My first and last was IX.
Wait, sorry, so you didn’t play an Ultima until IX? And so far that’s the only one you’ve ever played? I’ve honestly never heard of such a thing, I almost want to tell you to do yourself a favor and go back and play the earlier games but I don’t know how they’d hold up for someone who didn’t play them in their time.
Bought? uh… Eye of the Beholder. First one, Wait , Might and Magic 3.
Hmmm…I think Age of Empires 2. I had played the Age of Empires demo (included multiplayer) a ton on MSZone. Also alot of Microsoft Ants on that. Actually still think the box is still around.
I know I played pirated HL multiplayer (and mods e.g TFC) at the same time, but I don’t believe that lead to any purchases.
IIRC Wing Commander made me learn how to use memory manager software.
I will say U6 holds up super well, not having played it at the time – although you still kind of need to be in a retro state of mind. And it helps to have contextual info from the previous Ultimas.
Correct. It was so long ago that I have very few memories of the actual game, but I do remember that I thought it wasn’t as bad as I’d been reading online at that time. That favorable memory could be attributed to the fact that I had the (apparently) rare computer configuration that allowed it to run just fine. Never crashed once, and ran smooth as butter. I think I had some fun with it, but do not remember anything of the gameplay, story, or characters. Played for many hours over maybe a month. Still have my boxed copy right here. [holds up boxed copy]
GOG had a sale a year or two ago where I grabbed up all the other Ultima games for a few bucks. Which included IX. Which, being the only one I had ever played, I immediately reinstalled for old time’s sake, and it doesn’t run right at all on my new rig. Not playable. But since I do own the others I may fire one of those up and check it out one day.
Thank you. I will keep that in mind.
Wait, wait! I did purchase and play “Martian Dreams” long before “IX”. Still have my boxed copy of that as well. Does that count? That was an Ultima game, right?
But see, I bought that game right after I bought my first PC, and it may have been too complex for me to figure out at the time, since I barely could figure out how to get the damn game to run, much less play it. I did play it though, but again, I do not remember much about it, other than I planned to try it again a few years later, but never did.
Martian Dreams was an Ultima spinoff – same engine as VI.
How come? Ultima II-VI were all on the ST and III-VI were on the Amiga.
My first game shopping memory was going to the games store and seeing these two titles side by side - and I had to choose one of them.
I ended up getting Doom 2 because I had played the shareware version of Doom 1. I was sure I would play Civ one day, but little did I know on that day over 20 years ago I would actually never play Civ 1. I’ve played the sequels to death, but I never played the original.
I bet he had the speccy when the early ones were new. Dunno when U6 hit the ST but it definitely had a late-ish release on Amiga.
I blame a lot of you for making me start this for the first time in my life today.
Now perusing the History of Britannia. I wished there was a paper fragrance emitter on the iPad.
I bought an Atari 800 and 3 cartridges for it: Defender, Pac-Man, and Star Raiders. Played them to death.
The first game I bought on disk was Ultima 3. It was amazing. I’ve been an Ultima fan ever since, although I think 3 was the last one I actually completed.
I can’t pin point the exact game that I bought with my own money but I do distinctly recall that when I got my first ‘real’ PC back in middle school the my Sound Blaster came with a copy of Wing Commander 2 that I then spent the next few months trying to figure out how to play.
As a younger child I only had access to a much older 386 w/ monochrome monitor (not really suitable for any real gaming) and got my color PC around 1994. Since I already had a SNES at the time the PC games I gravitated towards tended to genres that were rare to see on consoles - I think the first PC games I bought with my own money was either the remastered version of Quest for Glory I or Space Quest V…I don’t think I beat either one until much later when I had reliable access to the internet where I can look up walkthrough hints.
Hell, before I got The Internet, I invested a bunch of money ($20 each IIRC) on those Strategy Guide books for all of my favorite games that I’d get stuck in. And I remember a buddy and I spent three solid days with the strategy guide trying to beat MYST, and still got stuck at some point we never got past.
At least you weren’t calling in to those buck ninety-five a minute hint lines! I bet the people that did that feel pretty stupid. Ha ha. Totally.
Holy… what a start.
We didn’t have strategy guides in my country (nor my language), so I was practically buying every single computer magazines for that purpose. And to drool over the pictures, of course.
Jesus. Was it that much? Guy could go broke pretty quick at that rate.
I do remember calling the support line for some game I was having trouble getting to run. It was “Quarantine” (1994). I was talking to what sounded like an 18-year-old kid, who did spend quite a bit of time with me helping me edit my config.sys and autoexec.bat, during which I could hear loud rock music playing in the background of where he was. I asked what he was listening to, and he said, “Hopefully you’ll be hearing it yourself in a minute. It’s the soundtrack for ‘Quarantine’. We love it.”
Turned out that yeah, it was in fact a pretty good soundtrack.
I hope you were subscribing at least. Much cheaper that way.
For years, I was a subscriber to Computer Games Strategy Plus, Computer Gaming World, and PC Gamer (and for a while, even PC Accelerator). I read all three cover to cover each month. I could not get enough of that shit.