It as if your favourite band - at their commercial and creative peak - replaced their frontman and lead songwriter with a 17 year-old fan who had only learned to play the guitar the previous year. Refreshing as it almost was not to have yet another Ultimate isometric title, Cyberun felt not so much a throwback as altogether dated, a bad cover version of what Ultimate once did so well. Though succeeding in being something of a combination of those two classics - with a vaguely similar art style and sound effects - the reality was a long way from such early highs.
#The ultimate game 2000 manual#
Notably, it was the only Ultimate game for the C64 not to be developed by attic coders Dave and Bob Thomas, and was instead the work of fruity Spaniard Manual Caballero.Īnother post-ANUS GOLD sale release, Cyberun was clearly intended to conjure up memories of Ultimate's early hits, Lunar Jetpac and Lunar Jetman.
This had a similar effect to presenting your significant other with an expensive-looking ring box which actually contained nothing but rat excrement. Ultimate were seemingly putting all of their efforts into the packaging - which sported the exact same attention to detail as the company's Spectrum games. Uninspired at best, an outright travesty at worst, Commodore 64 owners could only look on with envy and confusion at the games their Spectrum-owning rivals were playing. The leaden controls were bad enough, but the worst crime this game committed was once again failing utterly to live up to the high bar set by the rest of the company's output. Not as revolting as it might sound, these eggs emerged from your eagle's beak. Still, perhaps helped by some typically iconic Ultimate packaging and the company's reputation, it sold well enough that Rare rushed out a follow-up.ĭespite some nice parallax scrolling, Imhotep was arguably the worst game ever released under the Ultimate brand.Įssentially an Ancient Egypt-themed shoot 'em up, the player took to the skies on the back of an eagle, and shot what appeared to be eggs at enemies. YOU JUST CAN'T (COULDN'T) GET THE STAFF THESE (THOSE) DAYS!!?!!! Nevertheless, the thing for which Ultimate was best known - its boundary-pushing visuals - were desperately lacking. U-u-u-u-u-u-uuuuu!ĭespite it being greeted with bafflement, there was a reasonable amount of depth, as you explored the castle in search of its titular magic staff there were hidden rooms, assorted spells and items to use. The Staff of Karnath was ugly, unremarkable, and unimpressive.
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Unaware that the Stampers weren't involved, most Commodore 64 owners had expected Ultimate to make full use of their system's alleged extra power, and produce a game that boasted the sort of high productuion values Spectrum owners had become accustomed to. Worse still, there was no relying on Sir Arthur to bring personality to the game - he had as much charisma as the inside of a mitten. As the first Ultimate game released without the input of the Stamper Brothers, The Staff of Karnath lacked the cartoonish quality of its Spectrum stablemates, adopting a grotesque, side-scrolling, 2.5D style which did little make it stand out. Initially a blonde Trump-alike in a high-vis vest, Pendragon took it upon himself to travel the world destroying magical objects. With the exception of ports for Sabre Wulf, Underwurlde and Night Shade, the majority of Ultimate's Commodore 64 titles were based around the "character" of aristocratic nobody Sir Arthur Pendragon.
Here, then, are the ten Ultimate games which The Official Version of Events would rather you forgot.
You see, for every great Ultimate game there was a really awful one - whether excreted onto the Commodore 64 (for which the Stampers outsourced all the work to two men in a loft), or on the Spectrum after the brand had been pimped-off to legendary shovelware facilitators US Gold. Indeed, there's an Ultimate which released a whole load of rubbish. There's another side to the Ultimate story, a darker side - a side which doesn't entirely feature classic after classic. Now get a load of this: everything you believe is wrong. Like a crop-happy jockey that's hepped-up on "bennies", it's common knowledge that the company rode the ZX Spectrum faster and harder than anyone else. Hewn into the very DNA of history itself.įounded by the enigmatic and inscrutable Chris and "Tim" Stamper, Ultimate discharged one classic after another, from Jetpac through Atic Atac, to Underwurlde, to Knight Lore. This is a fact: Ultimate Play The Game released the best home computer games of the 1980s.
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