Game 3: Ultima: Exodus (NES) - Introduction

The original game, Ultima III: Exodus, was released in 1983 for many PC platforms including the Apple II (I have fond memories of trying to play it with my dad). It was a great advancement for the series with many new additions, and much polish. Battles now take place on a separate screen, and with multiple party members, it takes a more tactical approach to defeat the enemy. The setting takes on more focus with a fully medieval-fantasy setting, gone is the futuristic themed parts. Using what the party can realistically see, the player now has a limited view of their surroundings based on the terrain. Dungeons are drawn with textured walls, and sprites are animated.

Wow, the music here is maddening...

This game may have had the greatest influence of all on the console RPG genre, so it's great to see it ported to the NES. All games that followed it show strong evidence of the impact it had. From the use of an over-world map; separate screens for battles, towns, and dungeons; and the four character party to magic points used for spells, and the proliferation of the medieval-fantasy setting, the game echoes throughout time.

An NES port was an obvious choice as the leading console of the time; following the success of games like Dragon Warrior (1986 JP) and its sequel (1987 JP), which take most of their inspiration from here, and seeing Dragon Warrior II become the first blockbuster game in Japan (seriously, people camped out days in advance to get the game), cashing in on this market is a no-brainer.

Changes were necessary though as the NES had no keyboard. To fit everything to a 2-button controller interface, the game used nested menus to fit all the options (much like Dragon Warrior). The graphics are more colorful than the original versions of the game, and the music changed to fit the NES hardware. All the manuals were reduced to one, and no map was included. I feel like I'm in for a bit of a challenge with the reduction in exposition.

The party that never was (also this music is pretty catchy)

I remember having rented this game as a kid. I never beat it. In fact, my memory of it is all rather hazy. The most memorable part of it is my struggle with understanding the moon phases. Moon gates were the bane of my young addled brain. I'm fairly certain I didn't get very far, and would jump on my brothers save file to check it out.

Mostly, I'm going into this blind, and from what I hear I'm going to struggle with unhelpful NPC hints. There's also mention that it is not possible to brute force through the game, and the final boss is more of a puzzle to pass. I've tried to keep this research spoiler free, so I don't have much more to report. There's evidently a 64-page hint book floating around as well, which I'll take the time to peruse after completing the game.

There's not a lot of mention of this game when reminiscing about classic console RPGs with friends and forums, so I have to wonder how the Ultima series continued to be released on consoles through Ultima VII. In fact, there's two Ultima games released for the Game Boy that look more like Zelda than Ultima, but I'll give them a chance based solely on the series. One of the most unfortunate omissions of the series on console is the lack of an American release to the PlayStation port of Ultima Underworld.

I didn't even vote in this poll...

I had a poll up for the last week to help me decide characters. It looks like Ranger & Thief edged out Paladin & Lark. This gives me a party of Ranger, Thief, Cleric, Wizard; in honor of the CRPG Addict, The Trickster, and my top two commenters, I'll be naming them Chet, Trick, AmyK, and CanaG respectively. Thanks for all the inspiration and support guys. I'm really looking forward to this one.