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Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness

From PCGamingWiki, the wiki about fixing PC games
Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness
Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness cover
Developers
Origin Systems
DOS John Fachini
Publishers
Electronic Arts
Release dates
DOS 1987
Windows (DOSBox) August 30, 2011[1]
macOS (OS X) (DOSBox) October 18, 2012[2]
Taxonomy
Monetization One-time game purchase, Expansion pack
Modes Singleplayer
Genres RPG
Themes Fantasy
Series Ultima
Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness on HowLongToBeat
Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness on IGDB
Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness guide on StrategyWiki
Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness on MobyGames
Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness on Wikipedia
Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress 1982
Ultima III: Exodus 1983
Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar 1985
Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness 1987
Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny 1988
Ultima VI: The False Prophet 1990
Worlds of Ultima: The Savage Empire 1990
Ultima Worlds of Adventure 2: Martian Dreams 1991
Ultima VII: The Black Gate 1992
Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss 1992
Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds 1993
Ultima VII Part Two: Serpent Isle 1993
Ultima VIII: Pagan 1994
Ultima Online 1997
Akalabeth: World of Doom 1998
Ultima IX: Ascension 1999

Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness is a singleplayer RPG game in the Ultima series.

The original 1980/1981 version was released only for Apple II and Atari 8-bit computers. The DOS version was released in 1987 and is probably based on the 1986 remake for Apple II and Commodore 64. This DOS version was actually released after the DOS version of Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar and supports EGA graphics out of the box.

Unlike the DOS versions of Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress, Ultima III: Exodus and Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar, the game runs without issues on faster systems even when not using any unofficial patches. However, it suffers from some additional bugs when compared to the 1986 version for Apple II and C64. For example, the armor apparently does not give any protection during combat in the dungeons.[3]

General information

The Codex of Ultima Wisdom - A huge wiki for the series
GOG.com Community Discussions for game series
GOG.com Support Page

Availability

Source DRM Notes Keys OS
Retail
DRM details are not known
Run in DOSBox.
DOS
GOG.com
DRM-free
DOS version in DOSBox. Includes Ultima II and Ultima III. Pre-packaged with DOSBox.[4]
Windows
macOS (OS X)
Origin
Origin
Not available in some regions.
Windows

Game data

Save game data location

System Location
DOS <path-to-game>\PLAYER*.U1
Windows <path-to-game> (mounted in DOSBox)[Note 1]
macOS (OS X) <path-to-game> (mounted in DOSBox)[Note 1]
Characters are saved as individual files (PLAYER1.U1, PLAYER2.U1, etc.)

Save game cloud syncing

System Native Notes
GOG Galaxy
Origin

Video

Graphics feature State Notes
Widescreen resolution
320x200 only.
Multi-monitor
Ultra-widescreen
4K Ultra HD
Field of view (FOV)
Windowed
For DOSBox toggle with Alt+ Enter (see the glossary page for other workarounds).
Borderless fullscreen windowed
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Anisotropic filtering (AF)
Anti-aliasing (AA)
Vertical sync (Vsync)
For DOSBox use an unofficial build (see the glossary page for other workarounds).
60 FPS and 120+ FPS

Input

Keyboard and mouse State Notes
Remapping
For DOSBox use the DOSBox Mapper (see the glossary page for other workarounds).
Mouse acceleration
Mouse sensitivity
Mouse input in menus
Mouse Y-axis inversion
Controller
Controller support
For DOSBox use the DOSBox Mapper (see the glossary page for other workarounds).
Controller types

Audio

Audio feature State Notes
Separate volume controls
On/off only; toggle with N.
Surround sound
Subtitles
Everything is text-based.
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
For DOSBox change the priority background value in the DOSBox configuration file.
Royalty free audio

Localizations

Language UI Audio Sub Notes
English

Other information

API

Technical specs Supported Notes
DOS video modes

System requirements

Windows
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) XP, Vista
Processor (CPU) 1.8 GHz
System memory (RAM) 512 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD)
Video card (GPU) DirectX 7 compatible
macOS (OS X)
Minimum
Operating system (OS) 10.6.8
Processor (CPU) Intel Core Duo 2 GHz+
System memory (RAM) 1 GB
Hard disk drive (HDD)
Video card (GPU) 64 MB of VRAM

Notes

  1. 1.0 1.1 File/folder structure within the installation folder reflects the path(s) listed for DOS game data. For the GOG.com release, file changes in DOSBox are redirected to <path-to-game>/cloud_saves/ even if GOG Galaxy is not used (this folder contains all redirected files, so some files in the cloud_saves folder might be temporary files or other files that do not contain saves or settings).

References