| Ultima: Escape from Mt. Drash | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Sierra On-Line |
| Publisher(s) | Sierra On-Line |
| Series | Ultima |
| Platform(s) | Commodore VIC-20 |
| Release date(s) | 1983 |
| Genre(s) | Role-playing video game |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
Ultima: Escape from Mt. Drash is a video game for Commodore VIC-20 home computer.
Contents |
In the game, creatures called "garrintrots" have imprisoned the player in Mt. Drash, and the player's task is to escape the dungeons.
The game itself is a very simple series of three-dimensional randomly generated dungeons, and the idea is to destroy all monsters that stand in way and exit to the next level. There is a time limit as well. The game doesn't employ custom graphics, but rather uses the VIC-20's standard set of graphical characters to draw the game scene.
The game was also notable for its soundtrack; using the 3-voice sound chip in the VIC-20 to provide background music. Very few games written for the VIC-20 featured such a background soundtrack that would become commonplace in games for the Commodore 64, Nintendo NES, etc.
The source code was written in VIC-BASIC, with assembly language routines for faster animation of graphics and to handle the background music. Due to the complexity of the source code and length of the game, an 8k or 16k RAM "expansion card" was required to be installed in the VIC-20 beforehand.
Copy protection consisted of the RUN-STOP and RESTORE keys on the VIC-20 keyboard being disabled (to prevent "breaking in" to the BASIC code), as well as the original cassette recorded and mastered in a way which made duplicating on a dual-cassette deck troublesome.
The game itself doesn't tie to Ultima series in many ways. Mt. Drash is a location in Ultima I.
The game was originally written by one of Richard Garriott's friends, Keith Zabalaoui, in Coarsegold, California, for Sierra On-Line, Inc in 1983. Sierra, who had just successfully published Ultima II, named the game an Ultima in hopes that it would sell better. They did this without Garriott's permission - Garriott held the rights to the Ultima name - and due to the relative obscurity of the game, Garriott didn't hear about the incident until much later.
Sierra originally intended to publish the game as part of the SierraVenture series of games. However, it seems that someone at Sierra had noticed that the game was not going to sell well. Only one advertisement was published (in Compute! magazine), but aside of that, the game was never distributed very widely. Sierra even denied the game ever existed, until Zabalaoui confirmed it actually was finished and was actually shipped to retailers. Approximately 3000 units were made, though exact numbers are not available.
For a long time, a lot of the details surrounding the game were very vague. For example it was believed the game was a cartridge, while in fact it was released on cassette tape. One of the rumors about the game was that Sierra sold a very minimal number of the games, barely enough to get even, then buried the remaining stock at a foot of a mountain somewhere. (This parallels the ultimate fate of Atari's E.T. game - the remainder of unsold E.T. cartridges were allegedly buried in a landfill.) In fact, some retailer near Vancouver, B.C. had dumped unsold software over a cliff, and this is where one of the only known complete copies were eventually found.[1]
In recent years, the game has been extremely sought after by collectors. First copies of the game were discovered and announced in 2000. The first online auction of a copy was in September 2003. Since then, there have been some very rare sightings, but due to high demand, there have been quite a few counterfeit games on the market. The first complete copy of the game sold on eBay in March 2004 for US$3,605 to collector Peter Olafson; the next complete copy to emerge a couple of months later went for a thousand less.
On 20 June 2009, another boxed copy (without manual) of the game was listed on eBay. The seller from Tucson, Arizona, had bought the game about a decade earlier from a Commodore enthusiast, along with other games, and had it in his closet for ten years. Not knowing the extreme rarity of the game, he listed it on eBay to make a quick buck, listed at a starting bid of US$4.99. The extremely rare auction closed on 25 June 2009 with a final bid of US$1,875. There were a total of 31 bids in all.
On 11 June 2003, the game was ported to PC by Kasper Fauerby. The original VIC-20 cassette is also available in a format suitable for VIC-20 emulators, although to detract from the greater likelihood of counterfeiting tapes, the TAP file (a recreation of the entire tape itself) has never been made available.
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