Paul Izod at Zero 1 Gaming has begun a new retrospective of the Ultima series, beginning with Akalabeth.

Welcome foolish mortal! Such is the way Akalabeth: World of Doom greets the player after it boots up. Somewhat idiosyncratic, but at the same time memorable, the opening is, in many ways, emblematic of the Ultima series of games as a whole: Quirky, memorable and not a little brilliant.

Many gamers in their late twenties or older will have experienced the Ultima series of games in one form or another. The series is a seminal work of PC RPG gaming, often cited as innovating many of the now core RPG game mechanics of today. The series spanned 9 official main storyline games, along with a number of spinoff and side games and an extremely popular MMORPG. The series, in the main, was the direct brain child of Richard Garriott, a tabletop RPG and coding enthusiast who used new computer technology to translate his love of role playing games into computer games. A pioneer of the industry, Garriott is one of that rare breed, the (initially at least) solo developer who started our coding for his own pleasure and ended up as one of the recognised founding fathers of his chosen gaming genre.

This choice of retrospective series is a personal one for me, as the Ultima games are a major part of why I love games. I grew up playing the various games in the series and in many ways it was a perfect progression. As I grew and developed, becoming more mature (shut up I did!) so did the games, becoming increasingly mature and complex.

What follows is a lengthy and quite decent summary of Akalabeth’s design and significance; click on through and give it a read!