To be fair their reputation on the Amiga can be hampered through emulation and defaulting to PAL. Most of their stuff is playable in NTSC. It's just sad that these magazines were begging and screaming for them to "someday discover the blitter!" and they never did discover it... Everything is going through the CPU because that's how it was done on the PC, but the Amiga didn't need a 25mhz processor because it had all these other chips which operated independently, but you gotta use them!
The ultimate F-U to Sierra was after they abandoned the Amiga in 1993, another company bought the rights to port King's Quest VI to the Amiga and they did what Sierra programmers seemed to think was impossible... Make it run well. If Sierra hadn't been the ultimate of cheap companies they would have seen what they couldn't do and farm out the games to those who could, like other companies did. Unfortunately that would mean paying for those companies to port the game, where with King's Quest VI it was Sierra getting paid... Oh well, put them on a composite CRT, upgrade the processor, install them to a hard drive and run them in NTSC, and they're still good games.
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Shot97
- Detroit, MI, USA
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Zippy Zapp
- CA, USA
Completely agree and I know we are totally off topic here so sorry for that. I think of all the great games that we did get for Amiga, including many that did take advantage of the Amigas hardware specifically. Then in hindsight, I think of all the lazy ports that we got from the PC and the Atari ST. Ugh. Sierra was guilty for sure.
But back to the Ultima I port that was done really well. One thing I appreciate about Origin is that they had people in place to port to the C64 that really knew their stuff (Chuckles, LOL). Ultima III and IV were ported from the Apple II, IIRC and the Apple II version had the music if you had a Mockingboard sound card installed in your A2. But when they ported to the C64 and took advantage of the SID it was an amazing work. They had to cut the voices down to 3 because IIRC the Mockingboard had more voices.
I remember being a little disappointed that Ultima I did not include any great music until I realized that it didn't have any to begin with and then I was just happy we got a port of by that time an older game. It wasn't until U3 that we would have a full musical score.
But back to the Ultima I port that was done really well. One thing I appreciate about Origin is that they had people in place to port to the C64 that really knew their stuff (Chuckles, LOL). Ultima III and IV were ported from the Apple II, IIRC and the Apple II version had the music if you had a Mockingboard sound card installed in your A2. But when they ported to the C64 and took advantage of the SID it was an amazing work. They had to cut the voices down to 3 because IIRC the Mockingboard had more voices.
I remember being a little disappointed that Ultima I did not include any great music until I realized that it didn't have any to begin with and then I was just happy we got a port of by that time an older game. It wasn't until U3 that we would have a full musical score.
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A1-X1000
- Toronto, Canada
@ Shot97
a joy to read and see the pics thanks for posting
I started playing the updated Ultima 1this past winter and had a blast with a down and up level spells in the dungeons again...I'm hoping to finish it finally this winter. Unlike Ultima IV which seems I spent a life time to never finish it as I was endlessly looking for some 'green stone or gem' in the days before internet and buying cheat sheets etc I can at least revel in completing Ultima 1 this winter...ugh hopefully will anyhow 
a joy to read and see the pics thanks for posting
I started playing the updated Ultima 1this past winter and had a blast with a down and up level spells in the dungeons again...I'm hoping to finish it finally this winter. Unlike Ultima IV which seems I spent a life time to never finish it as I was endlessly looking for some 'green stone or gem' in the days before internet and buying cheat sheets etc I can at least revel in completing Ultima 1 this winter...ugh hopefully will anyhow