Boxer

Developer diary: plans and progress reports.

Facelifts Tuesday 30th December 2008

Immobilised by wine and hams, I declared it a fine idea to doll up the sample games with custom disk images.

The first and foremost is Ultima IV, which I remember from the tender age of 7 as my first proper game. The Ultimas came with such fabulous feelies, including cloth maps and hand-illustrated manuals, and I wanted to give those a proper tribute:

Ultima IV disk image

I also made less ostentatious disk images for the System Shock and Dark Forces demos—two distant and sadly neglected cousins of the Doom era:

Dark Forces disk image System Shock disk image

I’m afraid that Tyrian is the runt of the litter for now, as I had no great attachment to the game itself. If I remember a game I’m more emotionally attached to (and legally permitted to distribute), I may replace it in the lineup.

While I don’t plan to make a habit of this, I’m open to suggestions for other freely distributable games to offer (just not Beneath a Steel Sky, I’m afraid I think it's rubbish.)

Commentary

  1. Nice work! The feelies that came with Ultima games is something I always remember about the series. Great stuff. Unfortunately I don't have the little obsidian stone that came with Ultima VIII Pagan, but still have the nylon cloth!

    Sean Thursday 1st January 2009

  2. My Ultima IV and V boxes are probably stuffed in an attic on the other side of the world, if they weren't just tossed away... *sigh*. I remember the codex medallion that came with Ultima V; alas I don't think our edition of Ultima IV came with the ankh. The maps were terrific, Ultima V's especially.

    I recall my big brother fell in love with Ultima IV in a big way: at one point he painstakingly mapped out the entirety of Britannia, tile by tile, onto sheets of graph paper. They covered the floor when laid out properly.

    Alun Bestor Friday 2nd January 2009

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