Top games of my childhood: Ultima III: Exodus

It took me a while to actually end up remembering the title of this game despite the fact that I had such fond memories of it and that will maybe make sense after I explain this one area of the game that really stood out as being something unusual in every way.

The music, the design, the difficulty of all of this one particular area was just so memorable that here we were probably around 40 years later and I still remember just being completely transfixed by it.

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This game just generally speaking was very similar to so many other games that were released around this time but it was considerably more complicated. This was true to the point that I am rather surprised that it did as well as it did because this was far more complicated than would be possible for most kids to have found entertaining back in the 80's. While the original game was released on I believe it was the Apple 2 machine, it would be another 4 years before it was ported to the NES, which is where I first encountered it.

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If you have one of these in your library, don't get excited. It is considered extremely common and is only valuable if it was never opened and in mint condition. An opened game where some of the components such as the guide book or map is missing or damaged is only worth about $25, which is probably how much it cost when it was released so adjusted for inflation it is actually worth less money than when it was released. Shame.

Now, i'll be honest with you, this game is an absolute turd by today's standards but back in 1987, when I first played this game, we were just excited to have any sort of RPG that functioned like this. It was similar to Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, Dragon Warrior (see what I did there?), and basically any other game where you had a party that you would level up, have some basic commands in your menu, and be subjected to some early notions of open-world game design.

That is part of what made it so great though because almost all other games that could even be considered RPG's at the time simply wouldn't allow you to access more difficult areas but in Exodus you would get let known you don't belong somewhere by getting your butt whooped by the enemies there - which is something that all of us became very familiar with from more recent games like and of the Elder Scrolls games and for me, especially Skyrim.

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Walking around was a little bit different in this one than in others like it that existed at the time because you could actually see the enemies on the world screen instead of all battles just being random encounters that were generated by RNG. So if you were clever, you could actually avoid battles that you would prefer not to be in.

When you did get into battles they had a sort of open field battle system I think just to differentiate themselves, there didn't appear to be any sort of tactical advantage in these battles based on where you were standing.

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I don't really remember all that well to be honest with you and that is fair when you consider that it has been nearly 40 years since it was released.

What I do remember, is this magical area that I believe was optional called "Ambrosia." I think that anyone else that played this also remembers this because even though it was 8-bit, the sound, the ambiance, the lack of enemies and the frustrating puzzles were something that just sticks with you over time.

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After driving your boat into a whirlpool that you probably avoided in the past, your boat and you get whisked away to a magical place that has a few people in it and you are told "this is Abrosia" and that is all the information you get. you cannot get out by going back and you are basically stuck here.

You wander around a rather frustrating landscape that is thankfully devoid of enemies seeking out various temples where if you get to the monk or whatever that is in charge of it, he asks for a donation. Give the 100 GP donation and the monk will permanently upgrade your stats (STR, INT, DEX) a point. So if you got here and had a bunch of money on you, you could max out the stats for the remainder of the game.

This, over time, became such a critical in-game cheat of sorts that even speedrunners go to Ambrosia simply for these stats.

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I'm not gonna get into it but there was apparently an optimal way to do this that pre-teen me didn't concern himself with. I just wandered around and figured it out, which was the style at the time since we had no internet.

The song was just haunting and very well done for an NES game. Some dude has gone and remixed it using today's technology and to me at least, it is just fantastic.

Because we didn't know any better at the time, the frustrating elements of this game didn't seem frustrating to us. We saw it as having a ton of options that were not available in other games seeing as how your menu had a ton of choices in it and sometimes the things that would happen would seem extremely random and well, a lot of people bought the tip guide book exactly for this reason, which was the true method of cheating back in the day.

I never bought one of those books though and the fact that I figured out "Ambrosia" at all is still impressive to me to this day. I do not have that level of patience today. I would imagine my parents probably thought I had some sort of mental disorder as I would sit in front of the CRT television that weighed 800 lbs for hours on end as they heard the same music over and over and over again until a few days later I probably finally got out of Ambrosia and carried on with the rest of the game.

But just like a lot of gaming choices back in the mid to late 80's we weren't spoiled for choice like we are today. If you bought or borrowed a game, chances are you would play that game all the way to the end of it because you likely didn't have many other ones.

I have fond memories of Ultima III: Exodus, but that being said, I think it would end up being my own personal hell to be forced to play it from start-to-finish today.