The CRPG Addict has decided to take a look at Ring of Darkness, a game released in 1982 for the ZX Spectrum.

So imagine you’re an eager young player in the United Kingdom in the early 1980s, and you’ve just unpackaged your new Dragon 32 or ZX Spectrum. Maybe in some magazines you’ve heard about the Wizardry or Ultima series in the U.S., and you start looking around for something to fill that RPG craving. You find nothing, unless you want to type the code for The Valley yourself. You start to suspect that the U.S. is going to dominate the Computer Age.

Then a company like Wintersoft comes along and offers a game like Ring of Darkness. You don’t care that it’s a breathtakingly obvious ripoff of Ultima; it’s not like Richard Garriott–the prick who has the audacity to call himself Lord British–was porting his stuff to your little Welsh machine. It’s all you have, and you love it.

An Ultima ripoff? Well, yes, actually…very yes.

When I say “breathtakingly obvious ripoff,” I couldn’t be more serious. The product would be indistinguishable from Ultima except for the couple of features it steals from Akalabeth and Ultima II. These include:

• Overland, iconographic surface navigation is contrasted with first-person wireframe dungeon movement.
• The game has the same attributes, races, and character classes as Ultima, plus modifications to attributes based on race and class choices.
• The same enemies pop up in the wilderness, including “evil rangers” (Ultima)
• The command list is copied almost directly from Ultima, including (K)limb, (Z)stats, and (I)nform and Search.
• A king gives you random quests to visit signs and slay enemies (Akalabeth and Ultima) and takes your gold for hit-point increases (Ultima and Ultima II)
• Oh, but you also get hit points when you leave dungeons, based on the number of enemies you killed! (Akalabeth, Ultima)
• Quests offered by kings alter between visiting signs and killing specific enemies in dungeons (Ultima)
• Towns feature little counters selling weapons, armor, spells, and food. You engage them by walking up and hitting (T)ransact.
• Bartenders give hints when you buy drinks (Ultima).
• Spells appear as inventory items that deplete as cast (all three games)
• You need to constantly watch dwindling food supplies (all three games)
• Magic only works in dungeons (Ultima II)
• A king’s castle features a princess in jail and a jester wandering around who steals from you. And guess what the jester has to say?

The Addict goes on to note that, insofar as it rips off Ultima, the game is quite good. He cannot say the same for where the game tries to be original however, and singles out its control scheme and error-handling for criticism in particular.

However, the Addict is a completionist, and so will attempt to pass the game; do stay tuned for his next report on it. One wonders if it will require him to become a space ace at some point?