VIC 20 Ultima I
Produced by: Aleksi Eeben
Website: VIC 20 Ultima I
The VIC 20 emulator image and player reference card for the VIC 20 port of Ultima 1.
VIC 20 Ultima I is a hybrid conversion of both the original Commodore 64 and Apple II releases of Ultima 1; a full-assembler remake for both platforms was released in 1986, featuring upgraded visuals that gave the game a look more in line with Ultima 4. Due to the VIC 20’s hardware limitations compared to either of those platforms, however, this port also borrows some stylistic choices from the Atari and the original 1980 Apple II releases.
This port was much more challenging for Aleksi Eeben than either of his other Ultima conversions. Towns, castles, overworld exploration, dungeons, space travel, and the time machine leading to the final battle with Mondain had to be disassembled and converted to load separately as needed, most of them barely fitting into the VIC 20’s fully expanded memory. The space-flight section uses the original soft-sprite routines, using half the original horizontal resolution. For the Mondain battle, Aleksi rewrote most of the graphics routines from scratch, allowing fixed-size animated tiles to be used more efficiently. The port also features a new 4×8 character set that mimics the distinctive curled, handwritten style of the Ultima IV font.
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[…] can grab a copy of VIC 20 Ultima 1 from the project’s home page, or from the shiny new project entry here at the Codex. The download includes the VIC 20 emulator image (in D64 format) and a player […]