Ultimate: Play The Game
What was all the fuss about Ultimate games?
Sure they were technically impressive but for me none of their games stand out in the memory for me personally.
Once I'd got over the 'wow' factor of Alien 8 I found it pretty boring. Jetman I thought was a little unplayable and Sabre Wulf repetitive.
Is it just me? Am I being too hard on their games? Or did they have (as a company) this 'aura' around them that made their games seem better than they really were? I'm not knocking them or anything, but even back then I could never really see what all the fuss was about.
For me a lot of stuff from Ocean, Hewson and Gremlin Graphics knocks Ultimate stuff into a hat.
Thoughts?
Sure they were technically impressive but for me none of their games stand out in the memory for me personally.
Once I'd got over the 'wow' factor of Alien 8 I found it pretty boring. Jetman I thought was a little unplayable and Sabre Wulf repetitive.
Is it just me? Am I being too hard on their games? Or did they have (as a company) this 'aura' around them that made their games seem better than they really were? I'm not knocking them or anything, but even back then I could never really see what all the fuss was about.
For me a lot of stuff from Ocean, Hewson and Gremlin Graphics knocks Ultimate stuff into a hat.
Thoughts?
Post edited by Retrobrothers on
Comments
personally, i didn't played the ultimate games in real time, and, being in a peripherical position in the Spectrum Empire (italy in the second half of the eighties was rather despectrumized) i didn't receive much of the hype surrounding ultimate - but in spite of that i got really involved by knight lore, in 1987 or 1988, and i appreciated it very much - although i think i had already played head over heels -, and still do (i've played it again recently, after a hiatus of a lot of years). i even drew a map for it, which wasn't very common for me. i also like very much pssst! which i played for the first time in 1986 or 1987. atic atac didn't impress me much, but it's very smooth and playable, and even groundbreaking at the time. sabre wulf is too hard, and so underwurlde, and, even more, lunar jetman - although they were all outstanding for their time. nightshade and gunfright introduced scrolling in the filmation technique, but weren't great games. pentagram was a rehash of knight lore and alien eight, with shootings and looming enemies. jetpac is a little early classic. cyberun, bubbler and martianoids are probably their minor games.
so, overall the quality of their output was very high - and they made some classics indeed - which i find still very pleasant to play today.
"so, yes, you're wrong!".
The question is the first time you load and played some of them, you are just shocked.
Of course they made some crap games no need to mention.
And yes, I'm an Ultimate fan :smile:
By the way, seeing the answers above, are there any non-mediterranean Ultimate fan around here? ;-)
It seems that I am missing something with Ultimate!
Having been a little negative towards them, I have to say that JetPac is one of the best 16K games you could get - the wrap around effect was brilliant. In fact it's probably my favourite game from Ultimate.
Then Sabre Wulf came out, one of the first games to jump i think if memory serves me right from ?5.95 to ?7.95 which caused uproar at the time but Sabre Wulf blew people away.
Underwurlde was slightly different, then Knight Lore appeared and back then was stunning.
The adverts for the games helped create this special Ultimate feeling, the instructions not giving much away also helped. The boxes/instructions oozed quality and were brilliant.
For their time they were just an amazing company. In later years things went downhill (milking the filmation games, Cyberun, Martionoids etc) but they were great. After Alien 8 their crown slipped a bit. Dont blame them releasing Alien 8, would have been criminal to use that special filmation technique on just one game. Epic company
and Jetpac was the reason I bought my Spectrum (well the reason I got my mum to buy it )
and you have to remember that the volume of software titles coming out was staggering and out of about 50 games released per week only 1 or 2 where any good.
now you have to remember that parents didn't give a crap about software it was left up to us children to spend there hard earned ?5.99 on a game and if your last game was good by a software company I.E. Arcadia you would then look for another game by them Schizoids
http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0004362
holy shit what a load of crap (and that was two weeks pocket money...gone...forever...:cry: bastards)
so lets try one by them that did Jetpack...err
Cookie...keys a bit fiddly but loads of levels and enjoyable
lets try something else by them
Atic Attack....wow this is great...rock hard but better than most of the crap like Diggar Dan or Jack and the beanstalk
so that's why they are remembered so fondly they never let us down or screwed us over with a crap unplayable game even if it was rock hard it was still fun seeing the next screen.
Yes, there is a lot of quality and polish in the titles. But as others have said, perhaps it was more a case of "you had to be there", waiting for the new Ultimate title to understand why people feel so strongly about them...
Oops forgot about that classic. Amazing game for its time. 1983 ! Still looks so polished years later, great playable game and was way ahead of so many others back then. I mean Knight Lore was 1984, again its amazing it came out back then. And apparently the 'story goes' that they could have released it earlier but it would have affected their other sales so waited.
Its similar to the game Elite, as in if someone discovered Elite years later they would think 'whats the fuss about ?' but back when that came out that was another epic game which at the time blew everyone away
- IONIAN-GAMES.com -
I think the quality dropped when US Gold bought them over, then they just disappeared.
well Ultimate Play The Game did but the programmers Chris and Tim Stamper founded RAREWARE
Bangoo Kazooie EDIT (Banjo)
GOLDENEYE
Donkey Kong Country
Killer Instinct
and the rest
Chris and Tim have left RARE .....?
However, when I look at Spectrum stuff now I think Ultimate's quality shines through. Not all the games are brilliant but about half of them are, and they all have a certain look, with great loading screens.
I think Jet Pac, Cookie, Pssst, Atic Atac, Knight Lore and Gunfright are amongst the best Spectrum games and the first 4 are still very playable for a young child today. They also look nice enough to not be a turn off.
I now think Atic Atac was their finest achievement. Superb animation, great graphics and sound and simple but compulsive gameplay.
Eventually, and to a certain degree yes, but we're talking another 3, 4 or 5 years of development experience on top of Ultimates. For me Ultimate are the legendary Speccy publishers, 1983 through to the release of Alien 8 nobody else even really got close.
Knight Lore was so far ahead of everything else at the time, I don't think we've ever really seen such a graphical leap - maybe the release of Mario 64.
The attention to detail - graphics and sound are just stunning. Playability is off the scale. As Joffa used to say :cry: - just make it playable! Commandment no 1 of games design!
I WAS there back then, JetPac being amongst the first games I played on my (48K) Speccy.
When Knight Lore came out I played it on my mates Speccy and, once I'd got over the amazing graphics, found the game a little dull to play. Maybe it's just me (I've never been a fan of istometric games) but I thought it was a little over-hyped. I never went and bought it after playing it on his machine, I never even borrowed it either! The same thing happened with Alien8 too.
I agree that the box-art was always really well done, very polished and classy, and the presentation of the games was great.
I'm obviously in the minority as most people seem to love Ultimate.
Same as Rollercoaster by Elite, loved this game but again it was a case of finding new rooms as i cant believe anyone could have completed that game without pokes.
Its funny looking back when (i presume) a fair few people played games just to find new rooms. Jet Set Willy another example, do love that game for nostalgic reasons but i would never have been able to complete that so it was a case of going in a new direction to find a room.
Funny looking back, 8 quid for a nice box with vague instructions to play a game where i'm walking from one room to the next seeing how long i could survive for.
Absolutely correct I have never been able to play knight Lore it's just tooooo hard and it was only recently after watching a rzx that I found out that you should pick up an object, use it to jump over a wall AND THEN PICK UP THE OBJECT WHEN YOU JUMP :-o
the same with underworld it was toooo hard bouncing me all over the place but the difference with Ultimate is that these were fun rather than frustrating I mean who would bother to reprogram a robot to such a degree in Alien8 most games couldn't be bothered with a good loading screen. (unless it was a TV/Film)
EDIT: A good analogy of Ultimate is THE BEATLES sure they did some crap songs but the overall package was good easy to get into and stands the test of time.
Most games beyond this were improvements on their filmation engine.
It was almost a case of peaked to early for me.
Bytes:Chuntey - Spectrum tech blog.
...which is all part of the mystique thing. They often left the mags with little time to review a new title, and since getting an exclusive/fast review of the latest Ultimate title was important, corners were cut.
Do you think it might be something to do with their large number of full page advertisements in the magazine, perhaps?
For what it's worth, I'd think that Cyberun and Pentagram were the only ones that definitely didn't deserve a Crash Smash. Nightshade is perhaps a bit borderline, as I thought it seemed a bit of a step back after the Filmation 1 games, but it still has its fans.
the ritman's games preserved this feature!
back then Ultimate games were so far ahead of anything else:
quality graphics and sound effects,
great packaging
smooth and addictive gameplay
That's why I wanted a 16k spectrum for Christmas. I saw this brilliant slab of black metal and plastic playing Jetpack in WHSMith, alongside a C64 with big blocky Atari graphics and there was only one wish! (and I got a 48k!! woohoo!)
Jetpack was my first game, along with Jumping Jack, as a Christmas Present. Now, I loved Jumping Jack (hell, all games were amazing then); but the difference in quality between the two was night and day.
Then Lunar Jetman
then Atick Atak (which is still awesome)
sabre wulf, the jungle and charging hippos and mountains and lakes and spiders and villages and cliff faces and magic orchids. I don't think I've been so enchanted with a game until Ocarina Of Time came along many many years later.
And Underwurlde and Knight Lore, superb atmosphere.
I used to look forward to the next Ultimate game, to see how good the graphics would be; and of course, they would be even better than before (how could that be!!!) and the game would be more technically advanced.
After Knightlore, I lost interest with the Spectrum, better machines were available.
But that run of games from Jetpack to Knightlore.
Amazing.
I understand what you mean but maybe Elite is not a good example as it actually plays just as well today as it always did in my opinion but that might be because there has never been more than a few titles that even resemble Elite,sure back in the day you might of had Captain Blood and Codename Matt,etc which were flying,spacey ,shooty adventure types but after that i do not recall any other game even coming close to Elite even on other machines.
I too had the pleasure of following Ultimate from the start with Jetpac possibly being the first Speccy game i ever played and they were way ahead for the time,i liked all their earlier games and even though i disliked Underwurlde because i found it too hard to play i still thought it a high quality game it was simply just the fact i had no patience.(stupid bubbles)
But even i in the laster stages did start to think.."Whats happened at Ultimate have they been bought out and had a change of staff or something" i mean Martianoids!? wtf!? complete scatt!