I Played What? - Akalabeth
Feb. 2nd, 2020 09:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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i_read_whatSo somewhere along the way, I had a thought about reviewing other things, not just books, for this blog. As a child, I was PAINFULLY addicted to Ultima 7. To the point where I once accidentally put our family computer into an endless loop while trying to set up a boot disk for Serpent's Isle.
There's a reason I'm generally not allowed to program things. I'm also not allowed to cook or engage in basic chemistry.
Happily, that's not something I have to do anymore. GOG.com has all of the Ultima games in cute little dosbox equipped packages. I'm sure I could still find a way to put my computer into an infinite loop if I really wanted to, but it's definitely not necessary now.
So since I'm on a nostalgia gaming kick. I thought it'd be fun to maybe review the Ultima series on this blog. I'm not going to let it interfere with my regular Sunday + once mid week posting schedule for the books, though. This is just a lark and an experiment.
Now the thing about nostalgia reviewing video games that's different from reviewing books is that technology to play these games improves by leaps and bounds. While I could (and will) make the argument that later Ultima games are very playable by modern story standards, the earliest ones probably are not.
But it should be fun for me at least.
So the first game in the Ultima series is Akalabeth. Akalabeth was a game programmed by Richard Garriott in 1979. Meaning it's actually four years older than I am. The story goes that Garriott sold it in zip lock bags and made about 150K doing it, which is pretty impressive.
For its time, Akalabeth is pretty groundbreaking. For our time, it's...not. But it is interesting to look at.
Now for really early games like this, you're not going to get much in the way of story in the game itself. There's a bit of a text dump early on (which I'll show you). But the bulk of the story takes place in the manual.
Because this is a GOG game, I have the manual as a pdf. But doesn't it look pretty awesome? Honestly, the manuals are the best parts of these old games. It gives us the story, such as it is: (Tip, do not play the main download if you purchase from GOG, in the bonus materials, we get the 1998 port which actually allows you to save! Admittedly, when I play these kind of things, I prefer as close to an original as possible, so I can enjoy a progression. But saving is GOOD.)
We're in a place called Akalabeth! (Even though the subtitle of the game is "world of doom", Akalabeth is not the name of the world. We'll learn that in Ultima 1. Akalabeth was retroactively inserted into the Ultima series as a prequel.)
Akalabeth used to be a peaceful place, until a dude named Mondain got pissed off at his dad, King Wolfgang, and his unnamed older brother. He decided to wander the land being an asshole and summoning monsters. At some point, a dude named Lord British, who is "pure and just", came and kicked his ass straight out of Akalabeth.
Please note, this is probably the first and last time we'll actually hear of Lord British doing his own damn dirty work in the entire series. For the most part, he's going to outsource it to...us. Well me, in this playthrough. We start today, being sent by Lord British to clean up some of Mondain's monsters.
The series will eventually add a few more elements to the lore here. Both Lord British and the "Stranger" who will end up being the Avatar of the Ultima series are actually from Earth. Presumably British was the one to summon the hero, though why he couldn't actually summon them to the fucking castle is beyond me.
Seriously, the game starts you out at a random town on a 20x20 grid. If you're lucky, it's close to the castle, where our hero will get their quest, assuming they get there before running out of food. I managed to die a good three times in a row trying to find the fucking castle in the non-1998 version of the game. Then I was told to kill a(n) .
This is a problem because I can't complete a quest to kill something when you don't tell me what to kill, Lord British.
But happily the 1998 version is actually functional. So there we go.
This is what the world map looks like, by the way:
It's pretty adorable! The big square is the castle, the other is a town. There are lots of those. And not shown are the X-marked dungeons.
So my character is Ian, he's from Earth. He spent at least one version of events wandering in the wrong direction and starving to death, but thanks to a helpful reload, I DID actually get him into the castle. I can only imagine how many starved corpses of would be adventurers that he had to step over to get there.
Which meant he wasn't particularly happy when he finally stormed into the castle gates for the only real interaction in the game:
Hee, that was fun. Ian is immediately sent back outside. But he supposes he is actually here for a reason, so this time, he'll say yes:
So now it's time for dungeon delving. There's a difficulty curve here. Mainly in the form of food. Ian can only go so far into the dungeon, before escaping and heading back to town. So the first part is a bit of a slog. He needs to kill things for money, and then spend the money on food, which depletes with every step he takes. It's like he's walking around on a constant iv drip.
He does have an ace up his sleeve. At the start of the game I rolled with enough money for ONE magic amulet. Ian casts the Bad??? spell and...turns into a toad. His stats are now 3s across the board. One unpleasant encounter with a thief later and ...oops, "ressurrection" time. (That's the spelling they use.)
So, a reload later, Ian casts the Bad??? spell again. And this time he becomes a LIZARD-MAN.
Being a lizard man is awesome. Double stats! And being able to hit very hard. Ian plays it very unsafe and casts "Bad??" again. It backfires at one point, causing some damage, but he gets "lizard-man" two more times. Which increases stats EXPONENTIALLY. He started at between 10-20. Now his stats are in the 100s. He's not dying again. Counter-intuitively, magic using now means just smack the shit out of everything.
Unless he runs out of food. But at this point he can just hit things for money, go back up, and buy more food. And amulets. Because while he's not willing to risk turning himself into a toad again, the ladder spells are pretty foolproof. And I hate trying to map shit.
So he goes down and kills the carrion crawler, then back to the castle. Doing British's dirty work is not yet enough to become a knight. British also doesn't seem to notice that he's a giant lizard. But that's royalty for you.
So in sequence, four more quests: a gremlin, who is adorable but nasty, as they steal food. And that's the only thing I really care about at this point, a daemon (...we started killing these guys early on, didn't we. Ian might regret this, come Ultima VI), and a balrog. Because copyright is for chumps.
Look! A Gremlin!
It's so damn cute. And this is what the dungeons look like. The color denotes what level you're on.
Finally, Ian defeats the Tolkein estate's lawyers (In Ultima I and onward, it will be called a "Balron"):
And returns to Lord British one final time:
Ian wonders if Lord British has grown a bit confused, as he is reporting to Lord British now. The original game had a phone number here to call to report your victory. I'm guessing that, some forty years later, the phone number MIGHT not be up to date anymore.
But at least Ian will be sticking around to finally bring an end to that asshole Mondain in Ultima 1.
Verdict:
As I said before, there's no real point in evaluating a game like this by modern standards. This game was made literally forty years ago. It's older than I am. It's not going to hold the attention of a kid today.
But I have to admit that once I got a version that worked, it was an entertaining enough lark. I didn't have much of a challenge after the beginning, but that's my own fault. I picked a cheap character class. But the game, while amusing, isn't really engaging enough to make it worth adding to the difficulty level by playing a fighter. (Thieves always steal your weapons anyway.)
All in all, I think I played for about an hour.
It was a pretty big deal for its time though. The features were actually pretty advanced and got Richard Garriott a lot of attention. We'll see them expanded on in a much more involved (and batshit) game: Ultima 1. I know Ian's looking forward to it. Especially the outer space part. Yes, there's an outer space part. Exactly how I'm going to grab a screenshot will be an interesting challenge. Stay tuned!
There's a reason I'm generally not allowed to program things. I'm also not allowed to cook or engage in basic chemistry.
Happily, that's not something I have to do anymore. GOG.com has all of the Ultima games in cute little dosbox equipped packages. I'm sure I could still find a way to put my computer into an infinite loop if I really wanted to, but it's definitely not necessary now.
So since I'm on a nostalgia gaming kick. I thought it'd be fun to maybe review the Ultima series on this blog. I'm not going to let it interfere with my regular Sunday + once mid week posting schedule for the books, though. This is just a lark and an experiment.
Now the thing about nostalgia reviewing video games that's different from reviewing books is that technology to play these games improves by leaps and bounds. While I could (and will) make the argument that later Ultima games are very playable by modern story standards, the earliest ones probably are not.
But it should be fun for me at least.
So the first game in the Ultima series is Akalabeth. Akalabeth was a game programmed by Richard Garriott in 1979. Meaning it's actually four years older than I am. The story goes that Garriott sold it in zip lock bags and made about 150K doing it, which is pretty impressive.
For its time, Akalabeth is pretty groundbreaking. For our time, it's...not. But it is interesting to look at.
Now for really early games like this, you're not going to get much in the way of story in the game itself. There's a bit of a text dump early on (which I'll show you). But the bulk of the story takes place in the manual.
Because this is a GOG game, I have the manual as a pdf. But doesn't it look pretty awesome? Honestly, the manuals are the best parts of these old games. It gives us the story, such as it is: (Tip, do not play the main download if you purchase from GOG, in the bonus materials, we get the 1998 port which actually allows you to save! Admittedly, when I play these kind of things, I prefer as close to an original as possible, so I can enjoy a progression. But saving is GOOD.)
We're in a place called Akalabeth! (Even though the subtitle of the game is "world of doom", Akalabeth is not the name of the world. We'll learn that in Ultima 1. Akalabeth was retroactively inserted into the Ultima series as a prequel.)
Akalabeth used to be a peaceful place, until a dude named Mondain got pissed off at his dad, King Wolfgang, and his unnamed older brother. He decided to wander the land being an asshole and summoning monsters. At some point, a dude named Lord British, who is "pure and just", came and kicked his ass straight out of Akalabeth.
Please note, this is probably the first and last time we'll actually hear of Lord British doing his own damn dirty work in the entire series. For the most part, he's going to outsource it to...us. Well me, in this playthrough. We start today, being sent by Lord British to clean up some of Mondain's monsters.
The series will eventually add a few more elements to the lore here. Both Lord British and the "Stranger" who will end up being the Avatar of the Ultima series are actually from Earth. Presumably British was the one to summon the hero, though why he couldn't actually summon them to the fucking castle is beyond me.
Seriously, the game starts you out at a random town on a 20x20 grid. If you're lucky, it's close to the castle, where our hero will get their quest, assuming they get there before running out of food. I managed to die a good three times in a row trying to find the fucking castle in the non-1998 version of the game. Then I was told to kill a(n) .
This is a problem because I can't complete a quest to kill something when you don't tell me what to kill, Lord British.
But happily the 1998 version is actually functional. So there we go.
This is what the world map looks like, by the way:
It's pretty adorable! The big square is the castle, the other is a town. There are lots of those. And not shown are the X-marked dungeons.
So my character is Ian, he's from Earth. He spent at least one version of events wandering in the wrong direction and starving to death, but thanks to a helpful reload, I DID actually get him into the castle. I can only imagine how many starved corpses of would be adventurers that he had to step over to get there.
Which meant he wasn't particularly happy when he finally stormed into the castle gates for the only real interaction in the game:
Hee, that was fun. Ian is immediately sent back outside. But he supposes he is actually here for a reason, so this time, he'll say yes:
So now it's time for dungeon delving. There's a difficulty curve here. Mainly in the form of food. Ian can only go so far into the dungeon, before escaping and heading back to town. So the first part is a bit of a slog. He needs to kill things for money, and then spend the money on food, which depletes with every step he takes. It's like he's walking around on a constant iv drip.
He does have an ace up his sleeve. At the start of the game I rolled with enough money for ONE magic amulet. Ian casts the Bad??? spell and...turns into a toad. His stats are now 3s across the board. One unpleasant encounter with a thief later and ...oops, "ressurrection" time. (That's the spelling they use.)
So, a reload later, Ian casts the Bad??? spell again. And this time he becomes a LIZARD-MAN.
Being a lizard man is awesome. Double stats! And being able to hit very hard. Ian plays it very unsafe and casts "Bad??" again. It backfires at one point, causing some damage, but he gets "lizard-man" two more times. Which increases stats EXPONENTIALLY. He started at between 10-20. Now his stats are in the 100s. He's not dying again. Counter-intuitively, magic using now means just smack the shit out of everything.
Unless he runs out of food. But at this point he can just hit things for money, go back up, and buy more food. And amulets. Because while he's not willing to risk turning himself into a toad again, the ladder spells are pretty foolproof. And I hate trying to map shit.
So he goes down and kills the carrion crawler, then back to the castle. Doing British's dirty work is not yet enough to become a knight. British also doesn't seem to notice that he's a giant lizard. But that's royalty for you.
So in sequence, four more quests: a gremlin, who is adorable but nasty, as they steal food. And that's the only thing I really care about at this point, a daemon (...we started killing these guys early on, didn't we. Ian might regret this, come Ultima VI), and a balrog. Because copyright is for chumps.
Look! A Gremlin!
It's so damn cute. And this is what the dungeons look like. The color denotes what level you're on.
Finally, Ian defeats the Tolkein estate's lawyers (In Ultima I and onward, it will be called a "Balron"):
And returns to Lord British one final time:
Ian wonders if Lord British has grown a bit confused, as he is reporting to Lord British now. The original game had a phone number here to call to report your victory. I'm guessing that, some forty years later, the phone number MIGHT not be up to date anymore.
But at least Ian will be sticking around to finally bring an end to that asshole Mondain in Ultima 1.
Verdict:
As I said before, there's no real point in evaluating a game like this by modern standards. This game was made literally forty years ago. It's older than I am. It's not going to hold the attention of a kid today.
But I have to admit that once I got a version that worked, it was an entertaining enough lark. I didn't have much of a challenge after the beginning, but that's my own fault. I picked a cheap character class. But the game, while amusing, isn't really engaging enough to make it worth adding to the difficulty level by playing a fighter. (Thieves always steal your weapons anyway.)
All in all, I think I played for about an hour.
It was a pretty big deal for its time though. The features were actually pretty advanced and got Richard Garriott a lot of attention. We'll see them expanded on in a much more involved (and batshit) game: Ultima 1. I know Ian's looking forward to it. Especially the outer space part. Yes, there's an outer space part. Exactly how I'm going to grab a screenshot will be an interesting challenge. Stay tuned!
no subject
Date: 2020-02-04 03:46 pm (UTC)The graphics are adorable! And your boss is really weird.
no subject
Date: 2020-02-04 05:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-02-27 02:48 pm (UTC)The title's also taken from Tolkien; it's from "Akallabêth", which is the name of a section in The Silmarillion. I thought that was neat to share!