Ultima VI: The False Prophet, released by
Origin SystemsOrigin Systems, Inc. was a computer game developer based in Austin, Texas that was active from 1983 to 2004...
in
1990-Notable releases:*Bonk's Adventure is released for NEC's TurboGrafx-16 and is the first US appearance of Bonk, the mascot of the TurboGrafx-16.*Namco releases Kyuukai Douchuuki, World Stadium '90, Final Lap 2, Pistol Daimyo no Bouken, which is a spin-off from Berabow Man, Souko Ban Deluxe, Dragon...
, is the sixth part in the
computer role-playing gameA computer role-playing game is a broad video game genre originally developed for personal computers and other home computers. While technically not a separate genre, and sharing the same defining characteristics as console RPGs there are nonetheless general tendencies that make them distinct...
series of
Ultima. It was the last in the "Age of Enlightenment" trilogy.
Some years after Lord British has returned to power, the Avatar is captured and tied on a sacrificial altar, about to be sacrificed by red demon-like creatures, the
gargoyleIn architecture, a gargoyle is a carved stone grotesque with a spout designed to convey water from a roof and away from the side of a buildingThe term originates from the French gargouille, originally "throat" or "gullet"; cf...
s. The Warriors of Destiny suddenly appear, save the Avatar and collect the sacred text the gargoyle priest was holding.
Ultima VI: The False Prophet, released by
Origin SystemsOrigin Systems, Inc. was a computer game developer based in Austin, Texas that was active from 1983 to 2004...
in
1990-Notable releases:*Bonk's Adventure is released for NEC's TurboGrafx-16 and is the first US appearance of Bonk, the mascot of the TurboGrafx-16.*Namco releases Kyuukai Douchuuki, World Stadium '90, Final Lap 2, Pistol Daimyo no Bouken, which is a spin-off from Berabow Man, Souko Ban Deluxe, Dragon...
, is the sixth part in the
computer role-playing gameA computer role-playing game is a broad video game genre originally developed for personal computers and other home computers. While technically not a separate genre, and sharing the same defining characteristics as console RPGs there are nonetheless general tendencies that make them distinct...
series of
Ultima. It was the last in the "Age of Enlightenment" trilogy.
Plot
Some years after Lord British has returned to power, the Avatar is captured and tied on a sacrificial altar, about to be sacrificed by red demon-like creatures, the
gargoyleIn architecture, a gargoyle is a carved stone grotesque with a spout designed to convey water from a roof and away from the side of a buildingThe term originates from the French gargouille, originally "throat" or "gullet"; cf...
s. The Warriors of Destiny suddenly appear, save the Avatar and collect the sacred text the gargoyle priest was holding. In Castle Britannia, the Avatar learns that the shrines of Virtue were captured by the gargoyles and he embarks on a quest to rescue Britannia from the invaders.
Gameplay
This game ended the use of multiple scales; in earlier games a town, castle, or dungeon would be represented as a single symbol on the world map, which then expanded into a full sub-map when entering the structure. In
Ultima VI, the whole game uses a single scale, with towns and other places seamlessly integrated into the main map; dungeons are now also viewed from the same perspective as the rest of the game, rather than the first-person perspective used by
Ultima I-V. The game kept the basic tile system and screen layout of the three preceding parts, but altered the look into a much more colourful
pseudo-isometricOblique projection is a simple type of graphical projection used for producing pictorial, two-dimensional images of three-dimensional objects.- Overview :Oblique projection is a type of parallel projection:...
view, to take full advantage of the newly-released VGA graphics cards for
PCsIBM PC compatible computers are those generally similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT. Such computers used to be referred to as PC clones, or IBM clones since they almost exactly duplicated all the significant features of the PC architecture, facilitated by various manufacturers' ability to...
.
Non-player characterA non-player character, often shortened to NPC, is a character that is controlled by the gamemaster in role-playing games. When this definition extends to video games, an NPC in a video game is usually part of the program, and not controlled by a human....
s had their portraits shown when talked to, something that would not have been feasible on the classic 8-bit Apple II.
Development
It was originally planned that Ultima VI was to continue on with the Apple II series, and through the much more capable 16-bit
Apple IIGSThe Apple IIGS, the fifth model inception of the Apple II, is the most powerful member of the Apple II series of personal computers made by Apple Computer...
, where its advanced graphics, music and mouse interface would been more than suitable to handle the task. In the end a decision to cancel was made due to the declining market size of the Apple II platform, and marked the first time a chapter in the Ultima series was
not available for the Apple II (the platform it originated on). It was one of the first major PC games directly targeted to PC systems equipped with VGA graphics and a mouse, when the big "gaming computer" was still the
CommodoreCommodore, the commonly used name for Commodore International, was a US electronics company based in West Chester, Pennsylvania which played a vital role in the development of the home/personal computer industry in the 1980s. The company is also known under the name of its R&D operation, Commodore...
AmigaThe Amiga was a family of personal computers originally developed by Amiga Corporation. Development on the Amiga began in 1982 with Jay Miner as the principal hardware designer. Commodore International bought Amiga Corporation and introduced the machine to the market in 1985...
. The game supported
sound cardA sound card is a computer expansion card that facilitates the input and output of audio signals to and from a computer under control of computer programs. Typical uses of sound cards include providing the audio component for multimedia applications such as music composition, editing video or...
s for music as well, which were not yet common when it was released. Other sound effects, such as the clashing of swords, magical zaps, or explosions, were still played through the
PC speakerA PC speaker is a monophonic 2.25 inch magnetic driven midrange speaker, later replaced by a piezoelectric tweeter , built into some IBM PC compatible desktop computers. The first IBM Personal Computer, model 5150, employed a standard 2.25 inch magnetic driven speaker as a tone generator...
. The Amiga version was itself ported from the PC and due to a lack of reprogramming it was very slow. The only 8-bit computer system to which the game was ported was the
Commodore 64The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer introduced by Commodore International in January, 1982. Volume production started sometime in the spring of 1982, with machines being released on to the market in August at a price of US$ 595...
due the fact that it still had a very sizable market share. The C64 version lacks many features of the PC version though, not just in aesthetics (no portraits), but also in gameplay (no horses, no working gems, reduced NPC dialogs, simplified quests etc.); it is generally considered much worse than the earlier C64 Ultimas.
The Ultima VI engine was also used for the
Worlds of UltimaThe Worlds of Ultima series was a short lived spin-off of the well-known Ultima series of computer role-playing games.-Worlds of Ultima: The Savage Empire :...
spin-off series.
A port of the game for
FM TownsThe FM Towns system is a Japanese PC variant, built by Fujitsu from February 1989 to the summer of 1997. It started as a proprietary PC variant intended for multimedia applications and PC games, but later became more compatible with regular PCs...
platform was made primarily for
Japanis an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
ese market. This CD-ROM-based version included full speech in both
EnglishEnglish is a West Germanic language that developed in England during the Anglo-Saxon era. As a result of the military, economic, scientific, political, and cultural influence of the British Empire during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, and of the United States since the mid 20th century,...
and
Japaneseis a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family. There are a number of proposed relationships with other languages, but none have gained general acceptance...
. What is interesting about this version is that the voice acting was recorded at Origin, mostly by the people the characters were based on (with
Richard GarriottRichard Allen Garriott is an English-American video game developer and entrepreneur.He is also known as his alter egos Lord British in Ultima and General British in Tabula Rasa...
as Lord British, Greg Dykes as Dupre, etc.), though not all personnel could be reached at the time of recording, so some substitutes were used.
Compatibility with modern systems
The
DOSDOS, short for "Disk Operating System", is a shorthand term for several closely related operating systems that dominated the IBM PC compatible market between 1981 and 1995, or until about 2000 if one includes the partially DOS-based Microsoft Windows versions Windows 95, 98, and ME.Related systems...
version of Ultima VI may have sound and speed problems when running on modern computers and operative systems. However, it can run reliably in a
DOSBoxDOSBox is an emulator which emulates an IBM PC compatible computer running MS-DOS. It is intended especially for use with old PC games. DOSBox is free software.-Features:...
environment.
An engine remake project called Nuvie, similar to the goals of xu4,
ExultExult is a Free Software reimplementation of the Ultima VII game engine. It enables play of Ultima VII: The Black Gate and Ultima VII Part 2: Serpent Isle, and their corresponding expansion disks Forge of Virtue and Silver Seed, on modern machines. In order to play these games, data files from the...
and Pentagram, is in the works. Not much of the game functionality is implemented yet.
At one time, the for-pay online gaming service Gametap had added Ultima VI to its library of games; it ran more or less correctly on the platform. Due to licensing issues, however, it was removed on December 11, 2007.
Reception
The game was reviewed in 1990 in
DragonDragon is one of the two official magazines for source material for the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game and associated products. TSR, Inc. originally launched the monthly printed magazine in 1976 to succeed the company's earlier publication, The Strategic Review. The final printed issue was...
#162 by Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk Lesser in "The Role of Computers" column. The reviewers gave the game 5 out of 5 stars.
Fan remakes
There is a current project to recreate
Ultima VI using
Dungeon SiegeDungeon Siege is a computer role-playing game developed by Gas Powered Games and published by Microsoft Game Studios. Chris Taylor showed Dungeon Siege years in production for the first time at E3 2000...
engine. Another remake project uses the
ExultExult is a Free Software reimplementation of the Ultima VII game engine. It enables play of Ultima VII: The Black Gate and Ultima VII Part 2: Serpent Isle, and their corresponding expansion disks Forge of Virtue and Silver Seed, on modern machines. In order to play these games, data files from the...
engine, using graphics from
Ultima VIIUltima VII is the seventh installment of the Ultima series of computer role-playing games.The game was released in two parts, Ultima VII: The Black Gate , and Ultima VII, Part Two: Serpent Isle . Aside from the direct continuation of the plot and using essentially the same engine, the two parts are...
.
Ultima 6 Online is an MMO version of Ultima VI.