Restored: A Legend is Reborn/ERA
This project began as an ambitious remake of Ultima 1. However, due to the fact that Peroxide couldn’t get formal permission from Electronic Arts to make an actual Ultima game (not that this should have ever been a condition that Peroxide imposed on its development), the project ceased to be a formal Ultima remake in January 2003.
However, Peroxide kept their stunning custom-made 3D engine alive a bit longer for a new, somewhat Ultima-inspired project: ERA: The Arken Throne. This was supposed to be a published game, inspired by (but not actually) Ultima 1.
Sadly, Peroxide has shut ERA down. The team’s website contained, for a time, a message that seemed to promise that they would reappear, with the ERA engine still in development and ERA under a new name. Nothing seems to have come of that over the last few years, sadly.
All that is left of the game are a few tech demos, which can be downloaded via the project entry in the Orphanage.
It’s really a shame this project never was released or even that ERA died as well – if anything the engine was very impressive for its time.
I’ve always felt the EA thing was not the only reason they decided to drop the Ultima name though – I just never could shake the feeling that they reception Ultima I Reborn got from many hardcore, because you know they wanted to take liberty to the canon (like Ultima I has a lot of canon in it really!) and even imagine new stuff – had something to do with.
Because seriously it got a lot of underserved hate back then – it wasn’t as bad as Ultima IX, but that certainly reminded it of that.
Yes, a shame. I remember playing this demo with great interest. The scenery was beautiful, and it was quite moving to see a circle of standing stones like that.