Origin historian Pix, having polished off BioShock Infinite to his not-quite-satisfaction, decided to give the NES port of Ultima 5 a try recently:

This was released in 1993 and unlike previous entries in the series on the NES must have been developed within Origin judging by the credits list. It’s main claim to fame is often being described as the worst RPG on the NES and generally being regarded as legendarily bad. Hopefully this isn’t entirely deserved but I’ve not got high hopes now that I’m about to start on it.

His first post concerning the game consisted of shots of the manual and other box contents; it wasn’t until the second post that he got around to commenting on the game and gameplay proper. His first real complaint about the game, apart from some notes on the apparent limitations imposed on the world of Ultima 5 by the use of the Ultima 6 engine and the limitations of the NES as a platform, concerned the music:

The tune isn’t that offensive but it’s hardly good and last night the jaunty little jingle embedded itself into my brain so deeply that I’ve not been able to get rid of it 24 hours later. I’ve been in a bad mood all day and I’m attributing it entirely to this. This game needs a government health warning not to play with the sound on.

What makes this worse is that the music and sound are credited to Martin Galway. How the same guy who did the epic C64 themes for games like Wizball or Times Of Lore can be responsible for this aural equivalent to water torture is anyone’s guess.

His third post on the game included a lengthy examination of the game’s limited inventory system and controls, as well as some commentary on the first shrine quest. And to be fair, his initial impressions of the game were overall positive.

That opinion had shifted by the time he published his fourth post:

I reckon it’s safe to say by now that this particular Ultima 5 isn’t very good. It’s not offensively bad (at least with the sound off) but there is nothing much to make me want to keep playing. This Britannia is bland, basic and more than a little boring and I’m wondering why I didn’t go for Ultima 4 on the SMS instead. I’m hoping some dungeon exploration will liven things up.

Still, he kept with it, until — as detailed in his fifth post — something went horribly wrong in Dungeon Deceit:

I followed my map taking a route which went down to floor 2 then back up to floor 1 in a separate area and then followed this to where there should be a ladder back down (the rightmost brown square on the screenshot above) and there was no ladder! I searched the whole level looking for an alternative unsuccessfully. I then watched the appropriate bit of the playthrough on Youtube to see what they had done and the ladder was there exactly where I’d been looking.

I’m entirely out of ideas at this point – no ladder means the game is uncompletable so this attempt to play the game has come to a grinding halt without any other suggestions. If anyone has run into this before and/or knows what I can do to fix it please let me know. I’m suspecting there must have been a bug in some versions of the cartridge at this point but maybe a certain conversation will make it appear?

Not that he’d miss playing the game, he admits, although he would like to finish it if possible. If you can toss him a suggestion that will get him out of Deceit, hit up the comments at his last article.