I owned and played the original Ultima 9, and never really had a problem with it. I had to dig it up to see if it was the original. It is really a shame that so many people had trouble with it, it was actually a pretty good game. There wasn't much for replay value in this game however.

The system I used was an AMD Athlon 500mhz w/Win98 SE. It was the old slot a, and the card was the Voodoo 3. I don't remember what the sound card was, but I also played this game on a 650mhz Athlon with an ATI rage card and had no trouble.
 

Likewise. In fact I played it all the way through twice without ever patching it and without ever having any problems with it. I quite liked the game, actually.

But then again I was a latecomer to the Ultima series -- to date I've only played Ultima 8 and 9. (And liked both, although U8 was a bit too fiddly.)
 

God, I remember U9.

The game would get progressively slower and slower as you played it. The graphics was mediocre. Voice acting was hideous. One of my friends described as "it was playing a giant Quake level," which was pretty bad, since he wanted to play an RPG.

And the worst part? Years later, I got to play Ultima VII, and I enjoyed myself in ways I never could with U9. How messed up is that?
 

U7 had its share of bugs 'n stuff with its initial release, though, if I recall correctly. Things like - uh, disappearing keys. Wrapping around your virtue in certain circumstances so you went from being extremely virtuous to shunned by party members. Getting a weapon stuck to your hand forever. And then there was that awful Voodoo high memory driver...

And my disks came with a boot-sector virus. I don't know if it was a real boot-sector virus or just a false positive on the virus scanner. Probably the latter. But Origin replaced my disks.

But...

It was still my favorite of the series. And my favorite CRPG of all time. A couple of games have come very, very close, but none have exceeded it. Yet. But that may be because the game is tinted with nostalgia. I haven't gone through and actually tried to play it again recently beyond the first fifteen minutes or so.
 

U9 was like buying a turd in a box, when you opened it and saw you bought a turd.. man the dissappointment.

but the signs were there after u8. buying u8 was like buying a box with a half turd/half pyrite.

a cubic zirconia is better value for money than a boxed copy of u9...
 

Come on, Stu, quit holding back and tell us how you feel... :)

Actually, this made me think about Ultima VIII a little bit, which is where today's post came from. I bought U8 at a discount about a year after its release, after hearing all of the horror stories of its initial problems, and I think I only played the first... I dunno... half hour of it?

It's one of the many games that are "on my list" of games I have some vague fantasy of actually completing someday. Though I expect someday will never come for most of 'em.
 

I bought fountain of dreams on the back of the strength of wasteland (remember pre internet speedy communications days)...

that was.. well it wasnt even a cubic zirconia it was a note saying go buy some sand an a blowtorch and make your own glass chip.

i did get a free (really small) sized EA tshirt and some plastic sunglasses (big 80'style reflective chips type lenses!)

shame about the game... (i did finish it tho)