Last week, Viridian found a cool blog involving a person’s experience with the Ultima series of games.
Blogging Ultima documents CageBlogger’s journey through the worlds of Britannia, starting from Akalabeth (or Ultima 0). He writes about what the games are like, giving his opinion on the coolness of certain features or the strangeness of the stories.
The only game I played in the entire series was Ultima IV for the NES, and I had two problems. One, I was too young to understand how to play it well. Collecting elements needed to cast spells was foreign to me, let alone the virtue system. Two, it was a rental. I had all of two days to play it.
It’s a fun blog to read through, and the links to the Richard Garriott chat sessions throughout the years are valuable pieces of video game history.
The existence of Blogging Ultima led me to think about similar blogs. What about a blog for the Wizardry series? The Prince of Persia games? Even Leisure Suit Larry or King’s Quest games would probably make for an interesting story for someone to play today. On consoles, there is Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy.
I have the Wizardry Archives as well as Wizardry 8. I suppose I could always start up the blog myself. It would give me an excuse to actually finish those games. B-)
I wish I’d had a blog when I played Betrayal at Krondor for the first time… Now, that would have been a blog-worthy experience! The story totally gripped me, and I think I had my best CRPG experience ever when I played the first chapter. I knew nothing about the world (I hadn’t read the Riftwar books back then) and I had no idea what to expect from the game (no, I couldn’t be arsed to read the manual). When I finally reached Krondor at the end of chapter 1 I was just barely making by. I imagined my characters limping and crawling along, desperately trying to avoid assassins…
Left by Karja on May 24th, 2007