LairWare's Ultima 3 for OS X Updated

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To this day, I don’t know what (if any) licensing agreement exists between Apple-focused developer LairWare and Electronic Arts. There has to be something, because LairWare’s port of Ultima 3 for Mac has remained available lo these many years. What’s more, the OS X-specific version of the game has just been updated to version 2.2. Notable changes include:

Fixed build issue which rendered v2.1 unable to run some non-Snow Leopard systems. 
Windowed mode now double-sized when able. 
Higher quality application icon. 
Now largely localizable into other languages.

I’ve taken the liberty of updating the demo download at the project entry.

The OS X version, as was the case with the older version, cannot be completed without registering (specifically, it prevents you from reaching Ambrosia), which still costs only $15 now only costs $5!  For a professionally-done, classical graphics remake, that’s a reasonable fee indeed.

(via UO Journal)

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4 Responses

  1. Sanctimonia says:
    May 27, 2011 at 11:49 pm

    That’s just crazy. I looked at the screenshots, and if that game or Lairware has a legal affiliation with EA/etc. then something fishy is going on. Like someone owed someone a favor. Maybe an ultra-low budget way of testing the marketplace or brand recognition? I don’t have any facts, but it just seems odd to me.

  2. Sergorn says:
    May 28, 2011 at 7:52 pm

    This actually a very old project. It was an officially sanctionned commercial remake licensed from Origin and EA and released in 1993.

    As I recall one of the reasons they did this remake is because the Mac only had a crappy black&white port of the original Ultima III. Now I have no idea how negociation went about this and lead Origin and EA to authorize this remake – though I’m not exactly surprised since Origin seemed opened to this kind of things (there was also an improved Apple IIGS remake of Ultima I with music and all which up till the passing of its creator a couple years ago was still legally available for sale). I figure Lairware probably approached Origin and they agree providing that they had their share of royalties and Origin had no money to spend to create it.

    So basically this is just Lairware continuing support for the game, as they have been doing for the last 14 years – indeed they kept adding a lot more feature: a workable mouse interface, support from different tiles graphics (PC version, 16 Bit versions, even the NES versions) and so on…

    I’ve actually played (and bought) this version last year for my Ultima playthrough:
    http://sergorn.wordpress.com/category/ultima-iii/

    I was very impressed by it, and this is definily the definitive version of Ultima III even if emulating OSX to get the latest version running on a PC was kind of a pain!

    It’s a shame they never did any port of it for the PC, but I would guess the original licensing for this remake was solely about the Mac.

  3. Francois424 says:
    August 29, 2012 at 7:47 pm

    Sergorn, could you share how you did to setup this on a PC computer so it works ? my Email is francois.poisson@videotron.ca, and I would be grateful if I could get this to run.

    Thanks !