It may surprise the modern gamer to learn that the first Ultima, while without question a groundbreaking game in the evolution of the computer RPG, was not a huge commercial success. While it certainly sold well for its time, its sales figures (insofar as such records were kept back then) were lagging behind that of the contemporary Wizardry series in the Apple II world. In fact, even today, when you ask an Apple fan what the best RPG is on that platform, you’re probably more likely to hear Wizardry than Ultima.

Regardless, it was successful enough that a sequel seemed called for. Moreover, Richard Garriott had continued honing his programming craft; he had by now begun dabbling in the arcane art of machine language, which opened up new vistas for what he could achieve in a game that simply couldn’t be done in Applesoft BASIC. By this point as well, the movie Time Bandits had come out, and Garriott seemed facinated by its core concept of “time doors” that led to various historical eras; in particular, the film’s McGuffin, the map showing how the doors interconnected, captured his imagination. He knew he wanted to incorporate these concepts into his next game.

And with this in mind, he began coding the game that would become the second entry in one of the longest-running and most reknowned RPG series in the history of computer gaming – and would also represent perhaps his first misstep.

Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress (1982): Whoops! It seems, unbeknownst to anyone, the evil Mondain had been training an apprentice (among other things he was doing with her). Minax, a shapely but evil witch who’s just ever so slightly ticked off at you, noble hero, for splattering her mentor/lover’s squishy innards all over the landscape at the end of the first Ultima game. Showing an initiative that’s actually somewhat remarkable for a Big Baddie in one of these games, she’s tracked you all the way back to your homeland – the good old Planet Earth – and set her minions upon the place, wreaking havoc in four different periods of global history. Lord British, upon learning of her plot, somehow transports his castle to Earth and informs you of what’s going on, tasking you with finding Minax’s lair and putting an end to her wicked ways once and for all.

Ultima II was the first game in the series to feature something that would become an Ultima staple in later installments – a full-color cloth map of the game’s world. It was also the first, and only, Ultima to be published by legendary adventure-game house Sierra On-Line (King’s Quest, Space Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, and on and on… actually, I should probably do one of these articles on them someday); legend has it that Richard Garriott chose Sierra mostly because they were the only publisher willing to put forth the expense of making the cloth maps! Notably, it was also the first Ultima to be available (in its original release) for platforms other than the Apple II; now, owners of Atari, Commodore, and IBM PC computers could join in the quest. It also introduced the concept of doors that would magically appear and disappear on fixed schedules; in later games this would be refined into the famous Moongates that come and go with the phases of the twin moons.

Sadly, this is where the good news must end. It must be said that of all ten original Ultima games, the second installment has aged the least well. Part of the problem was in setting the game in the rather mundane trappings of Earth. The inclusion of the Pangean era (playing off the theory that the continents we know today were at one time joined together as a single landmass) and a “Time of Legends” helps somewhat, as does the space-travel angle, but there’s a reason why most RPGs are set in worlds that are not Earth (or at least, not the Earth we know). When you’re traveling on a map and you’re taking more notice of the fact that it only takes about twenty steps to travel from France to Siberia, it makes it harder to suspend disbelief (plus it makes you wonder how well the distances in other fantasy games are represented!).

Ultima II is also among the most frenetically-designed RPGs on record. There are entire sections of the game that serve absolutely no discernable purpose except to make you waste time and effort exploring them; this includes all of the 3D dungeons and towers that dot the landscape, making this the only Ultima that can be won without ever once going underground. You can eventually explore other planets in the solar system, and the manual will even give you coordinates to each of them, but in the end only one planet must be visited in order to win the game, and its location must be discovered from an NPC; as with the dungeons, you can play an entire game without ever setting foot on any other planet besides this one “Planet X,” which really makes you wonder why Garriott bothered with them at a time when memory and storage space were such factors. We won’t even get into the silly and completely incongruous sense of humor (which includes, among other things, a rather unflattering cameo appearance by the creators of the Wizardry series), something Garriott himself would admit in later years was a serious error in judgement on his part, along with adding science-fiction elements to these early games.

Worst of all, at least in the PC version, are some of the worst bugs that ever plagued an Ultima. Not until Ascension was released some 17 years later would Garriott’s name be attached to such a buggy and incomplete piece of software: The game can summon at random killer monsters that will just eviscerate any low-level adventurer; ships, when captured, can be cloned, and the clone will often attack the original ship; and some late-game map data is corrupted, rendering the game unwinnable without patches. To top it all off, on modern systems the game will simply crash with a DIVIDE BY ZERO OH SHI – error. This is all addressed in fan patches that make the game playable (and even improves the original magenta/cyan CGA graphics to a more tolerable EGA pallete; it is with that patch active that these screenshots were taken), but they do little to improve its gameplay issues to make it at least a little more fun to play.

Overall, I have to classify Ultima II as a well-intentioned experiment that just didn’t come off the way it should have. Only Ultima completists should consider playing this one through to the end.

Next time (hopefully tomorrow or Thursday at the latest), the series gets back on track, and enjoys some much-deserved mainstream success, with Ultima III.

If you liked that, try...

1. Retro-Active Special: Rule Britannia! The History of Ultima (Part 1 of Many)
2. Retro-Active: The Better-Late-Than-Never History of Ultima, Part IX: Super Avatar Bros.?
3. Retro-Active Special: The History of Ultima, Part III: The Exodus to Origin
4. Retro-Active: The History of Ultima, Part VI: Prophet Motive
5. Retro-Active Special: The History of Ultima, Part V: Lord British Takes a Holiday

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