a suspicious drawing of sherry the talking mouse from several Ultima games abusing gargoyles with their own boomerang
I always liked the Gameboy game Ultima: Runes of Virtue. Attempts to directly port regular Ultima games to consoles felt unfinished and misguided, beyond even the degree to which the original non-sequel Ultima did, but Runes of Virtue was a specially crafted Gameboy action puzzle adventure perfect for the short play sessions that Gameboy was specially suited to.
DESPITE the very stupid dance that Sherry does at all times.
In frap it was only this past month that I saw enough of Ultima 6 to realize Runes of Virtue directly follows it, as back when I played Ultima: The False Prophet, its super nintendo port, I found it less unfair than Ultima Exodus, also a Nintendo system port and the only other game in the series I had tried, but still too unclear in its goals to get very far in. Nintendo versions hiding the title numbers didn’t help. BUT recognizing a bunch of the character names and concepts from Runes of Virtue helped me appreciate what I could of it slightly more than I would have otherwise. Certainly more than if I had known of and played the bewildering nes port of Ultima 5 instead.
Though it turns out to be the most accurate and playable Nintendo system Ultima port, that still was not enough for me to crack, apparently. Perhaps its most egregious offense of is presenting Sherry as an isolated-use item whose only purpose is retrieving a single essential item and optionally running under locked gates to steal other treasures or move switches, provided you think to try that,
and who inherits the hero’s neon green poison aura when deployed if you happen to have one available
rather than a fully functioning combat party member whose 1 strength allows her to only wield the likes of a boomerang, but with 27 dexterity, out of a maximum of 30, for deadly accuracy.
I actually have a legal copy of this game and apparently generated a character in it years ago, probably around the time that I regretted playing ultima 1, without going any further, and imagined it should be pretty easy to get to the same place the youtube video was at and take my own screenshots, since youtube pictures are ugly and the person whose video I took those from is an irritating bonehead anyhow. As hokey and annoying as Ultima is, I appreciate the progress it made across a few years and the influence even the shoddy ones had on better games, and reserve the right to laugh at them on my own terms, without condemning them. Some dork reading all the dialog aloud, stuttering half the time, and constantly interjecting snarky comments and complaining about how it is different and better in Ultima 7 makes it take longer and also me to hate him more than the video game he is suffering/cheating through.
But I was today unprepared for how irritating it also was to control Ultima VI even on its intended platform and how infrequently attacks connect even with high dexterity (though more so than without), so I could not easily recreate the scene. But I had already made the dumb drawing so felt obligated to try for longer than was sensible. I thought eh it can’t be THAT hard. I just need to kill ONE big gargoyle out here to have an unblurry picture of its body on the ground and then I can edit the text to say that Sherry did it.
sensing my unvirtuous inclination, an invisible doppelganger of the king Lord British with no property except raw scorn suddenly got a turn and crashed the game when I tried to enter a command and then stared at me disapprovingly until I forced dosbox to quit
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pindoorang sez:
That’s sure an odd addition to a party of the usual assortment of swordsmen and wizards! Did you know the first 2 Prince of Persia games also featured a little mouse? It was the princess’s pet and appeared a couple of times during the cutscenes that ran after you beat a level. But oh boy, I do think it’s awfully wacky for Ultima to have a mouse character in a combat role, and wielding a boomerang of all things. They should have called her Sheila and made her a kangaroo rat! And it’s too bad the sudden appearance of the king-lord suddenly crashed your game, since it definitely looks like he’d be a better party member to have around, seeing as how his stats are already maxed out and wouldn’t need to rely on a bent stick in order to defeat a gargoyle.
lord frimpish sez:
It is the non first and second prince of persia games I don’t know about! The first had a very good, extended super nes port by Arsys and the second was developed by Titus and thus had minimal effort, was broken and unfinishable.
Apart from the name these statistics accurately reflect the king, as he is intended to be unkillable (though the super nes version removes the ability to attack non-hostile persons) and will execute the hero on the spot if an attempt is made to take an item he is presently using, Except with the “pickpocket” spell, in which case he won’t notice. You might wonder why the king doesn’t just go on quests himself rather than send adventurers, but Ultima 5’s story is that the king DID go on a quest and somehow got trapped inside an enchanted mirror and the realm fell into chaos for several years. He may be a bit like Superman, ordinarily the greatest at everything but subject to very eclectic weaknesses that ordinary people aren’t.
?n??oobniq sez:
ha, nice. I’ve always liked that fantasy gimmick of trapping people in mirrors, or even the modern version: sucking them into TV or computer screens. Or, since you mention Superman, there were also those Kryptonians from the second movie who were trapped in those Phantom Zone mirrors. Who knew that mirrors were such popular places to stick people you want gotten rid of? It makes me wonder why their side of the mirror is always so darn sturdy, since the first thing anybody does when they find themselves trapped in a mirror is to vigorously bang their fists on the glass.