Okay…who has messed with cAndy Apple before?

A reader asks a question I just don’t know the answer to:

Question: Do you have any articles on your site about how to play some vintage ultima games using the above app on an android device?

Just curious – love the site!

To answer Jeff directly: no, I have no such articles.

But then…I’m not an Android guy, so I don’t know how to answer. I’ve heard of cAndy Apple before, and I think I read somewhere that it can get Akalabeth up and running, but…yeah, honestly, I just don’t know.

Feel free to chime in with any helpful advice. I know a few of you are familiar with Google’s mobile OS, after all. 

5 Responses

  1. Ed says:

    i’ve gotten Ultima IV to work with it. theres a set of disks out on the intarwebs labeled as [Fixed] that seem to be required, I guess there’s something weird about the originals

    It’s the only one I’ve tried though

  2. Sanctimonia says:

    @WtF; I don’t have much experience with Android, but here’s a DosBox port for it:

    http://androiddosbox.appspot.com/

    The only thing I saw that needed to be finished is on-screen keyboard support, and they say it runs a little slow.

    @ED: “Fixed” might mean that the copy protection had been cracked. The DOS ports for the older Ultima games had disk-based copy protection so the original disk had to be inserted. Programs like Copy II PC tried to make exact copies of the original and later fixed EXE’s and patches were created.

  3. Geoff says:

    Hey – Wow! Thanks for the input – I really appreciate your advice.

    I recently purchased an ‘el cheapo’ Android 2.1 tablet with a 7″ screen for $150, and have had a lot of fun messing around with it.

    I am eventually hoping to get some of the older ultima games (Ultima3 and Ultima4 are my favorite games of all time) working on it. I got an NES version of ultima3 to fire up yesterday, but it’s not playable.

    I really that tile-based RPGs like U3 and U4 would be perfect for play on a tablet device – the lower-horsepower processors should be able to handle games like them easily, and memory requirements, etc… are easily within the specs of these phones.

    Thanks again for your help!

  4. Rob says:

    I, too, just installed and love this, however, whenever I try (q)uit and save and then start over and (j)ourney onward it starts a pre-saved game towards the end. I can’t seem to be able to save my own game…any ideas?

    Thanks,
    Rob

  5. WtF Dragon says:

    I noticed that the legally available download of Ultima 4 comes with a savegame; possible workarounds including running the install script (don’t know if this will work) or manually deleting the save files.