Re: Hardpressed and Salvation

[rubywand@aol.com (RUBYWAND)]

In article <4ldpo0$rhm@gap.cco.caltech.edu>, nathan@cco.caltech.edu
(Nathan Mates) writes:

>>    Ultima VIII was one of the first popular games to not support
>>operation on a compressed hard disk ....
>
>   Popular? It bombed bigtime. Nobody liked it as a sequel in the
>Ultima series, and it was very darn hard to control, glacial (2+
>minutes to get to the title screen on my Pentium 90, 32MB Ram), and
>everything else.  Origin's had a history of incompatible gunk for some
>of their games (dare I mention 'voodoo memory manager' for Ultima 7),
>but they are more of the exception than the rule.
>
>   Origin's suffering from the "we're the industry leader, so if we
>do crap everyone will follow; never mind the users who can't run our
>stuff" disease that IBM had when it developed the PS/2, MCA, and the
>like. What other companies practice shafting their users like this?
>

     Like, don't keep your complaints about Origin all bottled up.

     As for Ultima, the series took an unfortunate turn after Ultima III.
The King Lord British business (or is it Lord King British?), niceness
rules for Avatarhood, and cumbersome combats are some notable negatives.

     Still, Origin has produced a number of excellent games. Wing
Commander II, Ultima Underworld, and Ultima Underworld II are examples.
The first UU is a solid contender for 'Best Adventure Ever".

[Hardware stuff discussion continued in "New Apple II ..." thread]
 

Rubywand