Pix Plays Ultima 4 for the NES
Origin historian Pix has published a series of three articles (part the first, part the second, part the third) detailing his playthrough of Ultima 4 for the original Nintendo Entertainment System (NES).
Here’s his lead-in for the series:
Ultima 4 was released somewhat belatedly for the NES in 1989 having being developed by Pony Canyon. It’s a game I’ve been curious about trying out for a while as I love the original version but the console ports tend to be different enough to be worth a look in their own right. This time I get to play au-natural as such meaning, you may be relieved to hear, that I recently bought a NES and it’s now region-unlocked and ready to play my Ultima 4 cartridge:
The snag with having the real hardware of course is that decent screenshots are out of the question and I’m just pointing my phone at the TV instead. Ultima 3 on the NES turned out to be a decent and reasonably faithful port which was something of a pleasant surprise back when I played it last year. My concern (which is probably justified from what I’ve heard) is that each of these games is going to be slightly worse than it’s predecessor as the scope grows further beyond what a console of the time was capable of.
And by the end, he ended up having mixed feelings:
I have to say that I enjoyed the later stages of this game more than the earlier ones, which is the exact opposite of the PC version. As such this port did grow on me to an extent but if this had been the only version of Ultima 4, I doubt many people would remember the game all these years later.
The main drag is the incessant combat. Stand still for 10-15 seconds at any time and you will be in a fight. I couldn’t even complete the ceremony fast enough at the abyss entrance to get through it in one go. I much prefer being able to see and avoid the enemies on the main map. This tactic did have to be taken to extremes on the seas since pirate ships are the only enemies visible on the map. I could barely move without seeing one. Whenever I play a game like with this much combat it always feels like a short game is being deliberately dragged out.
The other major problem is the reduction to the conversations and towns. Ultima 4 isn’t a game that needed any simplification as it was already fairly bare bones being made for a 1985 Apple II. This simplification more or less ruined my favourite part of the PC version.
As noted above, he did take many screenshots of the playthrough, although these were in the form of photographs of a television screen rather than actual gameplay image captures. He has captured a fair number of interesting pieces of the game with the photos, however, so do make sure to give them a good look as you peruse his articles.
Great write-up by Pix, and thanks for posting this!
I actually have fond memories of this game and have often desired to go back and replay it. My first exposure to the Ultima universe was reading about this game in a Nintendo Power magazine. While the first game in the series I actually played was U6 for the PC, I remember getting quite lost in that game before renting U4 NES to learn more about Britannia and the virtues. I still catch myself humming the overworld tune to this day.
I agree the combat didn’t age well, though laborious combat is actually one of my criticisms of Ultimas 3-5 in general. It is somewhat tedious that you need to move, enter commands, and then choose an attack direction for each character in the party. U6 of course vastly improved on this gameplay mechanic. Interestingly, while the Final Fantasy series still requires you to enter commands for each character, it doesn’t feel nearly as clunky and has still largely remained the same over 14+ games. I believe that’s because it’s more limited than Ultima since you don’t have to think about movement or attack directions during battle sequences.
Oh man, Ultima III for NES was what started me on Ultima as a kid. I heard about Ultima IV and desperately wanted to get it, but never did. I’m used to the NES gameplay for older Ultima games, so I still haven’t really given Ultima IV its just-due.
I have a lot of fond memories of Ultima IV for the NES. The first Ultima games I played were Ultima III and IV for the NES. As a kid I found Ultima IV to be refreshing and much less dark and depressing compared to Ultima III. I recently started to replay this version on an NES emulator I have on my phone and still quite enjoyed it.
That’s precisely what I’m going to do once I finish Dragon Warrior III (Dragon Warrior was another game we played on NES, and I never knew there were more of them until recently.)
This was my introduction to Ultima as well. My friends actually thought I was insane for liking it more than Final Fantasy. I was pretty obsessed with it as the time too. Had every city, every dungeon, every rune location memorized. Ah for the days when I had time for such obsessions.