THE FIRST AGE OF DARKNESS

Ultima I is the first game of the Ultima series.
Before Ultima I, Richard Garriot, the creator of the Ultima series had already made two other games: Akalabeth and Mount Drash.
With Ultima I he began the very successful Ultima series.
Ultima I was first released in 1980.
Later, in 1986 the game was redone and brought out again.
Today, most people that buy Ultima I, buy it as part of: "The Ultimate Game Collection", by Encore Software. This is a collection of 6 CDROM's and one of them is the Ultima I-VI collection. In the rest of this story I'll be talking about the 1986 version of Ultima I.

If you take into account that Ultima I is a rather old game, you'll be surprised how much fun this game really is. In my opinion this game beats a lot of modern games.

When the game starts , you'll find yourself on one of the four continents of the world. Each continent has two castles, a couple of cities and some dungeons. In every castle you'll find a king that will give you a quest. When you'll finish a quest, you must return to the king, to collect your reward. The final goal of the game is to defeat the evil wizard Mondain.
The dungeons are not very difficult at the first levels. By entering a dungeon and fighting some enemies you can restore your hitpoints (when you leave the dungeons your hitpoints will be raised). When you get deeper into the dungeons the enemies will become more difficult.
In every town you can buy food, weapons, armoury, spells and transportation. In order to defeat Mondain, you need to go back in time. In the end of the game you'll find a timemachine.

One of the more difficult parts of the game is the so called space quest.

To complete this quest you must board a space shuttle, take of to the skies and finally you'll arrive in space. Here you must board another spaceship and beat 20 alien spaceships. It can be done, but you'll need a lot of practice before you'll be able to finish this quest.
If you're having trouble finishing the game, you can use one of the walkthroughs and help files that you can find on "The World Of Ultima" site (see below).
Ultima I is a very nice game if you don't mind using your keyboard and if your not just looking for fancy modern graphics. It's nice to see the "beginning" of the Ultima series.

Installing the game.

Don't use the install program that's on the CDROM!!!!!!
Just create a new folder on your hard disk and then copy the files from the CD to the new folder (drag and drop).
That's all. If you enter the new folder, all you have to do is double click on the Ultima icon (ULTIMA.EXE) and you can play the game.
Before you start to play the game, you can get the maps for Ultima I, from "The World Of Ultima" site.

After that you can go to Micro Dragon's homepage. The original documentation for Ultima I is not included with the Encore CDROM. Micro Dragon has put this documentation on his webpage. You can download it there: Micro Dragon's Home Page
After this you're ready to play the game.

©Mieke Schotting

Links :

The World Of Ultima This link takes you to the quick access page of: "The World Of Ultima". Here you can find the walkthroughs, helpfiles, maps etc, for Ultima I.

Ultima World Wide Web Archive This is the Ultima Archive at Origin's site, made by Ultima Dragons.
Here you can find maps, a walkthrough and the Documentation for the Encore CD-Rom

Ultima I-VI CDRom Horror Story FAQ This is a great helpsite by Ultra-Mind dragon. Here you can find help for problems that you encounter when you try to play Ultima I-VI from the Encore CDROM.

Ultima I- a legend is reborn A link to a very promising project to completely remake Ultima I. The screenshots look great and there is a demo available for download.

D+S Software This is a (reliable) Dutch site where you can buy the Encore Ultima I-VI CDROM. They sell abroad. Look for:"The Ultimate Game Collection", by Encore Software.

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