5342

For Ultima VIII & IX, they should pay you that much to play them.

5343

GOG.com just legitimizes the purchase of the game files instead of going to Abandonware sites. Instead of using the GOG.com DOSBox wrapper, I use a different one with Direct3D shader support and Roland MT32 emulation support (with the rom dumps) for much better music on some of the older games.

This version of DOSBox.

here for MT32 files.

edit the dosbox.conf file in Notepad to change your choice of D3D Shader, sound preferences and/or window size.

I use:

pixelshader=GS4xHqFilter.fx
mididevice=mt32

unzip the mt32 files to the same folder as where you keep dosbox.

5344

I get the feeling that you don’t like Microprose … :P Doesn’t change my very much rose-colored glasses tinted personal opinion however.

My same perhaps irrational and yet utterly my opinion goes for old EA, Sir-Tech, SSG and SSI too. I’ll rebuy the vast majority of those publishers catalogues were they to show up.

5345

I wish there were more worthless publishers like MicroProse around today.-)

5346

What happened between U7 and these two? Different developers? Did they attempt to make a different type of game? I’m not that familiar with the series except that U7 is considered one of the greatest RPGs of all time.

5347

They were bought by EA around the time they were finishing up U7. Some would say this is not coincidental. I don’t think we ever really got a proper, official post-mortem on exactly what went wrong straight from the lead people involved, though. Bad-mouthing a company as large as EA probably isn’t a good career move…

Edit: It probably has a lot to do with resources being diverted to work on Ultima Online, too. I think that was Garriott’s primary focus at the time, leaving the main series in the hands of other people.

5348

Has I’76 been fixed yet? Or should I still avoid?

5349

EA killed it.

EA bought Origin in late 1992 - the year U7: The Black Gate was released. U7 was a fantastic RPG - one of the best of all time. Incredibly deep, awesome story, good graphics (for the time)…it was almost a perfect RPG. It was, in my opinion, Richard Garriott’s finest achievement (even better than U4).

U7, Part II: The Serpent Isle was released in 1993. You could already see EA’s “influence” in this title, though it was a damn fine game. I remember that some of it was cut out due to EA’s timeline on release. Still, it was an excellent RPG. Garriott didn’t think it was different enough to use a new title, hence the Part II.

By the time U8 came out in 1994, Garriott’s influence on the Ultima series was waning and EA was clearly calling the shots. I think he was more focused on UO (released in 1997) at this point anyway. But there’s little doubt that U8 was not only rushed to market, the game play was changed considerably - less open world, no companions and a lot of jumping puzzles the engine couldn’t handle very well. It was bad - the first Ultima I didn’t complete.

By the time U9 came out, EA was firmly in control. Garriott worked on U9, but I don’t think it was entirely his baby and it was shoved out the door half-baked. It was horrible. I know…I had to review it. I couldn’t even complete it - it corrupted all my saved games (this was a common issue on release).

So yeah, the decline of the Ultima series can be pretty well tied to EA. Hell, look at the decline of the Wing Commander series as well…

5350

There’s a 3rd-party loader for it linked in one of the GoG stickies which makes the game work on modern systems, but it requires specific tweaking for your rig (based on system speed). I was able to get it to work. GoG still should have not released the game without including these tweaks on their own – they basically replaced the 16-bit installer of the original and dumped it out there with no other changes.

5351

Hell, look at the decline of the Wing Commander series as well…

Not sure you can blame that on EA, but rather on Chris Roberts, who decided he wanted to be a filmmaker more than a game designer.

5352

I picked up dungeon keeper 2, and couldn’t get it to run. I tried all of the suggestions that were on the gog forum. This is the first time I have purchased an unplayable game.

5353

Ahh Microprose… those were the days. Gunship, Airborne Ranger, Red Storm Rising, F-19 Stealth Fighter, Pirates, etc. They were the first publisher that I bought everything they came out with as I knew it would be awesome. Don’t believe I ever got burned by them.

5354

I thought Prophecy was a good game. However, it was the first (and maybe only, now that I think about it) WC game I ever played. I wonder how well Privateer holds up…

5355

Well said, I don’t think I ever did either, and I got tons of their games back in the day.

Privateer is a bit funky to look at, but gameplay wise it holds up well. You could also give one of the free remakes a whirl:

http://privateer.sourceforge.net/
http://www.asciisector.net/

5356

The most complete and “canon” of the Privateer remakes the last time I played was Gemini Gold – but it was absolutely killed by horrible, horrible enemy A.I. I haven’t checked to see if anything changed since then.

5357

Not much, the last news was about version 1.03 in 2009.

5358

I had totally forgotten about all that.

For a while around then, it seemed to me that just about every (arguable or otherwise) big-name in gaming was eyeing Hollywood enviously.

5359

I kind of miss the FMV glory days. Sure, FMV mostly sucked, and the acting was often atrocius, but it had a certain charm to it.

5360

So… has anyone mentioned Populous?

5361

Free version of Ultima IV is up as well.

Ultima V+ etc must be coming as well, hooray. Ultima VII is a B*tch to emulate though apparently, assume they might bundle that with exult.