The Dawn Of An Age

[Personal] [Computer Gaming]

When I was (I think) eight, my parents bought me a birthday present. It was a mostly black cardboard box, about A4 size and a couple of inches thick. At the top of the box were printed the words "Ultima Trilogy - I * II * III". In the middle were three little mini-pictures, showing such dramatic scenes as an armoured man on a horse fighting a giant dragon-thing. The back of the box suggested that within the box's magic confines I would find software which was compatible with my Apple IIe personal computer.

Huh, I thought. This looks okay. A guy fighting a dragon thing - I don't think I have any games like that. Maybe it'll be as good as Robotron, or possibly even Karateka!

I opened the box, on the spot (as you do), and perused the contents. Right at the top was the first find - a detailed map of a fantasy continent. No - not one map - three! That's right - this wasn't just one game, it was three separate installments, and they were all complex enough to warrant their own map.

But these weren't just any maps. They were covered with wierd symbols, and there wasn't a word of English to be seen anywhere on them. That's right - these maps were in CODE! And just looking at them, I had the feeling I could crack that code, with a little effort. Look, right there, there was a six-letter word, and knowing the title of the game, I could hazard a fair guess that it would translate to "Ultima".

Under the maps came the next treasure - the instruction manual. And this wasn't just some little pamphlet - no sir! It was about as thick as a Fighting Fantasy Gamebook (my passion of the time), clocking a good hundred and something pages easily. It was bound in a sort of fairly durable soft-cardboard, and it was decorated on the front with another picture of some guy fighting evil, rendered in simple atmospheric lines reminiscent of aged ink.

Within the manual, I found another break with the tradition of every video game I'd acquired thus far. The instructions were completely bare of dry directions like "Press Up to move Up", and instead read like a letter to the player, inviting the player to take up arms to save the world of Britannia, and leading slowly into the flavour and atmosphere of the game. More of the ink line-drawings littered the pages, and hidden among the instructions were hints as to what challenges I might face as I played the games. Time travel! Spaceships! Pirates! This game had it all!

I think the crowning achievement was discovering that the very back of the manual contained not just the complete spell list for Ultima III, but also the actual words of the spell! That's right! From this marvellous tome I remember to this day that uttering the words manji mular levi mittar nopsum alum cavi are crucial to the conjuration of a magic missile!

Ultima had me hooked. I played those three games fairly nonstop for the next two years. Ultima III ultimately proved to have a slighty extreme difficulty for someone of my young age, and Ultima II was riddled with bugs that unfortunately cut my experience short (I lost my saved game not once but twice, and had to abort a third game when random pieces of the scenery began haphazardly detachinig themselves and attacking me for crippling damage, effectively barring me from visiting towns and acquiring much-needed food.) But I played Ultima I right to its exciting conclusion, and it remains a nostalgic favourite to this very day.

And that, friends, is the moment I knew I was going to be playing video games for as long as people were making them.

This long rambling post is my response to this month's Blogs of the Round Table, which Corvus has decreed will be on the subject of "It Was Great When It All Began". What were the defining moments in YOUR gaming life?