Ultima: Exodus (ウルティマ 恐怖のエクソダス), launched 10/9/1987, launched by Pony
That is the primary Western RPG to be ported to a console. It’s a port of the third Ultima recreation, launched for PC in 1983. I keep in mind taking part in this at a buddy’s home as a child — we didn’t actually know what was happening and by no means obtained very far. I then obtained into the Ultima collection as an entire later, and whereas I performed a little bit of the pc model, I didn’t get very far then both. It’s not an particularly good recreation, as is likely to be anticipated from such an early RPG, and the Famicom port doesn’t do a lot to handle the sport’s flaws. I’m not going to play it a lot, particularly since there are a variety of top of the range playthroughs in weblog kind already. Significantly:
As an alternative, I’ll write a bit concerning the Japanese launch specifically, and in addition the place it matches into the historical past of JRPGs that I’ve been . Ultimately I understand this can be a bit synthetic — technically this recreation is the primary console RPG to have a celebration of 4 characters (and one of many few multi-character video games in any respect up up to now), however that’s not all that related as a result of inside two months, there may be Ultimate Fantasy and Wizardry. It’s not like folks on the time had been taking part in these video games precisely of their launch order.
The celebration of 4 characters with class selecting is one thing that’s not in too many video games of this period (though as I mentioned, Wizardry and Ultimate Fantasy are solely a few months away).
I do consider that is the primary grid-based pseudo-SRPG type flip primarily based battle system, and I don’t know when the following recreation with this type of battle comes out. It makes the battles gradual, however I suppose it supplies extra depth than simply button mashing.
It matches in with most of those early RPGs in {that a} good portion of the sport is simply wandering round determining what you’re imagined to do. It has first-person mazes along with the top-down exploration of the world map and cities. The development system is uncommon, with ranges solely providing you with HP (and growing monster issue); it’s important to discover shrines the place you should buy stat upgrades. A number of the sport is simply constructing your stats slowly on this manner.
The sport was truly launched with numerous effort in Japan. Richard Garriot visited Japan to do an autograph occasion, and there was an related pop tune referred to as “Compass of the Coronary heart” by Hidaka Noriko. Individuals would possibly acknowledge her because the voice of Akane from Ranma 1/2, Close to from Dying Notice, or Noriko from Gunbuster.
She’s additionally an NPC within the first city:
Apparently the dialogue usually was modified fairly a bit and there’s an precise ending sequence, however general the sport is a detailed port of the PC model. You would possibly suppose that this was enticing within the days the place there have been only a few RPGs accessible, and perhaps it was to some gamers. However as I discussed above, I performed this when it got here out within the US and didn’t suppose it was significantly enjoyable.
