SNES-Port of Savage Empire

The port for Savage Empire on the Super Nintendo was released as late as 1995, almost 5 years after the release of the original game. Despite many myths to the contrary, the game was never translated into English and was only released in Japan, therefore making it nearly impossible to judge the story and contents. Interesting, the SNES version of the manual contains coloured images of all the original monochrome graphics from the original manual.

It is possible that Origin decided to scrap the international release after the poor reception of the SNES Port of Ultima VII. This seems likely since the SNES port of Savage Empire uses exactly the same game engine as the Ultima VII port, down to the little details like the censorship of violence.

It is very curious why Origin went this route, since they had already done a relatively faithful port of Ultima VI to the SNES, and the original Savage Empire used the same engine.

Changes

 * There is no party; the Avatar travels completely alone.


 * The introductory sequence and in-game cutscenes have been completely removed.


 * The Avatar can't be named; he is always called "Avatar." (While the Avatar is always male here, that also was the case in the original)


 * The NPCs have no schedules; the day-night changes are only cosmetic.


 * Vastly-reduced interactivity; only a fraction of the in-game objects can still be used in some way.


 * The overworld is broken up into both indoor and outdoor maps.


 * The whole game control scheme was changed; it now plays more action-like, similar to the Zelda games.


 * All graphics are reduced-quality and more pixelated; the character portraits of the original are now smaller and less detailed.