This novel port of Ultima 2 was released in mid-2025. VIC 20 Ultima II is a from-scratch conversion based on both the original Commodore 64 and Apple II releases of Ultima 2. The title screen is from the Apple II version, its pixel resolution adjusted to fit the VIC 20’s capabilities. Tile graphics were adapted from Commodore 64 version of the game, but at half the horizontal resolution (the font was similarly adjusted). The colour palette is based on the Apple II version, offering more muted colours than the Commodore 64 version.

Aleksi Eeben slightly optimized the line drawing in the game engine, and fixed a few bugs with the monster drawing routine in dungeons (which also sped it up significantly). All the game’s code and data files were fit on a single disk side (the original game required two or three sides, depending on platform). This was partly accomplished by reducing the total number of files from 140 to about 50 by, for example, combining town maps, their NPCs and the NPC talk into one compressed file, and condensing almost all of the game’s code into one executable.

The VIC 20 was a Commodore computer, the predecessor of the Commodore 64. Its memory was a paltry 20 KB of ROM and 5 KB of RAM, though the latter could be expanded to 32 KB at some cost (the Commodore 64 shipped with 64 KB of RAM and the same 20 KB of ROM). While the VIC 20 did sell exceedingly well, it was not a platform that Origin Systems targeted for game releases…apart from Escape from Mt. Drash, of course.

You can grab a copy of VIC 20 Ultima 1 from the project’s home page, or from the shiny new project entry here at the Codex. The download includes the VIC 20 emulator image (in D64 format) and a player reference card.