Computer Ports of Ultima III

Ultima III is the first game in the series to contain music, meaning that now another factor for differences in the various ports has appeared. Indeed, the ports of the game are almost as diverse as the ones of Ultima II, with the first time that a proper 16-bit port (for the Amiga and Atari ST) exists.

Note that this covers neither the fan-made remake on the Macintosh from 1995 nor the Gameboy Color remake from 2001.

The Apple II Original
The original game on which all the ports are based on.

The game's graphics are similar to the graphics of the two previous games, although there are now blue borders around the different screen areas and the Apple's hardware "mixed mode", with graphics above and four lines of color-fringed text below, is no longer used; instead, text is written into the graphical bit map, which allows free placement of text and reduces the color fringing issue. There are some issues with the color. The limited palette is noticeable in that many things are in monochrome and some colors are off, like purple brick floor and strangely colored mountains. This is also the first Ultima game with music. The music requires a sound card (Mockingboard or compatible), as the Apple's hardware doesn't allow playing music through the internal speaker while simultaneously doing other things, such as animating the screen.

The game also has several glitches, which at worst can make further advance impossible.

The game was sold on a single, double-sided 5.25" floppy disk.



The C64-Port
Of the ports made in 1983, the C64-port -made by Chuckles- is without doubt the best.

The game actually made use of the C64's 320x200 "monochrome" mode, that allowed the foreground and background color to be independently defined for each 8x8 pixel block (one character of text). The game is really colorful, even compared to the Apple II original, although the graphics otherwise look very similar. Even better, the colors are more logical (with the brick floor being red instead of purple and brown mountains). However, the colorful 3D dungeons of the Apple II version are replaced with black-and-white ones on the C64. Since the graphics code of this port is partially based on first rendering things for the Apple's layout of graphics memory using the original Apple code, and then converting the result to the C64 layout, the game is somewhat slower than on the Apple.

The first Ultima with music made full use of the SID sound chip of the C64. The port does have the full score. The music does sound nicer than on the Apple, since the C64 sound chip is more capable than that used on the Apple's Mockingboard sound cards.

The game was released on a single, double sided 5.25" floppy disk, meaning no unneeded disk swapping. Note that the game has no fastloader, since these programs only came into being in late 1984 on the C64, meaning that the loading times are rather long.

In 2007, a crack of the Ultima III port for the C64 known as Ultima III Gold was released by Big Floppy People. This crack included numerous bug fixes and improvements, and can be found at http://www.paradroid.net/u3/



The Atari 8-bit Port
The port for the Atari 8-bit -made by "Banjo" Bob Hardy- is essentially the same game as the original on the Apple II. It utilized the Atari high resolution 320x192 graphics mode with 'artifacting' to provide color, which means that like most Atari 8-bit Ultimas, it will display in black-and-white on European (PAL) Ataris which don't offer artifact color. As with Ultima II depending on the Atari 8bit computer used the colors would appear different. The screenshots show how the color was supposed to look. The movement and attack sounds are presented through the 'speaker' and sound like the Apple II version. Fortunately Origin took advantage of the excellent sound capabilities on the Atari and provided the full musical score.

It was sold on a 5.25" floppy disk.



The IBM-PC Port
The IBM-PC port, made by James Van Artsdalen, was the port with the lowest audiovisual quality at its release. As the PC of 1983 was perceived as a machine for the workplace, games were slow to appear on the platform, and were often less advanced, in audiovisual terms, than their equivalents on other contemporary systems.

As was the case with Ultima II, the graphics are displayed in four-color CGA (black, white, magenta and cyan), which was the only form of (comparatively) high resolution graphics available for the PC at the time. However, if the game is played on a composite CGA monitor, the use of artifacting and dithering makes it appear much more colorful; in fact, under these conditions it looks quite similar to the Apple II version. The advent of the EGA standard bypassed this "feature" of CGA entirely, meaning older games like Ultima III would be doomed to a drab four-color existence henceforth.

The game also has no music and only basic PC speaker sound effects. PC sound cards as we think of them today only came along in 1988, with the advent of the original Adlib card. Also, the game has no frame limiter (a common shortfall of early PC games), making it virtually unplayable on a modern system without an external slowdown utility.

Note that the fan-made Ultima III Upgrade Patch addresses most of these issues: the game gets updated 16-color EGA graphics, a frame limiter is added, and the music of the Apple and Commodore ports is restored in MIDI quality.

The game retailed on a single 5.25" floppy disk.



The Amiga and Atari ST Ports
These two ports were created by "Banjo" Bob Hardy in 1986 and are essentially identical twins. They are both the most technically advanced on the ports made by Origin.

It is very noticeable that three years had passed since the original game, as the graphics are much better and more colorful, as expected of a 16-bit port. The ports also have mouse support, making the game much easier to control and play. Both ports have the fully musical score of the original, which of course also sounds much better, since both computers have superior sound chips.

Both of the ports, Amiga and Atari ST, were retailed each on a single 3.5" floppy disk, eliminating any kind of disk swapping.



The MSX-Port
This port is rather surprising. Released after the NES-Port of Ultima III, it looks and sounds exactly like it, with all the limitations that come to it. Therefore, all that applies to the NES port also applies to this one.



The FM-Towns Port
This port of Ultima III was made as part of the FM-Towns Ultima Trilogy I II III compilation. As such it offers redrawn graphics with a new tile set that was also used for the FM-Towns version of Ultima I and Ultima II.

In addition it also offers newly composed music, which replace the original compositions from Kenneth Arnold. As the graphics, these musics were also used for the other two titles of the compilation.

Like most FM-Town ports, it is also offers a new hi-resolution introduction the player can watch outside the game, but unlike the game it has no English translation and can only be watched in Japanese.

This port was only released as part of a compilation, and only in Japan. Outside of Japan, it is nearly completely unknown.


 * YouTube - Ultima III - FM Towns Introduction