GBAtemp Recommends Revival # 057 - Ultima VI & Metal Storm

Hadrian

Literally as TIGHT as a gnats chuff.
OP
Former Staff
Joined
Oct 12, 2004
Messages
16,991
Trophies
3
Age
42
XP
5,011
Country
United States
gbatemp_recommends_revivla_logo2_build-1.png
Welcome to the 57th issue of the GBAtemp Recommends Revival Project! This project is a weekly feature where we share our favourite games and applications with you. The things we recommend may be "old school" titles, a Homebrew, a ROM hack, sleeper hits, an application, etc, but one thing's for certain, we think they are fantastic and deserve your attention!​
This week because it's my first week in charge, I'm serving a double helping of retro goodness...plus they've waited a while to get these posted. :P


GBAtemp Recommends!
Ultima VI: The False Prophet
Written by GBAtemp member raulpica & parts originally edited by Another World.​
gallery_111084_186_34034.jpg
gallery_111084_186_8946.jpg
gallery_111084_186_16943.jpg
Ultima VI: The False Prophet, one of the last games in the Ultima series of renowned RPGs, was released back in 1990 by Origin Systems for a series of 16-bit computers like the Amiga, Atari ST, PC MS-DOS, Fujitsu-Siemens FM Towns, PC-98, and Sharp X68000. Ultima VI was the first in the series to be developed mainly for PCs, and not the Apple II, like the rest of the series, thus extensively using high-resolution VGA graphics and modern-day sound card support.

The game was also released to the Commodore 64 and the SNES. While the SNES version retains fidelity to the original version (which was not the case on the SNES version of Ultima VII), most of the game mechanics were entirely adapted to fit the console's limitations. A special mention must go to the FM Towns version, as it had full speech from Garriot himself and most of the Origin Systems' staff at the time.

Ultima VI is a classic '90s RPG. You've got a party, there are many NPCs around the map, and a fair lot of things to do. The world was quite extensive for the time, with cities to explore, numerous dungeons, and secret stuff to find. Dialogues were very well written, allowing you to ask many questions of the NPCs, which slowly showed how each of them had an interesting, vital life.

While the game can get a bit confusing mid-game, leaving you with an entire free-to-roam world, this confusion becomes quite rewarding as the game grows on you. When completed it will leave you with some great memories.

If you're searching for an enticing RPG story, with lots of stuff to do and helpful people to get to know, then Ultima VI is the game for you!

Genre: Role-playing
Release Year: 1990 (1993 SNES)
Developed & Published by: Origin Systems, Inc.
Designed by: Warren Spector & Richard Garriott
Released For: Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64, DOS, FM Towns, PC-98, Sharp X68000, SNES

icon11.gif
Youtube Footage of the Amiga Version
GBAtemp Recommends!
Metal Storm
Written by GBAtemp member BortzANATOR
gallery_27232_349_88619.jpg

Metal Storm is a game i discovered as a ROM on a cd years ago my friend gifted me. It had every single NES title. Since the NES didn't support saving, I would randomly select a title and play till I got bored. The title alone was good enough to get me hooked on this game, but after some gameplay, I wondered how this game was even made back in 1991.

You pilot a M-308 Mech and traverse stages that I think are supposed to be the innards of a computer and wipe out the virus robots. The game is virtual eye candy. Your mech is animated with the highest degree of care, the action is butter smooth, and the fore ground and background are not separate pieces, but look like it.

From the Wikipedia page:
Although the NES does not directly support parallax scrolling, programmers continuously redrew the tiles making up the game's backgrounds in order to animate them scrolling at a different rate than the foreground, giving an illusion of depth, notably in the game's third and fifth stages where there is a "second" background layer that appears to scroll behind the first.
You can see what i mean here.

The game also punches up the action instantly when you realize you have a button to control gravity. You read that right, gravity. When you flip. your mech flips up to the ceiling as if gravity has been reversed. Be advised, enemies also flip with you. So plan accordingly. Also you can get 3 power-ups, but you can only have one at a time. There's a bigger gun, shield, and booster that allows you to be invulnerable while shifting gravity.

The game really strikes me as a late NES title and it certainly feels like it. Using all of the NES'sresources and looking quite nice while doing so like many late generation titles. I found MS to have an incredible selection of bosses, even if it is a bit limited, because the game is criminally short. But that certainly doesn't stop it from also ramping up the difficulty into oblivion on the last 2 or 3 levels. Its Even hard for me, an experienced retro gamer.

Metal Storm is fantastic. If you haven't played it, its the only reason you need to dig out that old NES in your closet, or download am NES emulator. Its a stellar title in NES library that I feel a lot of gamers haven't experienced.

Genre: Side-scrolling platform/Shooter
Release Year: 1991
Developed by: Irem
Published by: Irem/Tamtex
Released For: Nintendo Entertainment System

icon11.gif
Youtube Footage


If you enjoyed this weeks edition of GBAtemp Recommends! please leave a comment in the thread. This helps us monitor feedback and ensures we keep posting these articles in the future.

We are always looking for community members who wish to get more involved. If you would like to write a GBAtemp Recommends! article, let us know.
 

Cyan

GBATemp's lurking knight
Former Staff
Joined
Oct 27, 2002
Messages
23,749
Trophies
4
Age
45
Location
Engine room, learning
XP
15,650
Country
France
I started with Ultima VII and is still the one I have preferences in the series.
I tried all other ultima games, but never played a lot (I wanted to play U7 first, but never had time to finish it).

Ultima 6 is good on Snes, and probably the plateform you need to play it because it's the easiest gameplay.
playing the DOS version is very hard on modern PC.
(Ultima VII even have a rewritten engine for modern PC to fix the speed problem : Hexult)
Sorry to talk about U7 here, while the recommendation is U6, it's nostalgia :P
 

raulpica

With your drill, thrust to the sky!
Former Staff
Joined
Oct 23, 2007
Messages
11,056
Trophies
0
Location
PowerLevel: 9001
XP
5,716
Country
Italy
I started with Ultima VII and is still the one I have preferences in the series.
I tried all other ultima games, but never played a lot (I wanted to play U7 first, but never had time to finish it).

Ultima 6 is good on Snes, and probably the plateform you need to play it because it's the easiest gameplay.
playing the DOS version is very hard on modern PC.
(Ultima VII even have a rewritten engine for modern PC to fix the speed problem : Hexult)
Sorry to talk about U7 here, while the recommendation is U6, it's nostalgia :P
I found Ultima 6 for SNES to be total crap, it's a butchered experience when compared to the original DOS one.

Just use dosbox an the game will work flawlessly :P

Ultima 6's "SPAM SPAM SPAM HUMBUG" was the best cheat code ever.
Yeah! :rofl:
 

IBNobody

I try to keep myself amused.
Member
Joined
Nov 16, 2006
Messages
1,151
Trophies
1
Location
Texas, Hang 'Em High
Website
Visit site
XP
954
Country
United States
As an add-on to Ultima 6, I also recommend Ultima: Worlds of Adventure 2: Martian Dreams.

It used U6's engine, is set on Mars in the 1900's, and has famous people from that time period. Edison, Freud, Twain, etc.

It was produced by Warren Spector... who also has a cameo in the game.
 

Another World

Emulate the Planet!
Former Staff
Joined
Jan 3, 2008
Messages
10,579
Trophies
2
Age
48
Location
From Where???
Website
wiki.gbatemp.net
XP
5,535
Country
Colombia
my favorite ultima title was IV on the nes, but i'm bias for the nes. lol. i almost got into that mmorpg they released but could never bring my self to pay the monthly subscription fee.

the japanese release of metal storm has an great english translation: http://www.romhacking.net/translations/1466/

The japanese version has a cinematic intro and text during the final boss fight. The difficulty is also slightly higher.

-another world
 
  • Like
Reactions: MassiveRican

MassiveRican

GBATemp's Unofficial Vigilante
Member
Joined
Aug 2, 2011
Messages
2,454
Trophies
1
Location
Creeping in the Shadows
XP
1,190
Country
my favorite ultima title was IV on the nes, but i'm bias for the nes. lol. i almost got into that mmorpg they released but could never bring my self to pay the monthly subscription fee.

the japanese release of metal storm has an great english translation: http://www.romhacking.net/translations/1466/



-another world
Thanks bro, just went and got the rom and translation patch, appreciate it and can't wait to play it.
 

nl255

Well-Known Member
Member
Joined
Apr 9, 2004
Messages
3,000
Trophies
2
XP
2,796
Country
my favorite ultima title was IV on the nes, but i'm bias for the nes. lol. i almost got into that mmorpg they released but could never bring my self to pay the monthly subscription fee.
<snip>
-another world

Actually, U4 on the NES had several features of U5 such as the ability to target anywhere on the battlefield rather than just the standard 4 directions and no manual mixing of spells (which didn't happen until U6 on the PC) though you lost the ability to save in the overworld and the final dungeon. For something closer to the PC version (but with the ability to mix up more than one copy of a spell) try the Master System version of U4.
 

stomp_442

New Member
Member
Joined
Jul 29, 2009
Messages
1,830
Trophies
1
XP
738
Country
United States
The only one I ever played was Ultima III, on my Atari 800XL. That was a very long time ago. I could remember mapping out all the towers and dungeons, I must have had a lot of free in my childhood.
 

nl255

Well-Known Member
Member
Joined
Apr 9, 2004
Messages
3,000
Trophies
2
XP
2,796
Country
ah, U6 works great in DosBox? to tell the truth, I didn't test it :P
I thought it was like U7, it doesn't work correctly, the game is running too fast.

Just lower the emulated CPU cycles in Dosbox and it will run just fine. The default setting with cycles=auto has problems with self modifying code.
 

Site & Scene News

Popular threads in this forum

General chit-chat
Help Users
  • Xdqwerty @ Xdqwerty:
    good night
  • BakerMan @ BakerMan:
    as to you
  • K3Nv2 @ K3Nv2:
    How do you know if the night will be good when you're asleep
  • BakerMan @ BakerMan:
    because i didn't say i was asleep
  • BakerMan @ BakerMan:
    i said i was sleeping...
  • BakerMan @ BakerMan:
    sleeping with uremum
  • K3Nv2 @ K3Nv2:
    Even my mum slept on that uremum
  • TwoSpikedHands @ TwoSpikedHands:
    yall im torn... ive been hacking away at tales of phantasia GBA (the USA version) and have so many documents of reverse engineering i've done
  • TwoSpikedHands @ TwoSpikedHands:
    I just found out that the EU version is better in literally every way, better sound quality, better lighting, and there's even a patch someone made to make the text look nicer
  • TwoSpikedHands @ TwoSpikedHands:
    Do I restart now using what i've learned on the EU version since it's a better overall experience? or do I continue with the US version since that is what ive been using, and if someone decides to play my hack, it would most likely be that version?
  • Sicklyboy @ Sicklyboy:
    @TwoSpikedHands, I'll preface this with the fact that I know nothing about the game, but, I think it depends on what your goals are. Are you trying to make a definitive version of the game? You may want to refocus your efforts on the EU version then. Or, are you trying to make a better US version? In which case, the only way to make a better US version is to keep on plugging away at that one ;)
  • Sicklyboy @ Sicklyboy:
    I'm not familiar with the technicalities of the differences between the two versions, but I'm wondering if at least some of those differences are things that you could port over to the US version in your patch without having to include copyrighted assets from the EU version
  • TwoSpikedHands @ TwoSpikedHands:
    @Sicklyboy I am wanting to fully change the game and bend it to my will lol. I would like to eventually have the ability to add more characters, enemies, even have a completely different story if i wanted. I already have the ability to change the tilemaps in the US version, so I can basically make my own map and warp to it in game - so I'm pretty far into it!
  • TwoSpikedHands @ TwoSpikedHands:
    I really would like to make a hack that I would enjoy playing, and maybe other people would too. swapping to the EU version would also mean my US friends could not legally play it
  • TwoSpikedHands @ TwoSpikedHands:
    I am definitely considering porting over some of the EU features without using the actual ROM itself, tbh that would probably be the best way to go about it... but i'm sad that the voice acting is so.... not good on the US version. May not be a way around that though
  • TwoSpikedHands @ TwoSpikedHands:
    I appreciate the insight!
  • The Real Jdbye @ The Real Jdbye:
    @TwoSpikedHands just switch, all the knowledge you learned still applies and most of the code and assets should be the same anyway
  • The Real Jdbye @ The Real Jdbye:
    and realistically they wouldn't

    be able to play it legally anyway since they need a ROM and they probably don't have the means to dump it themselves
  • The Real Jdbye @ The Real Jdbye:
    why the shit does the shitbox randomly insert newlines in my messages
  • Veho @ Veho:
    It does that when I edit a post.
  • Veho @ Veho:
    It inserts a newline in a random spot.
  • The Real Jdbye @ The Real Jdbye:
    never had that i don't think
    The Real Jdbye @ The Real Jdbye: never had that i don't think