Here is some personal history and some thoughts about the conversions. Bear with me if not all is like I remember it ;-)
Akalabeth & U1 - never played them and apparently I didn't miss anything as they seem to be rather primitive. Yes, you can throw stones at me now!
U2 - this was in fact the first Ultima and the first CRPG I ever played. 1984(?) it was pretty good and a good port on the C64: It used the 40 character mode with a redefined font for the surface world so it was very speedy and had some sound effects.
The gameplay and fighting "system" are rather simple by todays standards and the graphics whore in us would surely object against touching this game, but well it was where I started ;-)
U3 - also played it on my friends C64. No character mode but relatively colorful hi-res graphics and some music in this conversion.
Lord British raised the bar with much better graphics (I loved the line-of-sight algorithm), party management, a noteworthy combat system, a more diversified world and mucho better atmosphere.
Us players raised the bar by using cheating character stats to thwart the evil Exodus in less time the good Lord intended to...
U4 - more of the same but even better. Also played it on the C64 which was barely fast enough to update the beautiful tile graphics. Better line-of-sight, better combat, better dungeons etc. but I remember even more disk swapping.
I not only became the avatar - I nearly failed my school exams ;-)
Didn't really play the freely available, upgraded PC version but it's VGA graphics surely do look acceptable to me and it has good MIDI music.
U5 - my second favorite Ultima. Played it on an Amiga and couldn't install it on harddisk (I had a gigantic 20 MB one!) so I had to change disks all the time. This was a major pain even back then and I would prefer the DOS version anytime.
This game has great atmosphere and a "real living world" with a day-night-cycle and the townsfolk having their own schedules.
Many many objects to use and secrets to find. The enormous gameworld must be one of the biggest for years.
I remember some crashes but thankfully never lost character data. In 1991 I sold my Amiga stuff including many expensive books to jump on the PC VGA ship (after U6 came out for it) - the Amiga version of U5 is the only thing I didn't sell.
U6 - I swapped RPGs with a friend for a time so that I didn't have to buy that much stuff and I was so excited about U6.
Of course it looked great in its VGA glory where one "could count the blades of grass" but I was in parts disappointed of the game.
First of all the viewport is very small - especially your party of six "blocking" even more space. I also didn't like the whole gargoyle thing which developed in later Ultimas further.
U7 TBG - my favorite Ultima, hands down. The Exult variant crashed more on me than the original version on the 386 and 486 I had back then. IMHO the most beautiful and timeless Ultima ever created, aged better than any other version.
Easy to get into but not too easy. Lots of secrets and stuff to manipulate. Hilarious in-jokes like the Kilrathi ship.
U7 SI - this disappointed me the most. Even worse than U8 in it's original form. The dungeons were endless and I don't remember many fights there. More drama with a town going down and lots of NPCs getting killed.
Some improvements like the key chain but digitized character portraits and these hokey 3D-Studio animations with their cold clean render graphics.
U8 - had it for three days on loan from a shop back then (like movie tapes) but ran through it in a week. This was the original "Super Avatar Bros." version of the game and the jumping was the most fun for me. I didn't like the magic system but the presentation was acceptable (especially in the sound department though I didn't have the optional audio expandion pack).
U9 - still a good action-adventure but it's technical problems - if you don't use Voodoo hardware - may demotivate the potential player.
I played v1.18f - the official version sold in Germany back then - and had very little problems (only one or two crashes) but the game is unbalanced in parts and the ending is debatable. Strong atmosphere but the trademark Ultima repetitions (you must free eight shrines etc.) can get on the player's nerves.
So what's to recommend the (new) player?
- The Apple was the developer's platform of the first five games, they have reasonably fast disk access (provided you can live with the swapping) and OK color graphics. With a Mockingboard or a Phasor card the later U3 - U5 offer good music on the Apple, too.
- The C64 has better graphics on U2 - U4 (never saw U5 and U6 is intolerable) but has slow disk access.
- Most 8 bit Atari Ultimas suck in PAL country. Why? Because of the hires mode the programmer used instead to replicate the artifacting of NTSC (similar to the Apple II versions) and to re-use the graphics data. PAL sadly is too good to produce artifacting colors so these conversions are monochrome, badly dithered (no sexy hi-res Mac here!) and generally awful in PAL country. YMMV.
- The original PC CGA versions can only be played on appropriate hardware with correct colors. On anything else they look horrible and practically destroy the PCs biggest advantage: It's harddisk.
- The EGA versions of U3 & U4 versions don't look too great but the upgraded VGA version of U4 looks good and sounds well. It's also freely available so why not play it when you have a PC?
- U5 on the PC also uses EGA but is more detailed and looks very acceptable to me - the ST and Amiga look like they re-used all graphics but may not support hard disks (without patches) - you may enjoy the disk swapping but I don't.
- The PC at least was the developer's platform for U6 and all later games and there weren't many conversions (and mostly bad ones) so the player has little choice. I definitely recommend using Voodoo graphics for U9, though.
Note, that I didn't play any expansion packs as they were very expensive at the time (I also was disappointed in U7 SI) and no console conversions.
Here is some personal history and some thoughts about the conversions. Bear with me if not all is like I remember it ;-)
Akalabeth & U1 - never played them and apparently I didn't miss anything as they seem to be rather primitive. Yes, you can throw stones at me now!
U2 - this was in fact the first Ultima and the first CRPG I ever played. 1984(?) it was pretty good and a good port on the C64: It used the 40 character mode with a redefined font for the surface world so it was very speedy and had some sound effects.
The gameplay and fighting "system" are rather simple by todays standards and the graphics whore in us would surely object against touching this game, but well it was where I started ;-)
U3 - also played it on my friends C64. No character mode but relatively colorful hi-res graphics and some music in this conversion.
Lord British raised the bar with much better graphics (I loved the line-of-sight algorithm), party management, a noteworthy combat system, a more diversified world and mucho better atmosphere.
Us players raised the bar by using cheating character stats to thwart the evil Exodus in less time the good Lord intended to...
U4 - more of the same but even better. Also played it on the C64 which was barely fast enough to update the beautiful tile graphics. Better line-of-sight, better combat, better dungeons etc. but I remember even more disk swapping.
I not only became the avatar - I nearly failed my school exams ;-)
Didn't really play the freely available, upgraded PC version but it's VGA graphics surely do look acceptable to me and it has good MIDI music.
U5 - my second favorite Ultima. Played it on an Amiga and couldn't install it on harddisk (I had a gigantic 20 MB one!) so I had to change disks all the time. This was a major pain even back then and I would prefer the DOS version anytime.
This game has great atmosphere and a "real living world" with a day-night-cycle and the townsfolk having their own schedules.
Many many objects to use and secrets to find. The enormous gameworld must be one of the biggest for years.
I remember some crashes but thankfully never lost character data. In 1991 I sold my Amiga stuff including many expensive books to jump on the PC VGA ship (after U6 came out for it) - the Amiga version of U5 is the only thing I didn't sell.
U6 - I swapped RPGs with a friend for a time so that I didn't have to buy that much stuff and I was so excited about U6.
Of course it looked great in its VGA glory where one "could count the blades of grass" but I was in parts disappointed of the game.
First of all the viewport is very small - especially your party of six "blocking" even more space. I also didn't like the whole gargoyle thing which developed in later Ultimas further.
U7 TBG - my favorite Ultima, hands down. The Exult variant crashed more on me than the original version on the 386 and 486 I had back then. IMHO the most beautiful and timeless Ultima ever created, aged better than any other version.
Easy to get into but not too easy. Lots of secrets and stuff to manipulate. Hilarious in-jokes like the Kilrathi ship.
U7 SI - this disappointed me the most. Even worse than U8 in it's original form. The dungeons were endless and I don't remember many fights there. More drama with a town going down and lots of NPCs getting killed.
Some improvements like the key chain but digitized character portraits and these hokey 3D-Studio animations with their cold clean render graphics.
U8 - had it for three days on loan from a shop back then (like movie tapes) but ran through it in a week. This was the original "Super Avatar Bros." version of the game and the jumping was the most fun for me. I didn't like the magic system but the presentation was acceptable (especially in the sound department though I didn't have the optional audio expandion pack).
U9 - still a good action-adventure but it's technical problems - if you don't use Voodoo hardware - may demotivate the potential player.
I played v1.18f - the official version sold in Germany back then - and had very little problems (only one or two crashes) but the game is unbalanced in parts and the ending is debatable. Strong atmosphere but the trademark Ultima repetitions (you must free eight shrines etc.) can get on the player's nerves.
So what's to recommend the (new) player?
- The Apple was the developer's platform of the first five games, they have reasonably fast disk access (provided you can live with the swapping) and OK color graphics. With a Mockingboard or a Phasor card the later U3 - U5 offer good music on the Apple, too.
- The C64 has better graphics on U2 - U4 (never saw U5 and U6 is intolerable) but has slow disk access.
- Most 8 bit Atari Ultimas suck in PAL country. Why? Because of the hires mode the programmer used instead to replicate the artifacting of NTSC (similar to the Apple II versions) and to re-use the graphics data. PAL sadly is too good to produce artifacting colors so these conversions are monochrome, badly dithered (no sexy hi-res Mac here!) and generally awful in PAL country. YMMV.
- The original PC CGA versions can only be played on appropriate hardware with correct colors. On anything else they look horrible and practically destroy the PCs biggest advantage: It's harddisk.
- The EGA versions of U3 & U4 versions don't look too great but the upgraded VGA version of U4 looks good and sounds well. It's also freely available so why not play it when you have a PC?
- U5 on the PC also uses EGA but is more detailed and looks very acceptable to me - the ST and Amiga look like they re-used all graphics but may not support hard disks (without patches) - you may enjoy the disk swapping but I don't.
- The PC at least was the developer's platform for U6 and all later games and there weren't many conversions (and mostly bad ones) so the player has little choice. I definitely recommend using Voodoo graphics for U9, though.
Note, that I didn't play any expansion packs as they were very expensive at the time (I also was disappointed in U7 SI) and no console conversions.
take care,
Calibrator
take care,
Calibrator