Mythic Entertainment talking to DOSbox
Not that I stalk Paul Barnett’s Twitter feed or anything*:
Promising...promising, I tell you!
A bit over a month ago now (if memory serves), I downloaded the Commander Keen series off of Steam, and noticed how iD Software had prepared the games for release on modern systems. In essence, they bundled DOSbox with the games, and launched each game with a customized script that opened a DOSbox instance with pre-defined settings (which included running in full-screen mode), which in turn automatically found and launched the game executable.
It was really quite a slick setup, actually. So, shortly thereafter, I fired a note off to Paul Barnett musing on the feasibility of Mythic doing something similar with the old Ultima games. He liked the idea, though he wasn’t certain as to whether it would be workable given various legal considerations and constraints. But it seems as though things are perhaps a tad more favourable than expected!
Don’t get your hopes up too high, Dragons and Dragonettes; it could still be a while before anything to do with Ultima finds its way into the catalogues of services like Steam or Impulse (or the actually-not-dead-oops-sorry-about-that Good Old Games). For now, at least, your best bet is still [amazonify]B000028U20::text::::the Ultima Collection[/amazonify] and a standalone purchase of [amazonify]B00002EPYD::text::::Ultima 9[/amazonify].
But I know that I, for one, will be keeping an eye open. I still get asked, periodically, where copies of the Ultima games can be obtained from; it would be a nice thing indeed to be able to point people toward a reasonably priced digital download.
And hey…what could be better than gifting the Ultimas to a friend via Steam, I ask you? Well, okay, besides that, and that as well…
* actually, I don’t; Sergorn Dragon noticed this and alerted me to it.
If they do release the games again, can you please make sure that this time they actually properly patch Ultima II so it’s playable and has all the correct disks? While you’re at it, can you remind them to include Martian Dreams and Savage Empire too this time (I think the copyrights are different on Underworld). Heck, just sell the versions with the graphic add-ons already installed… Sorry, I digress. I’d LOVE to see this, but I’d also love to see it done better than last time.
I’ll have more to blog about this today, possibly.
This is so good to hear! Thanks for bringing it up,it made my day!
It turns out that he was actually talking about the Wing Commander series, and they released the first game for free.
Here is a link to the relevant news article:
http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/wing-commander/1123946p1.html
It’s a bit more involved than that, as a couple other articles on the site explain and examine.
Short version: WC1 is the test case, the proof that the DOSboxing conceit works and the means to getting it approved by EA’s legal department. Barnett confirmed that to me today. The rest of the Wing Commanders, and the Ultimas, will follow in WC1’s wake.