:extralife:

Apparently, the DOSBox video output feature is rather finnicky, and screws up video files if you quit the game without first terminating the video capture. Not realizing this, I wound up destroying/corrupting the vast majority of the videos of my playthrough of Ultima 6, which I finished today in a bit over 9.5 hours. As a result, what I had hoped would be a series of videos posted over the next couple of weeks has been reduced to just a handful of videos that I can post today.

I’ll keep trying to resurrect the video clips that went wrong, but obviously I’m not holding out much hope.

In the meantime, here is the introductory sequence and the first couple minutes of gameplay:

And here is the last minute or so of gameplay and the endgame sequence:

Here’s the basic rundown of how I went about the playthrough:

• I had to actually find the runes and mantras by talking to the right people; no working from memory. Although I slipped up in keeping to this plan when retrieving the rune of Valor.
• I had to actually find the map pieces; no finding my way to the little island by memory. Not wanting to mess with Destard or the Ant Mound, I allowed myself the use of the pickpocket spell in some cases, and set out to find the treasure once I had most of the map assembled (missing just the one piece from the Ant Mound, which isn’t strictly necessary for figuring out the location of the prize).
• I had to speak to Captain John, but I allowed myself to skip the majority of Hythloth by using the Orb of the Moons to travel to the gargoyle shrine of Diligence, then finding the entrance to Hythloth there, which John is near to.
• Basically, I tried to balance between playing as a pretend n00b and playing as a seasoned Ultima 6 veteran, taking only those shortcuts that eliminated the particularly ugly slogs from the game so as to streamline the time it took to complete. Otherwise, it was a fairly observant playthrough.

And as noted above, it took a little more than 9.5 hours to complete. I probably could have cut it to less than that, perhaps as low as 6 or 7 hours, by speeding up DOSBox and taking a few additional shortcuts (e.g. not bothering to find the map pieces). Who knows? I might even be able to cut it back to under 4 hours…but somehow, I kind of doubt it. Ultima 6 is a game that makes you wait, especially for NPCs as they go about their tightly-scheduled business in all its glory.

Oh, and kudos go out to Vinicius for this inspired piece of artwork:

Frak...gargoyles wiped my party.

…which he put together in response to a tweet from me complaining about how a poorly-executed raid on a shrine had resulted in the gargoyles there wiping out my party.

And a reminder: Extra Life is still going on today, for the rest of the day; donations are still being accepted!