Wow, that is intense. I am probably not going to read that, but my son soaks up things like this like crazy. Is it just informational or are there any suppositions around social influence or how the culture and gaming has grown?
I flipped through a few pages and was like... wow... this is a time-waster / information source. Heh. And it's FREE. Good stuff. I haven't dug deep enough to answer your question. I saw reviews and overviews, but I just glossed over it.
Started reading it. I find it both sad and humorous how much today’s gamers disliked Ultima IV. I loved that game when it came out, but looking at the games of today, I can see how new gamers would get frustrated.
Here's my Ultima IV story. I'd saved up to buy an expensive/cheap COLOR monitor to play the game. We ordered out of Compuserve, IIRC. For those not old enough, it was a HUGE PC parts magazine printed. We hooked up with some Chinese selling parts cheap. Heh. Anyway, got the monitor, had the game, and couldn't play. I remember it came with a cloth map and a medallion. Never finished it, but it was a blast to play eventually.
I played on a Commodore 128. I remember the cloth map, and the perspective change when you entered a dungeon. I am pretty sure I finished it, I had no life back then and spent most of my time playing. I think you had to master the eight virtues, then go to an island and defeat an evil wizard or demon. It was the only Ultima I played until Ultima Online came out. Its free on GoG if anyone wants to try it.
Yeah, I remember telling my parents it was literally a good game that taught values. Heh. UO was expensive when it first came out, IIRC? Was on compuserve, maybe? Ah...hourly rates. May they never return.
UO actually has a free to play option now if anyone hasn't tried it here! The godfather of MMO's in my opinion it is. So many hours of my middle school years were spent in the halls of Vesper, taming dragons, releasing said dragons on unsuspecting town's folk. Good times.
I was playing this on an apple //c, had that and a commodore 128, but, it played better on the //c. It was a crappy port for the commodore.
UO was a 9.95 a month subscription put out by Origin. In additional fees were due the isps. By that time were lucky and had a $20 a month unlimited service at 28.8 speeds. (Unlimited as long as no one picked up a phone, and you were willing to deal with massive amounts of lag.)
I can't remember which one was on Compuserve... I thought it was UO but I might be wrong... so many years ago...
It may have been. Games moved around a lot back then. Battletech and some other games were available through AOL and then moved to being available through the company that had the rights for them at the time, which I think was Gamestorm, before being bought by EA.
