Ultima IV

[Demon_Skeith]

Michael Abbott teaches undergraduates about the history of video games. They must play the old, ugly stuff. Defender? They can deal. Planetfall? It's a struggle. But there's this one game they just can't take.

Ultima IV.

Historic, important, innovative, (no, I've never played it), legendary role-playing game Ultima IV.

He gave them five days to play it. [UPDATE: Abbott e-mailed me more info about this class. It is a freshman seminar called The Art and History of Video Games. The students are 18 or 19 years old.]

Some of the students' problems:

• When I start a game I like to do it all on my own, but it's been impossible to do so with Ultima. I've asked friends for help, looked up FAQs/walkthroughs, and even searched for Let's Play Ultima 4 on youtube and am still uncertain as to how to get further in this game.

• I tried for awhile without any walkthroughs to get the full gamer experience sort thing and within the hour I gave up because of a combination of bad controls and a hard to get into story for me at least. It reminded me of a bad runescape.

Some of the teacher's woes:

I had supplied them with the Book of Mystic Wisdom and the History of Britannia, both in PDF form, but not a single student bothered to read them. "I thought that was just stuff they put in the box with the game," said one student. "Yes," I replied, "They put it in there because they expected you to read it." "Wow," he responded.

more here

sounds like a harsh class :unsure: