Spector, Garriott on Games

Warrior-GS writes "GameSpy has two interesting interviews up. Richard Garriott of Ultima fame talks about leaving Origin, getting bought out by NCSoft and becoming a pitchman for a popular Korean MMORPG trying to make it in the states. He also mentions his new game, Tabula Rasa. The other interview is with Warren Spector, who opened up a bit on the Deus Ex sequel Invisible War, while also commenting on linear games, anime style games and what the future holds."

Re:Classic Ultima vs Online

[Gaijin42]

Britannia started out all high tech. It wasn't till 4 that it went fantasy all the way. In the early ultimas, there were space ships, lasers, etc.

Blackthorn is a cyborg because of a plot line invoving Exedus. Which kinda makes sense, but only if you started with the early Ultimas.

Lineage 2 website

[Bonker]

http://www.lineage2.com/ [lineage2.com]

This is the 'New' version of the Korean game. It's in early beta phase, but has a steady following. Character models are *gorgeous*.

The Ultima Collection

[pHatidic]

The Ultima Collection, available from eastore.ea.com [ea.com] all of the single player Ultima's except for the last one, number nine. They also through in Akalabeth.

Caveat Emptor -- Several of the games do not work properly on modern systems do to memory incompatibities. IMHO, the only Ultima really worth playing is U7, which now works perfectly do to the new engine made by Exult [sourceforge.net]. However, Ultima's 4-6 are also very good if you have the time and patience to get them working (U4 worked fine for me except the sound but I could never really get U5 & U6 running correctly)

Re:I hated his Ultima 1, first release, it had bug

[SoftwareJanitor]

His second major product, was Ultima 1 for the Apple II.

Correct, I remember it well. Spent many too many hours playing it back in the early 80's.

It was written in Pascal P-Code I think, As was Wizardry 1 by another author.

Wizardry was indeed written in Apple Pascal (UCSD), but Ultima 1 was mostly written in Applesoft BASIC, as anyone who has perused the cracked copies that floated around the 'warez' circles back in those days could tell you.

Chances are Ultima 1 would have been less buggy had it been written in Pascal than in BASIC.

Deus Ex

[Teckla]

If you're a gamer, and you haven't played Deus Ex yet, do yourself a favor and GO BUY IT. RIGHT NOW.

I've seen it as cheap as $10 in the bargain bin (jewel case and CD only). The boxed version is only $20.

Deus Ex rocks. So much so, that I'm basing my next PC purchase on when Deus Ex: Invisible War is released.

-Teckla

Re:Cool.

[Torgo's Pizza]

With you writing history Germany would have won World War II and Russia came out on top in the Cold War. Ultima IX was the reason why Richard *left* the company, mainly because he lost full control of his product because of Electronic Arts meddling. RTFA's out on the web to get what truly happened.