Ultima has a friend in Felicia Day
Felicia Day
I tuned back in for the episode where Buffy took a bazooka to some sort of judge-demon-thingy, and then again for the episode where she sent Angel to hell and promptly left town on a bus (which, in turn, put me on to what remains — to this day — the only Sarah McLachlan song I can stand).
So I completely missed Felicia Day’s appearance on the show, and the story arc of her character, Vi. This may have been a pity, since it turns out that Miss Day is, according to this post on her Facebook page, a huge fan of two of the same games that I love, starting with Ultima 7.
As the good reader can see, the post attracted over a thousand comments and a lot of attention; floored, Day did a follow-up post listing five games that appeared on a lot of the comments she received, but which she herself had never played. Which, in turn, was an interesting read.
Ultima 7, TLJ...win, and win.
Ultima has a friend in Felicia Day. Especially Ultima 7.
And just for the record, here’s my “Top 5”:
- Ultima 6
- The Marathon series
- Mass Effect
- Hero’s Quest, later re-done as Quest for Glory
- The Longest Journey
Feel free to chip in your own in the comments.
Update: And thanks to Barry Ramirez, I feel as though I should eat some part of my foot, lightly salted and glazed with a red pepper and basil sauce. For indeed, Miss Day is none other than Codex Dragon, according to the UDIC “current members” roster. I observe that her listed email address is “@udic.org”; she is evidently a very old-school Ultima fan from way back.
Which. Is. Awesome.
The woman has great taste judging by just her first two entries alone.
I think it’s telling that even though she says in no particular order, Ultima 7 was what first came to her mind.
My list might look like:
1. Ultima 5
2. Sid Meier’s Pirates!
3. Master of Orion
4. TIE Fighter
5. Jedi Academy
That’s a hard list to make. I didn’t want to fill it with Ultimas, but my other favorites are 6, 9, and SE.
Yeah, I deliberately kept additional Ultimas off my list. Other choices would include SI and U9, though. Other games that might fill out a “Top 10” would include Simon the Sorcerer, World of Xeen (Might & Magic 4 and Might & Magic 5 combined into one game), Syndicate, Chaos Overlords, Inherit the Earth, any of the Monkey Island games, The Dig and Earth 2150.
I realize that’s more than five additional games, but consider that to be evidence that past the “Top 5”, it’s just too damned hard to choose.
When I do “top” for videogames, I usually just go with series or else it’s no use 😛
Re: Felicia and Ultima…
You’re forgetting another little connection there…
Look up ‘Codex Dragon’ 🙂
– the one formerly known as Monomolecular Dragon, who remembers Codex from *P
Wow…no idea, at all. Aaaaaaand…I’m speechless.
That’s going in the article.
Hah, yes, it’s official 🙂 Warder contacted her once, and she confirmed her alias of Codex in “The Guild” is indeed a reference to Ultima’s Codex of Ultimate Wisdom!
Cool news!
But I must admit, her role in ‘The Legend of Neil’ is a little erotic…and a LOT disturbing.
Well, I’ve f’sure never seen that, and I can’t think of anything else I might’ve seen her in, so…I’ll just have to take your word on it!
Google ‘The Legend of Neil’–it’s not dirty, or porn–well, some VERY off-color jokes, but nothing worse than South Park.
It’s worth a giggle! 🙂
Joe
If you’re going to talk about Felicia Day, you can’t go without mentioning “Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog”.
I guess it’s no surprise that Noah Antwiler, AKA “Spoony” from thespoonyexperiment.com, is a member as well – Hackrat Dragon.
You know, maybe I should just adopt a policy of checking every name I mention on the site here against the active roster. That’s cool, didn’t know that about Spoony.
And I…er…have never seen any Dr. Horrible.
I didn’t know that about Spoony. Neato. Also, I second the recommendation of “Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog”.
My top five (best to least best):
1) Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines (The most well crafted world and lore ever put into a game)
2) Counter-Strike (fundamentally changed multiplayer gaming as we knew it)
3) Daggerfall (one of the most open of the open-world style games)
4) Gladiator: Galactic Circus Games (innovative indie rts)
5) Ultima 8* (you know)
Wow, this list is actually really hard to commit to. I think Vampire and U8 are pretty set, but the rest might shift from day to day.
*: I can hear you all saying “ah hah, I always knew I hated that guy!”. Don’t think I can’t!
HEY BARRY,
Howzit hangin’? 😉
– the one formerly a target of Operation Blue Duck :*
Hey Whisper…welcome to the site!
Thanks. Was surprised to find out that we knew Felicia way back when she was barely a teen. lol I wonder how many other UDs are hanging around out there.
If either roster (current or all-time) is anything to go by, there’s likely plenty…though not all still go by their dragon names, of course. (I wonder when the last time was that the name “Codex Dragon” crossed Ms. Day’s mind?)
I think we need a new recruitment drive, and a “returning champions” campaign of our own. Why should Mythic get to have all the fun?
Great, whole new generations to revile me. LOL Just what I need in life.
Revile…or worship! It’s all in the marketing. Though I think it should begin with a revamp of the UDIC site, myself; place looks like a fugitive from Geocities.
It *is* a fugitive of Geocities. Good luck prying it away, though. Some aren’t known for playing well with others. 😉
Honestly, there are very few of the older people I’d be interested in getting in touch with, Barry being one of the few. After all, he did come to my wedding 100 years ago. lol
Nice to see Joe’s still around, somewhat, with the museum. At least I presume that’s who it is. Haven’t talked to him in ages.
Oh, if anyone knows how to get in touch with Lord Chaos of the EAs, please let him know I’ve preserved the EA History he was storing on our old domain.
I didn’t say anything about prying it away; I administer enough stuff and wouldn’t dream of flirting with the headache of taking on that kind of additional project. Ultima Return and private experimentation with the Unity engine are MORE than enough. (Though I’d be happy to lend any necessary efforts to a site revamp.)
(And yes, you did correctly identify Joe there. He is indeed still around, and has been doing some pretty neat stuff in fact. Check out some of the galleries here on the site; most are the results of his labours.)
I suppose it isn’t a strictly necessary thing, getting the fan club back into the limelight. The point, I suppose, is that right now is the proverbial “interesting times” for Ultima, or could be.
In light of that, it’s been my goal over the last while to turn this place into something like a hub of activity for the community, and the people that frequent here have their own monikers by which I know them already…and by which they know each other. It would be kind of silly (I suppose) to suggest they all adopt new names, or return to old ones.
Still, I guess I have a place in my heart for the Dragons, and likely always will.
As much as we may wish it were otherwise, Ultima, for all intents and purposes, is dead. It died long ago. Digging up remains and putting a fancy dress on a corpse doesn’t make it any less dead. 😉 But hey, knock yourself out. I’ve seen worse ways for people to spend their time. 🙂
The dragons, too, had their place but their time has come and gone. And that’s speaking as someone who lived and breathed the club for many, many years, who owes her very marriage and, as a result, the existence of her youngest son, to the club. It will always have a place in my heart and mind, but sometimes, its best to just reminisce rather than to recreate. Having lived it from the beginning to what was, for all intents and purposes, the demise, I’d say leave the past in the past. Some old wounds never truly heal, despite the passage of time. Give the devil his due, pay your respects (http://khassy.cheekygamers.com/2010/10/95/) and say “Goodnight, Gracie.” 🙂
Edit: I should hasten to point out that I will agree that Ultima “as we originally knew it” died a long time ago…in either 1999 or 2004, in fact (depending on whether you want to date from the release of the last single-player Ultima title, or the demise of Origin itself). If more happens with the Ultima franchise than the detestable Lord of Ultima (and it very well may), it will still be a very different beast than the Ultima of yore.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Original: To be completely fair, if a certain project of which I am aware fails to come to fruition, I will probably concede the point that Ultima has seen its day, and that said day has well and truly come to an end.
Oh, there may be some resurgence of Ultima in the mobile market — BioWare Mythic’s challenge regarding iOS and Ultima 4 still stands — but if said other project fails and founders…yeah, Ultima will be dead for me. But I want to see if Mythic’s crazy little idea pans out first before I get around to coming to that conclusion for myself.
Not that this site will go anywhere. It’s become a gathering place, a shrine, and a hub for fans, and as long as Ultima captures interest from people, it will remain as such.
The thing is that even if the games do get ported onto iPhones or Androids or anything else, Ultima will still be dead. Sure, people who played them before can play them again, but for the vast majority of people, in a world where World of Warcraft dominates (and can be played on smartphones), it won’t bring a resurgence of Ultima fandom.
There are many emulators around in which you can play just about any older game you want, Ultima or otherwise, on smart phones, computers, etc. And yet, despite their popularity, I have seen no evidence of a resurgence in 8-bit games. 😉 Even if someone were to update the graphics of the older Ultima games, they would no longer have the heart and soul of what made the games great back then. Times have changed and people want, and expect, different things from games than they did back then. “Honor” has been replaced with “honor amongst thieves” so to speak.
What made Ultima games great once can never be recaptured. The games can be ported, recreated, or even abominated (ala Lord of Ultima), but the magic can never be recaptured. That time is long gone, I’m afraid.
I try not to define Ultima by any truly concrete things…not Lord British (since he wasn’t in U8 and was originally supposed to die in U9), not the Avatar (since s/he wasn’t in the first three games, and did in fact die in U9), not Britannia (SI/U8), not the virtues (U7, SI, U8), and not any particular aspect of canon continuity (since each game commits its share of continuity violation and retconning).
Ultima is more about a certain sort of experience, an evocation of a particular sense of wonder achieved through the telling of a story through a particular framework in which the gameworld felt unusually alive. Can that experience be recaptured by newer games that have yet to be developed, some of which may even bear the Ultima label?
I don’t see why it couldn’t be. Origin’s writers weren’t gods or lesser deities of some unmatchable quality; there are good writers today. From a technical standpoint, it’s entirely do-able. Would it have to compete with those other games? To some degree, yes, although WoW is always going to be a very different kind of game than a single-player RPG; we still have single-player RPGs today, which do just fine in the market against WoW. And even WoW players step away from the Blizzard servers once in a while (except for the addicts, maybe).
The Ultima of the 1980s and 1990s is gone, to be sure…I can easily admit as much, because it is demonstrably true. But I don’t think it’s impossible that some game could one day be made which did in fact recapture the magic of the Ultima experience. Unlikely…I’d be willing to use that word. But not impossible.
Ultima can come back (in spirit). Give me a year or so and I promise that socks will in fact be blown clean off. And I will not be held responsible for the resultant loss of hosiery.
Handshakes, thou art now, officially, a tease.
It’s all awesomeness.
1. U7
2. Ultima Underworlds
3. Fallout, Fallout 2, Fallout BOS, Fallout 3 (and DLCs)
4. Oblivion
5. Baldur’s Gate – the entire series
It was a 100 years ago I registered at UDIC, back when I was still on Prodigy and running U7 from a stack of 3 and a 1/2 inch floppies. Okay, I confess, Fallout 3 and Oblivion are console games…don’t be hatin’! LOL
There is a website (or 3) out there that are dedicated to playing Ultima 7 on windows 7 (which is a darn fine coincidence). I’m waiting for DOS Box and/or Exult to mature before I try it out. Anybody have any experience?
For U7, unless you’re an ultra-purist, Exult is the way to go, and it should be Win 7-compliant.
Good list, btw.
Thanks. I’m getting old, not as much into the games as I used to be. Thankful I was nearly done with college by the time Baldur’s Gate came out! BTW, I still have the original box that U7 part II (Serpent Isle) came in. It had both parts, as well as the add-ons. That’s Black Gate, discs 1-6, Serpent Isle, discs 1-7, Forge of Virtue, Silver Seed, with cloth maps, the books “Fellowship,” and “Beyond the Serpent Pillars,” as well as game guides, and even original advertising for new Origin games. In fact, the only thing missing is the original part 1 box. Also have several of the big game guides, and a book based on the Avatar series.
U7 on Exult for sure. I’ve played through U7 with Exult and can vouch for its stability. That said I haven’t played through U7 all the way without Exult, so I can’t say if they changed anything in a big way, but I doubt they did.