Retro Gamer has published what I gather is part of an interview with Richard Garriott about the history of Origin Systems. It’s an interesting read, although much of the what is discussed therein will not seem at all new to Ultima fans.

However, the article is not without certain…errors and oddities. As evidenced by e.g. this:

Chris Robertson, the creator of Wing Commander, is currently working on Star Citizen.

Robertson. That was amusing enough, I thought, so much so that I shot Ben Lesnick — BanditLOAF, formerly of the Wing Commander CIC and currently the community manager for Star Citizen — the link and remarked on the typo. Ben, of course, is a highly knowledgeable and detail-oriented person, and he came back with several other observations about the piece.

Like this:

“In the UK Chris had been doing games for the ZX-80 and they certainly weren’t strong enough to change the world because it was such a primitive machine. His first Apple II game, Times Of Lore, was a medieval fantasy game that was good but not earth-shattering.”

That’s a rather odd thing to say about a game series that had a pretty significant impact on the design of Ultima…especially Ultima 6.

Ben also pointed this part out:

“Then came the day that Chris came to our business meeting with the idea for the game he was going to do next. It was going to be called Wing Commander. He’d taken some time on his own to build a little prototype of not only the 3D space flight section of the game but a cinematic method for you to get into your ship and launch into that 3D environment. So he showed his prototype with a guy running down the hall cutting to the side of a spaceship with the canopy opening up, then the guy jumping into his seat, putting on his helmet, then shooting down a tube into space. That was the first any of us had seen of his idea, and it was the first any of us needed… it was so obvious that it was going to be a huge success.”

Except that at the time of the pitch, Wing Commander was a top-down shooter.

And then there was this bit:

While the original game and its improved sequel stuck firmly to traditional computer graphics, for the third instalment of the game, Wing Commander III: Heart Of The Tiger, Chris was given a suitably astronomical budget of $10 million in order to embrace the upcoming PC CD-ROM technology and include movie-like full-motion video sequences.

Wing Commander 3 had a budget of $3.5 million, just for the record.

Retro Gamer goes on to list a few “notable” Origin Systems games, including Ultima 7, Wing Commander, Privateer 2, and Crusader (I assume No Remorse.) Which…isn’t a bad list, but which hardly seems comprehensive.

Okay, enough nitpicking. Click on through and give it a read yourselves; it’s never not engaging to read about Origin’s history, even if not all the details align with reality.