The Ultima series of computer games hold a special place in my heart – my love of computer games is strongly tied to the evolution of the series, from the precursor (Akalabeth, which I played obsessively on my friend Terry’s Apple II in Junior High), to Ultima III which I played all through high school, to Ultima IV which I played for several years on my commodore 64, these games along with the Wizardry series played a huge role in my development as a games player.

I mention all of this because over the past week or so I’ve stumbled on not one but three distinct approaches to playing an Ultima game on modern computers. One, Lazarus, uses the Dungeon Siege engine and is a re-envisioning of Ultima V with somewhat modern graphics and a radically different combat engine. Another, Nazghul, endeavors to become a toolkit that will allow anyone to develop their own ‘Ultima 5-like’ games, and features graphics and gameplay systems that are very true to the original Ultima 5. The third, Ultima 6 online, turns the gameplay of Ultima 6 into an online mmorpg.

Lazarus is the most approachable for folks looking for a quality modern RPG. It requires a copy of the original Dungeon Siege game, which you can find for under $10 these days. Even if you’ve never played an Ultima before it’s a pretty fun game with decent graphics, and it works with both Macs and PCs. If you’re looking to play online than Ultima 6 online is obviously the way to go. It’s pc only, and the server has a tendency to come and go, but really it’s a pretty amazing accomplishment, this came out of nowhere for me. Nazghul is the most interesting though, in that it’s really a toolkit (though it comes with a developed adventure to demo the system) that will hopefully gain some interest and lead to some fun modules shipping. It’s open source and cross platform and a tiny download. It’s also developed in Scheme, which is something of a novelty, at least to me.

All are worth checking out if you’re a fan of the old Ultima series of games, and Lazarus is worth checking out even if you weren’t.

I’ve mentioned OpenTTD, the excellent free update to the seminal transport strategy game Transport Tycoon Deluxe before, but I’ve continually forgotten to mention the alternative, Simutrans. Whereas OpenTTD is firmly based on the original Transport Tycoon Deluxe, and requires the original TTD game files to play, Simutrans endeavors to be its own game. It’s based on the same set of gameplay elements but doesn’t require anything from the original TTD and uses a higher resolution graphics file format. In theory this should mean it looks better…in practice maybe not so much, at this point I’d say they’re equal. At any rate Simutrans is well worth a look if you enjoy the genre. As with OpenTTD Simutrans is cross platform and free.

If you’ve got a pc and are playing World of Warcraft, check out the WoWmodelview and WoWmapview, which let you fly through the World of Warcraft world and examine the 3d models in the game. This is kind of spoilerish in that you can take away some of the fun to be had exploring the world and discovering new monsters, but it can also be helpful if you’re struggling to work your way through one of the game’s instance dungeons and want to explore it offline without the penalty of dying repeatedly. Both are free, open source and relatively small downloads.

I love tactical rpgs. They’re one of my favorite gaming genres, and I buy and play almost every one that’s released, often even the stinkers. One of the kings of the genre is Square’s Final Fantasy Tactics, a game I’ve spent more time playing than perhaps anything aside from the Civilization series of games. I was psyched to discover that there’s now an open source project to develop a cross-platform tactical rpg engine inspired by classics like FFT. It’s called Galaxy Mage, and while it’s in very early alpha it’s already in a state where you can play it – there are a couple of maps, a couple of unit types, a rudimentary AI, and a working 3d graphics engine. If the genre interests you this is one to watch, here’s hoping it becomes as succesful as projects like Battle for Wesnoth.