I must credit this find to someone I know.  In respect of this persons privacy; I will mention no names.

 

Click here to learn how to use copyrighted material.  I am only posting  this link for educational and informational purposes.  I do not condone nor support piracy of copyrighted material.  I always struggle with this when posting and wanting to use a quote.  I thank the person who made this link available.  If you are reading this;  you know who you are, Thanks again!

I'm a day late with my update of the PS2 games.  A word of advice:  if you're going to do a numbered list make sure you type it correctly and completely the first time.  I haven't found a better way than to erase the whole list and start from scratch when I have made changes as I describle.  I  make a change or correction in the number five position.  Here's how the list looks now:

 

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Please, whatever your political affiliation; take the time to view his site in my "Favorite Links" section.  With our democracy the way it is; I believe we need to think to the future because 2008 is not far away.  McCain would make an excellent president during the transition from war to peace and I believe, that is one of the qualities that no one else could coordinate as well as he.

The three pictures below are from Lord British (Richard Garriott) and were used on a site I built in 1997.  I claim no rights to these pictures that were copied from an Official Ultima site.  These pictures are for educational and historical purposes only and as such should be covered as material from the "public domain".  The commentary is my own and was written at sometime between 1997-1999.

Ultima Three

Exodus

    In Exodus, the evil spawn of Mondain and Minax had to be defeated.  Instead of just one character, the adventurer had a party of four to manage.  The game action was much slower than in the previous game, but the complexity of the strategy was much deeper.   In the final battle the adventurer was even attacked by the bricks in the floor!  I thought I must have gone insane when I was playing the game.  Where was the attack coming from?  What a challenge this game had become.  It had grown from a crude representation of a role playing game into a fantasy world within itself.
    Richard, along with his brother, Robert, had taken the profits that were made from "Revenge of the Enchantress" and formed the company:  Origin Systems.  Exodus had become the premier game of the new company.  What an incredible leap had been made from writing the codes of dungeons and dragons for a few of his friends to forming his own company.

The Age of Darkness Trilogy

Ultima One

     The Ultima Series of Role Playing Games began with Ultima I around 1980.  It was done in black and white originally, but hues were added to the IBM version.  Each of the towns fit onto one screen and the object was to find and defeat the evil Mondain.  The quest would take the adventurer through several continents and dungeons and even into outer space
    Richard Garriott had developed the game from his original dungeons and dragons games that he had written for the Apple II computer.  He published the game under the pseudo name of Lord British, a name he had acquired from his computer friends for his quiet and polite manner.
    The Apple II computer had a graphics memory of only 5k, so some of you may have a very difficult time even beginning to imagine what it was like to play the early games on computer.  The Commodore 64 became the computer of choice for most gamers in those days.  It came out shortly after the Apple II and literally took over the field of computer gaming.  The Apple had a price tag of around $1500 and when the more versatile Commodore came out it sold for a mere $600.  It was not long before the price on it dropped to $129!  All kinds of people were starting to write games for computers and it was a very exciting time for small businesses in the field.
    This was the atmosphere at the time of the release of Ultima One.  Those of us who were both into programming and role playing games became intoxicated with the possibilities and Richard Garriott quickly rose to the top of the field with his continuing series of Ultima.

 

Ultima Two

Revenge of the Enchantress

    Another company published Ultima II.  Garriott had wanted a cloth map and hard box to be included in the packaging of the game.  The original company would not meet this request, so Garriott worked with Sierra to produce the next game of the series.
    Ultima Two had extremely fast action to it.  It had been written in machine language.  The object was to find the evil spawn Minax and wrest back control of the planet.  The adventurer was forced into outer space, through time and into dungeons to complete the quest.  When I bought the game, everything else became immediately boring.  Although, the plot of the game was still rather simple by the standards of the later games, it was infinitely superior to anything else on the market at that time.  Minax had to be killed twice (or should I say her twin also had to be killed) in order to beat the game.  I thought I had beaten it until a friend pointed out the actual ending.
    I played this game while I was getting my college degree.  My best friend and I were both married and I am sure it drove our wives crazy.  Everywhere we went we simulated noises from the game. 

Needless to say, all my "Top Ten" lists are strictly my own opinions.  If you want to comment on a list, you're welcome to do so.  Just respond to which ever entry in my blog seems most appropriate; include upon which list you are commenting and post your thoughts. 

Resident Evil 4 ...has all the makings of one of the top three games on the PlayStation 2.  Look for a revision of my Top 10 PlayStation 2 Games within the next week.