C64-port of Ultima VI

Ultima VI has an interesting design history. Originally, Richard Garriott wanted to again make the game with the Apple II as a basis, an 8-bit system. However, after roughly a year he'd noticed that it was useless for the scope of the planned game and scrapped everything to instead move the development platform to the IBM-PC with VGA graphics and soundcard. Developemnt went very fast after that decision.

However, after the game was finsihed and in the stores, the matter of ports came, since the PC by 1990 still wasn't the ultimate top dog in gaming. While the ports for the Amiga and Atari ST were simple, they just had to created a 16-bit conversion with less colors and sound, the still sizable market share of the Commodore 64 8-bit computer was tempting for Origin, especially since they then could have the complete second trilogy on that system as well. That essentially turned back the wheel of time, despite Garriott having desinged Ultima VI especially for 16-bit systems.

Origin got the help from Axel of Imagitec Design and created this port that hit the shelves roughly one year after the release of the original. The result is... interesting, to say the least.

Technical
Creating this game for the C64 obviously had been a huge efford. After all, the titular 64KB memory are a pretty severe constriction for such a big game. This means that things always have to be loaded from floppy disk. The game graphics had to be reduced to a resolution of 160x200 with 16 colors and floppy disks with 170KB per side. All this meant that the game had to jump through quite some hoops.

The final version of the game comes on 3 double-sided 5,25 DD floppy disks. The sides are named Surface, Dungeon, Populce A, Populace B, Populace C and Game. The Surface-disk contains the overworld of Britannia and the gargoyle lands, divided into cities and the wilderness. The Dungeon-disk contains all the dungeons of the game. The Populace-disks A, B and C are filled with all the conversations of the game. At last, the Game-disk boots the game and holds the intro, endgame and character creation.

While this division is mostly logical, the game designers shot themselves into the foot with how conversations are handled. Instead of dividing Britannia into three chunks with the conversation data included, it goes like this: Considering that this goes for every person in the entire game, it quickly ruins the players person and is the biggest failing of the game. This is made even worse by the very long loading times of the 1541 floppy drive of the C64.
 * You attempt to speak to a character.
 * You have to insert the fitting Populace-disk.
 * Then you have to re-insert the Surface-disk.
 * Only now you can talk to this person.

Since the C64 has no native mouse support, the control sheme had to be significantly altered. The comfortbale icon-driven inferface is gone. Instead everything is done with keyboard commands. U for use, D for drop, etc... The joystick is used for moving and for aiming the crosshair for on what to use the command. An extra key exists to switch the crosshair between the main window and the inventory. This complicated command sheme is the second biggest failing of this port.

What is missing
Becasue of the limitations of the system, they had to axe a number of things to make the game possible on the C64. A list of the missing things follows below:

These spells are missing from the game:
 * The game has no music outside the intro and endgame. It also has no Sound FX at all.
 * There are no character portraits at all. Obviously this otherwise would have bloated up the amount of data significantly.
 * The number of different useable items has been reduced. There are for example no Triple Crossbows and no powder kegs (meaning that doors have to be blasted open with the spell "Explosion").
 * The number of spells has been reduced, the list is below.
 * The size of the party is reduced from 8 to only 6.
 * To save space, the conversations have been streamlined so that they take up less space on the disks.
 * Horseriding is eliminated. The programmers use the excuse that the Gargoyleshave eaten all the Horses. Only Smith the Horse is still there.
 * Peering is impossible, meaning that Peer Gems and the spell are missing.
 * The interactivity of the game world is reduced. For example, you can look into closets to find clothing and telescopes can't any longer be used.
 * Casting can be done without a spellbook. There is still one in the game, but it has no use.
 * The world itself is less detailed. For example, lots of the decorative items are missing and there are no tables in the game (when one is needed, they used wooden floor). Also there are no bag, they are all replaced by barrels.
 * The intro has less text and some pictures are missing.

1st Circle
 * Detect Magic
 * Detect Trap
 * Douse
 * Ignite

2nd Circle
 * Reappear
 * Trap
 * Untrap
 * Vanish

3rd Circle
 * Repel Undead
 * Peer
 * Mass Awaken

4th Circle
 * Poison Field
 * Animate

5th Circle
 * Insect Swarm
 * Pickpocket
 * Reveal
 * Seance

6th Circle
 * Clone
 * Confuse
 * Negate Magic
 * Replicate

7th Circle
 * Enchant
 * Fear
 * Wizard Eye

8th Circle
 * Eclipse
 * Turn to Slime
 * Armageddon