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Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness - All News

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Saturday - November 18, 2023
Saturday - January 23, 2021
Monday - July 11, 2016
Friday - February 17, 2012
Tuesday - November 01, 2011
Box Art

Saturday - November 18, 2023

Ultima I - Retrospective Review

by Hiddenx, 16:25

Majuular looks back at Akalabeth and Ultima I:

Akalabeth & Ultima I Retrospective | The First Age of Darkness

Saturday - January 23, 2021

Ultima I - Retrospective Review

by Hiddenx, 15:01

RPG wolf level up reviewed Ultima I (with spoilers):

Ultima 1 The First Age of Darkness

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Monday - July 11, 2016

Ultima 1 - Video Retrospective

by Aubrielle, 04:56

Slegnor's Random Gaming takes us aalllll the way back to Ultima I and II in a series of video retrospectives. They're broken into multiple chapters, and I've linked part 1 here to get you started.

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Friday - February 17, 2012

Ultima 1 - Retrospective @ Adrenaline Vault

by Aries100, 23:13

Adrenaline Vault has gone a trip down memory lane; they've made a retrospective article about the first Ultima - from 1981.  The author Ian David missed the boat on this game, so he decided to play through it. His review is favorable, noting this:

Ultima I includes some pretty odd design choices. For instance, there’s no such thing as a maximum HP score. You never heal; you just add more numbers to your current HP. You can gain HP either by buying them from a king or dungeon diving. When you exit a dungeon, you regain a certain amount of HP depending on the monsters you’ve killed. If you do it right, you gain a net profit of HP. Yes, you actually grind dungeons for HP as well as XP. Speaking of dungeons, there are dozens of them around the world, but they all function in the same way. Monsters are randomly generated based on a monster table, which is dependent upon which level you’re on. There are no unique monsters or treasure in any dungeon, leaving all of them identical except for layout.

Tuesday - November 01, 2011

Ultima - Series Retrospective @ Hardcore Gaming 101

by Dhruin, 22:32

A site called Hardcore Gaming 101 has a huge retrospective series on Ultima, starting with an overview and working through each game up to (currently) Ultima VI and the rest to come. The link above is the start and there is a list of contents at the top to take you to each game. I'm going to take a quote about Ultima IV, because of its historical importance:

Baffling and stupid as this was, it put the Ultima creator to thinking. Concluding that role-playing games, including his own, were actually about killing, gathering loot and gaining power instead of anything that resembled heroism or role-playing, he sought to try something different for his next game. Ultima IV: The Quest of the Avatar is the result, and is still a wholly unique product in computer gaming history. There are bad guys but no villains, and while there is still dungeon-crawling, it is not to acquire gold and magic items. Instead, the end goal of Ultima IV is to be a hero. 

Thanks to Ultima Aiera for the link.

Information about

Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness

Developer: Origin

SP/MP: Single-player
Setting: Fantasy
Genre: RPG
Combat: Turn-based
Play-time: Unknown
Voice-acting: None

Regions & platforms
Unknown
· Platform: PC
· Released: 1981-06-01
· Publisher: Unknown