots in “hack and slash.”

Garriott took the real-life social aspect of the game quite seriously, and seems to have genuinely desired to use his position to improve society. The manual speaks of the game as a “search for a new standard, a new vision of life for which our people may strive,” in short, a game that would make players into better people. This spiritual aspect of the game was reinforced with another feelie, this time a small metal ankh.

Title screen from Ultima IV.

Quest of the Avatar was another massive hit for Origin, outselling its predecessor and reaping praise from critics. It remains the favorite of many long-time fans of the series, and has shown up on plenty of “all time” lists; Computer Gaming World voted it the #2 game of all time in 1996, and 1UP.com named it as the twenty-first of its “Essential 50” list. After Quest of the Avatar, Garriott set himself to converting the earlier games into full assembly language, updating the audiovisuals and releasing the set as Ultima Trilogy in 1987. The timing was perfect for such a compilation, as the countless thousands who had been introduced to the series with Quest of the Avatar now had a convenient way to familiarize themselves with its backstory. The trilogy sold exceptionally well, and it's likely these versions that most people have in mind when they discuss the first three Ultima games.

Box and contents from the Apple II version of Ultima V.

Title screen from Ultima V.

The next game in the series, Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny (1988), was the last to be developed on the venerable old Apple II platform—it was also the last time Garriott would take an active hand in the coding. Whereas the first game had been about the Avatar's own quest for virtue, this game put players in a more ambiguous position—what happens when the state tries to force its own interpretations of moral virtues on its people? As players explored the world, they found that some bad people prospered and some good people were condemned; the lines between good and evil were often quite blurry. Ultima VI: The False Prophet brought the series up to the new VGA standard on the PC.⁹ It was the best-looking game of the series so far, with 2,048 different tiles in 256 colors. It also had support for the Roland and AdLib sound cards, expensive but gamer-friendly alternatives to the IBM PC's single-channel internal speaker. As with his support of the Mockingboard earlier, here Garriott was a driving force behind the wider adoption of these graphic and audio standards. The moral theme this time was racism and xenophobia, and again players were faced with tough decisions with disturbing consequences.

Box back from Ultima VI.

Ultima VII: The Black Gate, released in 1992 for the PC, was again a paradigm shift from earlier games and is often regarded as the best in the series. The game's primary feature is a huge and robust interactive world, which was far more detailed than anything gamers had experienced. Players could, for instance, plant seeds, grow wheat, bake it into bread, and sell it at the market. It also took advantage of the mouse, which had by that time begun to take root among PC users. Mouse control was perhaps a necessity given the alterations to the gameplay, which was now in real time; fast, precise control was essential. Garriott claims to have been inspired by Times of Lore (Apple II, Atari ST, Commodore 64, and others), a game by Chris Roberts that Origin published in 1988, and FTL's Dungeon Master (1987; Apple IIgs, Atari ST, Commodore Amiga, and others), a pioneering real-time game with first-person perspective and full-color 3D graphics. Though Origin spent a million dollars developing the game, they were back in black the day after it was released.¹⁰

Box back from Dungeon MasterII: Skullkeep.

Although the game had a definite storyline and mission, it was quite flexible. Players could spend countless hours in a type of sandbox mode, simply exploring and interacting without worrying about what a developer had intended them to do. Several other games used Ultima VII’s engine to good effect, including Ultima VII, Part Two: The Silver Seed (1993). The reason for the odd name is that Lord British felt it wasn't a proper sequel, because the engine hadn't changed; only major innovations deserved a new iteration. Besides expansions, we also find a short-lived spin-off series called Worlds of Ultima: The Savage Empire (1990) and Martian Dreams (1991). These games were more story-focused than The Black Gate, based on the works of Arthur Conan Doyle and Jules Verne, respectively. It was also during this time that Origin published Blue Sky's Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss, a real-time, first-person 3D game that inspired id's Wolfenstein 3D (see Chapter 5, “Doom (1993): The First-Person Shooter Takes Control”).

Screenshot from Ultima VII.

Looking back across such a succession of increasingly great games, we might expect the final two entries in the series to be even better. However, most critics see a steep decline beginning with Ultima VIII: Pagan, a 1994 game for PC. Garriott had signed on with Electronic Arts to publish the game, a deal that he regretted after they harried him to rush the game through production. The gameplay is a sharply different affair than previous games, involving a great deal of running, jumping, and fast-paced combat. Although these sorts of games were becoming very popular on consoles, many found them out of place in the Ultima series. What's interesting here is that Roberta Williams had tried something similar with her final King's Quest game, Mask of Eternity, and in both cases the efforts to graft on elements popular in other genres did not succeed.

Screenshot from Ultima VIII.

The last Ultima game, 1999’s Ultima IX: Ascension for PC, promptly descended from the shelf to the bargain bin. Although Garriott had been touting the game and building up buzz for months, a long and soap-opera-like production had done its damage. Perhaps still smarting from the sharp criticism he received after Pagan, Lord British seems to have become quite shaken and indecisive, forcing the code through four different versions. We should also keep in mind that Ultima Online was in production at this time, and Garriott may have struggled to stay on top of the two vastly different projects. Much like the aforementioned Mask of Eternity, this game was also fully 3D rendered in third-person perspective and involved quite a few action/reflex sequences. Greg Kasavin's review for GameSpot called it “both an epic and a farce,” admiring its ambition but lamenting the poor implementation, which was fraught with bugs.¹¹ Trent C. Ward of IGN, a longtime fan of the series, faced the unpleasant task of reviewing a game he felt was “nearly unplayable,” describing himself as “nearly paralyzed with disappointment over the way the last chapter turned out.”¹² The criticisms were many, but the consensus seems to be simply that Lord British had lost his way. Although some fans claim (perhaps out of loyalty) to love the game,¹³ most thought it was a sad ending for this magnificent and influential series.

Screenshot from Ultima IX.

Ultima’s influence on the games industry is difficult to exaggerate. The games were discussed at great length in almost every gaming magazine of the day, and ports found their way onto virtually every viable platform. Countless people active in the gaming industry today were inspired by these games and their developers to pursue their careers, and plenty of talented coders and artists contribute their energies to making unauthorized remakes of their favorite games. One of the more popular of these is xu4, a project to update the fourth Ultima for use on modern PCs (including those with Linux kernels). The website Ultima: The Reconstruction, tracks several efforts to remake the original games with 2D or 3D engines and is certainly worth checking out if you're a new or long-time fan of the series.¹⁴

Compiling a list of commercial games that have been inspired by Ultima would be a formidable task indeed. Some, such as DieCom Production's Gates of Delirium (1987) for the Radio Shack Color Computer, are shameless and insipid clones. Others, such as SSI's Questron (1984) were authorized games based on Garriott's engine. Questron was admired for its smooth gameplay and accessibility to novices. This series led to SSI's later and more inspired Phantasie (starting in 1985), Wizard's Crown (starting in 1985), and the “Gold Box” (Advanced Dungeons & Dragons; starting 1988) series of RPGs. The Ultima series also had its impact on Japan, where it inspired the countless games featuring top-down perspective, randomized combat, and roaming NPCs who must be found and interrogated.

Box back from SSI's classic Pool of Radiance “Gold Box” game.

In general, we can describe the early history of CRPGs as falling into two camps: Ultima and Wizardry. Whereas Ultima and its sequels featured top-down perspective, immense gameworlds, and eventually an emphasis on character development; Wizardry offered first-person perspective and kept the focus on hack-and-slash combat in dungeons. Both models were essential components of later games, which often combined the two. A good example of this is Enix's Dragon Warrior (Dragon Quest in Japan) games (see Chapter 7), which offered a top-down perspective for exploration, but a first-person mode for combat.

The future of Ultima is bleak. A game called Ultima X: Odyssey was planned for release in 2004, but Electronic Arts canceled the project. Garriott had left Origin, and the project seemed doomed from the start. It would have been a multiplayer online game based on the Unreal Engine.¹⁵ As Garriott no longer owns the rights to his Ultima series, the chances of his being involved in another sequel are small, and his latest project, Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa (published by NCSoft in 2007), is a massively multiplayer game with a sci-fi theme. It cost over a hundred million dollars to make, but dismal sales led to NCSoft's hemorrhaging employees and frightening away investors shortly after its debut, with the game's servers shutting down for good in February 2009. In short, beyond his much publicized trip into space aboard a Russian rocket in October 2008, Garriott's finest achievements seem to be behind him, but with such an incredible legacy, pity seems misplaced. For countless gamers and developers worldwide, the name “Lord British” is synonymous with quality, sincerity, and the endless drive toward perfection.

¹See David Taylor's 1992 interview with Garriott at http://www.uo.com/archive/ftp/text/intrview/richgar.txt.

²Origin would still rely on the distribution networks of other companies, such as Broderbund.

³For more about these and other CRPG series, see author Barton's book Dungeons and Desktops (A K Peters, Ltd, 2008).

⁴See http://www.klru.org/austinnow/archives/garriott/richard_garriott.php.

⁵See author Loguidice's “Game Packaging: A Look to the Past when Treasures Beyond the Game Were in the Box” at http://www.armchairarcade.com/neo/node/225.

⁶Akalabeth is also a Tolkien reference, albeit a far more obscure one from Tolkien's Silmarillion. These allusions aren't surprising, given that Garriott refers to himself as a “big believer in what I call Tolkien game design. I believe we—as developers—must know much more about the science, philosophy, language, and history than ever comes out in the game.” For the source of this quotation, see http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=167484.

⁷In fact, it's clear that the game received only a limited production run and distribution, making it a much sought-after and very pricey collectible today.

⁸See Shay Addams's The Official Book of Ultima (Compute! Books, 1990).

⁹Like the earlier games, The False Prophet received multiple ports.

¹⁰See Taylor, ibid.

¹¹See http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/ultima9ascension/review.html.

¹²http://pc.ign.com/articles/161/161753p1.html.

¹³In fact, there has been a long-time fan-led effort to fix the game's problems.

¹⁴See http://reconstruction.voyd.net/index.php?event=news.

¹⁵See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreal_engine for more on the engine.