Computer Ports of Ultima I

Ultima I is a very interesting case, since it comes in two flavors. The original game from 1980 was released only on the Apple II and later converted for the Atari 800 (same code used). Only in the later made remake of 1986 did Origin create ports of the game.

The Apple II Original
The very first incarnation of the game, the one that the first time held the name "Ultima".

For a 1980 game, the programming feats that went into this game are impressive. Even more if it is taken in consideration that Richard Garriott and Ken Arnold did all the work themselves. The game sported a for the time impressive representation of the terrian with the help of tiles. However, nothing was yet animated (that would first happen in Ultima III).

The whole game was programmed in Apple BASIC, making it virtually impossible to export it to other systems. The game is also plagued by glitches and other programming errors (something that was common at the time).

It was retailed on a single 5.25" floppy disk. 

The Atari 8-bit Port
In 1982, Sierra Online did manage to re-release the game on the Atari 800. The game is virtually unchanged, but the lacking graphical abilities of the system meant, that there is much less color in the game. Apart from the overworld, everything is in monochrome.

Interestingly enough, all of the glitches were converted 1:1 to the Atari 800 port.

I was released on a single 5.25" floppy disk. 

The Apple II Port
Compared to the original version of the game, the remake is a lot better. It was written entirely in assembly language, making porting issues trivial. A new title screen and some text screens were added, many aspects of the game revised. Something that simply wasn't in the original game were wandering monsters on the overworld, which now are included.

The gaphics, while still looking a little like the original, are much better and more colorful, the tiles now animated. All of the original's glitches were removed as well.

The game was retailed on a single 5.25" disk. 

The C64-Port
The port for the C64 is in many ways a lot like the one on the Apple II.

The two ports share much of the code, so the similarities are no coincidence. One difference are the graphics. The graphics of the C64 port make full use of the system's abilities, everything is much more colorful and also the colors are not as distorted as they sometimes are on the Apple II. The plus in color is especially noticable in the towns (just look at the walls).

The game was sold on a single 5.25" floppy disk. 

The IBM-PC Port
The port for the IBM-PC was finished one year after the other two.

Right from the start it shows, since the graphics of this port are clearly superior to the ones on the C64 and Apple II, despite only using 16 colors (the same amount as the other two systems). The port also got a new title screen, which looks nicer than the one on the other two ports.

The port however does have a problem: there is no frame limiter built into the game, which makes it virtually impossible to play it on a modern system, if not for artificially slowing it down.

The port was sold on a single 5.25" floppy disk and still in commonly available on various compilations. 

The MSX-Port
This is a strange port, created 1989 and only released in Japan.

There is only little known about this version of Ultima I. And while the graphics at first might look superior, they reveal themselves to be a pixelated mess. It is unknown why the graphics, despite the hinted system abilities, are so bad.