Multi-player Ultima – Mentioned in August of 1994
As we look ahead to the 15th Anniversary, it’s always good to look back at the start of Ultima Online.
No, I’m not talking about the launch in 1997.
Not even 1996 when it was heavy into development.
And not even 1995 when it officially started development.
How about August of 1994?
I’ve been scanning some images from Ultima and Ultima Online memorabilia and magazines for the main Ultima Codex site, and came across this speculation about a multi-player Ultima game from the August 1994 PC Games Plus magazine, a magazine that is now defunct, and has been for well over a decade. It’s unfortunate, as the magazine is heavily illustrated throughout with lots of screenshots, and the people writing for it clearly loved writing about games.
Here’s the brief mention of a Multi-player Ultima:
When Origin were discussing Wing Armada (UOG Note: probably Wing Commander Armada), they did drop the hint that they would be doing a line of multi-player games. This has led to a lot of speculation here in our offices about Net Strike Commander, or even a multi-player Ultima from the Texan crowd.
Garriott did reveal during an interview we had with him at the time Ultima 7 was released that they were planning on doing a multi-player RPG via null modem cables or a LAN.
In fact, he was planning to implement it in Ultima VIII, but obviously that didn’t come through. The current thinking is for a central world, run on a major network such as CompuServe that you can dial into and pay – I mean play. The possibilities of such a game has excited many minds, but we shall have to wait for time to reveal the truth.
Pretty interesting, but not surprising given that UO development would start the following year.
Null modem, nice. I remember those for connecting PCs and using Norton Commander. I wonder what made Garriott first think of making Ultima multiplayer. I remember hearing about some game or article and wondering what multiplayer would be like in Ultima VI. My first real Ultima-like multiplayer was on Intellivision in games like this:
youtube.com/watch?v=orXl1sop84c
Amazing gameplay for the early 80’s. Gauntlet as well, now that I think about it. Good MP mechanics with cool PvE elements (getting items, keys opening doors, reading scrolls, doing magic, combating bots and bot AI with two or four player cooperative).
What was your first cool (or even flawed yet inspiring) multiplayer CRPG experience?
My first “cool” multiplayer CRPG might have been the one that inspired Garriott – The Sierra Network – Shadow of Yserbius, which was basically a glorified MUD:
It’s possible (and probably) that Garriott was inspired by MUDs as well, but Yserbius and some of the other Imagination games really got people thinking about online gameplay and it got game companies thinking about the commercial possibilities.
I need to look into the Sierra Net/Imagination revival project – they have Shadow of Yserbius running. I tried them out a few years ago, but they’ve done a lot since then.
Shit, hadn’t seen Yserbius. It looks like the last “Might & Magic”-style game prior to Ultima Underworld. Its Wikipedia entry shows 1992 as its release date, which is the same as UU. Love to know when each of the two started and finished development.
I’m not familiar with ImagiNation, but it sounds like Prodigy or AOL; a centralized service for games and communication. After just seeing the entry on Wikipedia it appears that it was. Funny coincidence, but the publisher of Swords & Serpents was Imagic. Not credited in the Wikipedia entries for “Imagic” or “Swords & Serpents”. Lost information, haha. I remember the logo on the silver label all Imagic games shared (still have the game, actually).
What’s lost in that Swords & Serpents video (thanks for posting) is the multiplayer. You could play two-player simultaneous as a wizard and warrior (cooperative). I think as computer gaming ages things accomplished by older games will seem more and more profound, and oft rightly so.
Gotta love Intellivision – here’s the video: