As I was driving home the other day, The Almighty iPod Shuffle decided to take me on a serious nostalgia trip. After serenading me with a megamix of terrible songs from the early 90s, the “Travel Theme” from Ultima V: Lazarus came on. The Travel Theme, for those who don’t know, was specifically written for the Amiga port of Ultima V, and it was the only piece of music included with that version of the game. So the music looped when playing the game – over and over and over again.

Ultima V for the Commodore Amiga wasn’t a great conversion. It was over two years late (part VI had already been released for the PC, significantly advancing the state of the art); its primitive EGA tile graphics looked positively outdated at this point; and it lacked all musical variation found on the other computer systems, featuring that one single song instead. Oh, and it was copy protected! Ultima V on the Amiga came on two nastily protected 3 ½ inch disks, and it saved the only possible savegame on that very same, non-backupable disk! I’ve never been so afraid for my game progress in my life.

But it was a great game. And it was the first game I ever bought! Rather blindly, actually, on recommendation of a tiny article in ASM. And even though this event occurred over 20 years ago (I was only 14 years old) I still remember that day clearly:

• Taking the bus to the city in the early afternoon, longingly inspecting the big, shiny game boxes in the “personal computer” sections of various department stores.
• Weighing the heavy Ultima V box in my hands, pondering whether this should be the game to spend all of my allowance on – but taking the bus back home without having made a purchase.
• Changing my mind later that same day and rushing back to the city, less than 30 minutes before the stores closed.
• Running through Essen to the old Karstadt store, and buying the game.
• Unpacking the cloth map and the thick manual while riding back home on the bus, wondering about the meaning of the enclosed Avatar coin.

And then I started playing the game, and was actually quite disappointed! The graphics were poor, the world was shown from a bird’s eye view (I much preferred 3D dungeons), and the English was very hard to understand (imagine a 14-year old high school kid confronted with faux Shakespearean English for the first time in his life, trying to make sense of words like “thou”, “art” and “thine”).

But I had just spent my entire allowance – 100 German Marks – on this game! And so I kept playing, cloth map draped over a stool next to my computer table. Keeping a journal of all the conversations with NPCs, and the hints that I uncovered. Making a list of every single character in the game, cataloging the towns that they lived in.
After a short while the initial disappointment faded. I became hooked, and I started sinking countless hours into the game as I battled monsters, dodged Shadowlords, traveled through Moongates and tried to wrestle “Words of Power” (which unlocked the game’s 3D dungeons) from hidden members of Britannia’s old wizard council. And as I journeyed through the lands that one piece of Amiga music kept repeating itself for hundreds of hours of playtime.

I never grew tired of it.

All of this came rushing back to me as I was driving home. And I realized something: my wife couldn’t possibly have any idea just how much this game meant to me. So when I arrived at the house I immediately turned into a madman on a mission: I dug up all the old Ultima boxes, unpacked the old cloth maps and other trinkets that came with the games (who can forget the Avatar coin, the Moonstone “gem”, or the lead Ankh pendant?) and recounted this (and other) Ultima stories to her.

And I came to realize something else, something that is best remembered by everybody who is working on games today: this game mattered to me. Just like the games that we make today matter to other people. Kids will obsess over the content that we create, procrastinating on their homework so that they can play. Adults will stay up way past their bedtime playing our games, fully knowing that they’ll pay for it during the next workday. It doesn’t matter if you’re an amateur working on a mod or add-on level, or if you’re a seasoned professional who has years of game development experience under his belt. You’ll make an impact on somebody. I was reading a thread on classic Quake levels last year where somebody told the story of his dad downloading and installing my Beyond Belief level pack for him when he was 7 or 8 years old. Playing these levels is how he remembers playing Quake! That’s priceless, and puts a huge smile on my face.

And that’s why we must always put the best effort into the games that we create. Take pride in what we’re putting out for the world to play. It doesn’t always have to be brilliant, but it must always be quality. So when I have a crappy day at work or am dead tired from the previous evening, I try to remember Ultima V and the many other games that shaped me when I was young. It doesn’t always work when crunch is hard and the day was long, but it’s the best motivation to invest that extra little bit of effort into the game before it ships. The work will matter. Because somewhere out there there’s a 12 year old kid who has chosen to spend his hard-earned allowance on your game – the first game that he ever bought.