Development
Warriors of Destiny was the last Ultima developed on the Apple II; the limits of that system (excluding the 16-bit Apple IIGS) were increasingly becoming a hindrance to further technological advance, and thus all later games were developed on PC systems. This was also the last time in which Ultima creator Richard Garriott did a major share of the actual coding; in the later parts he acted as a game designer only.
Like the previous two games in the series, Ultima V was also ported to the NES by Origin and published through FCI/Pony Canyon; it was released as Ultima: Warriors of Destiny in 1991. Each of the NES games had significant differences from the originals; this NES version was, however, a less faithful rendition of the source material than its predecessors had been. Introductory parts were cropped; graphics and gameplay were relatively limited (a clear example is that the swamp terrain was represented by magical poison fields); and there were few music tracks.
The Commodore version of Ultima V lacks a musical score when played on a C64, due to lack of available RAM. The game's music will only play when it is run on a C128 in the C128's native mode. Additionally, the included fast loader of the Commodore version will only work on (American) NTSC C64s because of its intricate timing, so users of the slightly slower (European) PAL C64s were forced to select a third-party floppy disk drive type at the initial menu and had to live with very slow loading. On the C128, the native fast-loading code of that system is used, so that this problem disappears.
Amiga and Atari ST versions appeared in 1989. Their graphics were directly ported from PC thus not utilizing the capabilities of the machines. Also the soundtrack was reduced to few pieces when compared to Commodore 128 version.
All editions contained: the game media; a cloth map; a metal coin (approximately 1.5 inches in diameter depicting a three circles inside a six-pointed star); The Book of Lore; Lord British's Odyssey; A quick reference card; a player reference card (version specific); a registration post card.
The game box differs between editions only by screenshots on the back. The Atari ST version depicts (left to right): a giant mouse in a dungeon; Castle British area including the player, a ship and a headless; and battle screen with player casting 'In Flam Hur' on various skeletons. The IBM version depicts (left to right): a fountain in a dungeon; Castle British area including the player, a ship and a horse; and the interior of an inn.
Read more about this topic: Ultima V: Warriors Of Destiny
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