Mark Percival wrote:
Also keep in mind that the original Ultima was owned by California Pacific and Ultima ][ by Sierra Online. The Ultima Trilogy I-II-III was done by Origin and Ultima III may have been the only one that they had the rights to. That could have added to the need for the rewrites.
The Ultima Trilogy was released for some other systems as well (such as PC, Commodore 64 and maybe others). But the Apple version was the only one to contain a substantially changed version of Ultima II.
Thus I think rights can't be the reason.Also, the Apple U2 in the Trilogy is not a complete rewrite AFAIK, unlike U1 it seems to reuse much of the older code.
-- Linards Ticmanis