Ultima I

The world of Ultima is presented in a variety of different ways. The overworld is projected in a topdown, third-person view, while dungeons are displayed in first-person, one-point perspective. In both scenarios the player character is controlled with the keyboard directional arrows; shortcut keys are used for other commands, such as A for attack and B for board.

Character creation at the start of Ultima is not unlike a simplified version of traditional tabletop role-playing games. The player is presented with a number of points to distribute between various statistics that will affect their competence in certain aspects of gameplay. For example, adding points to the Strength statistic will increase the amount of damage inflicted on a foe, while adding points to Charisma results in cheaper deals with merchants. Once this portion of character creation has been completed, the player is given a choice of four races: Human, Elf, Dwarf and Bobbit (a hobbit-like creature).

Ultima is set in the fictional world of Sosaria, a land broken into four different continents. The land is ruled by a total of eight different lords, two for each of the world's four land masses. The four continents contain two castles each, where quests can be obtained by the player. There are two types of quests given out in the castles—one entails visiting a certain location on the main map, the other killing a specific type of monster in the dungeons. Fulfilling the former type of quest gives stat boosts; the latter gains the player an important item needed to reach the endgame.

There are also a variety of towns where different goods and services can be purchased. The world has dungeons to be explored, and is populated by forests, mountain ranges, lakes and oceans. All towns are exactly alike in the original release of the game, as are all dungeons (their maps are different, but are not designed but rather randomly created); castles differ only in the different quests that may be assigned. In the 1986 remake, more variety was added to the appearance and content of the towns and castles.

Richard Garriott started development on Ultima after the unexpected success of his previous game, Akalabeth. Large sections of Akalabeth were used as subroutines within Ultima in order to create the first-person dungeon sections of the game. Towns, quests, a plot and a user interface were all added to the original Akalabeth code before Ultima was completed. Star Wars elements were also added, including spaceships and lightsabers.

Development of Ultima was done during Garriott's freshman year at the University of Texas with the help of a friend, Ken W. Arnold; they finished it in less than a year. Ultima was coded in Applesoft BASIC on an Apple II computer, and Arnold wrote code in assembly language for the tile-based graphics system, the first game in the genre to do so.

Softline stated in 1981 that "Ultima seems to be the best" available Apple II role-playing game. The magazine called the graphics "impressive" and concluded that it "retails for $39.95 and is well worth the price". Deirdre L. Maloy reviewed the game for Computer Gaming World, and stated that "Ultima is one of the best computer fantasy roleplaying games to date."

Computer Gaming World in 1991 and 1993 called the game "truly epic in scope", stating that it was among the first to have outdoor settings and NPC conversations. While noting the "unbalanced combat system", the magazine concluded that Ultima I was "a classic not to be missed".