Ultima II: The Revenge of The Enchantress - Development and Versions

Development and Versions

Ultima II was the first game of the series to be coded completely in assembly language rather than in interpreted BASIC. Playing speed and reaction time were vastly improved over the original release of Ultima I. Since Richard Garriott was attending college at the time, it took him almost two years to create Ultima II.

Ultima II was the first game in the series to include a cloth map inside the box, which would become a staple of the franchise. This map, which illustrated how the time doors were linked, was inspired by the one seen in the film Time Bandits. Two versions of this map were produced. The first version is of a heavier and thicker material. This map can be found in the large boxed (8"x11") Apple II and Atari 800 versions of the game. Later production runs of the game featured a much smaller box and a lighter weight map.

It was also the first game to be officially ported to platforms other than the Apple II. Versions for the IBM PC with CGA composite graphics, Commodore 64, Atari ST, Atari 800 and Apple Macintosh were published. (An Atari 800 version of Ultima I was published in 1982, some considerable time after Ultima II's release; the Atari ST and Macintosh versions of Ultima II were published in 1985.)

Despite reservations of Richard Garriott and Chuck Bueche, the original Apple II version of the game was copy-protected using its new Spiradisc system.

The original Apple Ultima II received an audiovisual upgrade in 1989, bringing its graphics up to date with more recent games in the series much as was done with Ultima I. This "enhanced" version was only available as part of the Ultima Trilogy I-II-III box set released that year and discontinued only months later. (The Commodore and IBM versions of the Ultima Trilogy include the original, unenhanced versions of the game for their respective platforms.)

The game was re-released several times later in CD-ROM PC compilations, including 1998's Ultima Collection. All these re-releases are missing necessary map files for most planets other than Earth; however, the map for "Planet X" is intact and the game is still winnable. Modern computers also generate a divide by zero error when attempting to run the game. These issues are addressed with a patches created by Voyager Dragon, a fan of the series, and are available on his website the Exodus Project. The game is known to run without errors and at an acceptable speed in a DOSBox environment, provided the missing map files are present.