Ultima 5 Title Screen Comparison
To celebrate the release of Ultima 5 on Good Old Games today, it seems fitting to look at the differences in the title screen graphics between the various ports of the game.
The Apple II original
The 16-bit title screen, from the PC port
The Atari 8-bit title screen
The Commodore 64 and 128 title screen
The FM Towns title screen
The NES title screen
The Sharp X68000 title screen
Not surprisingly, there is a fair bit of variation in quality between the title screens on various systems. Personally, I quite like the Sharp X68000 offering, although there is certainly nothing wrong with the PC version either.
Ultima title screens didn’t change a lot after this, but there is definitely a noticeable shift in interface design between the title screens of the first five games and the title screens of Ultima 6 and Ultima 7. (And, of course, Ultima 8 and Ultima 9 did things very differently.)
Ultima 5 is also the last Ultima game to be built for the Apple II originally. Ultima 6 was ported to a number of other systems, but it also was the point at which Origin Systems began to focus on the PC as their target platform.
I’ve always had mixed feeling about the Sharp X68000 version. I mean… I love it and I’d love to play with this tileset (can someone does an xU5 please?)… But its too colorful in a way and like the dark somber feel the 16 Bits version conveyed.
If anything the Sharp tileset would feel more like they’d fit with Ultima IV.
On a side note I think the UVI/ UVII/SI menu isnt -that- different. Though UVIII&IX clearly went a different direction with their journal approach.
Unfortunately, the Atari 8-bit port of Ultima V was started on but never released (and probably never finished). The Atari 8-bit did have the previous Ultimas but for IV they didn’t include the music 🙁 Having a full soundtrack was unusual at that time and it was one of the reasons Ultima III was so special. I still have my copy somewhere…
I remember being bummed to learn that Ultima V would be their last release for the Apple II. It wasn’t just that it was the last one designed on an Apple, it was the last one to be playable on an Apple.
It was the end of an era. Apple, at the time, just couldn’t keep up with the technical demands of the games Origin wanted to produce.
They did, after all, develop a well-deserved reputation for releasing games that taxed the abilities of top-of-the-line hardware in their respective days.
Yeah I still remember getting the catalogs in the mail and getting that first one that mentioned Ultima 6.
I was mad because at the time I was like 15 or 16 so me buying a PC was out of the question, and getting my parents to buy one just for the new Ultima was a laugh to them. A couple years later we finally upgraded our old Apple II and bought an IBM PS/2.. First game I bought was Ultima 6 and I was so stoked I finally got to play it.. Although I was late to the game and U7 was already right around the corner just in time for me to get it at christmas..
Love seeing the color screenshots of the Apple II screens. My monitor was boring old green monochrome so I never got to see these things in color..
Actually, Apple kept up: the 16-bit IIgs supported 8MB RAM, up to 4,096 colors, GUI, and with a Zip Card ran at 8MHz. However, with certain people seeing the IIgs was a threat to the Macintosh LC, Apple didn’t promote it to software/game manufacturers & neglected it in general. Origin & other companies were given the impression there was no market for their games on the IIgs, and therefore they didn’t invest in it — otherwise Ultima V would’ve had a GS-specific release.
(The “official” reason Origin gave was that they believed there’d be no market. Heck, look at how ugly some of the Ultima ports were: obviously a slow, abysmal-looking Ultima with no sound wasn’t out of the question.)
Also IMHO the Apple II screenshot should come from the Mac emulator (can’t recall the name) that can mimic how the monitors back then smoothed graphics out, as the images didn’t look remotely that jagged in real life.
Lacking both a good Apple II emulator and the necessary binaries, I’ll have to rely on the generosities of others to provide better screenshots.
But thanks for the history lesson on the Apple side of things; I did not know all that.