What the Ultima series means to me
One of my earliest childhood memories, and one of the few positive memories I have of my dad (a malignant narcissist and an alcoholic who drank himself to death) was my father playing Ultima 4. Well, not so much “playing” as mapping out the world. The living room floor would be covered in graph paper that he meticulously filled in with all the tiles in the game.
I remember playing Ultima 4, 5, 6, and 7 as a kid. I wasn’t good at playing them, mind you. I spent most of my time in Ultima 6 telling Iolo “spam spam spam humbug,” the iddqd equivalent for RPG nerds. I’d then pick a spot in the world and spend inordinate amounts of time painstakingly moving furniture from halfway across the map into a house to make it mine. I don’t think I ever completed a single Ultima game, really, but it was great anyway.
The Ultima games were my first taste of virtual worlds, and I loved them so much they were the biggest influence that started me down the path of game development. There were other influences of course, but I think it’s fair to say it all started with Ultima.
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