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Comment by tibbon | Hacker News Reader

I’m mostly shocked that Ultima Underworld isn’t getting more attention. Not as fast paced, but if memory serves me they shipped before Doom, and did some really in depth things for the time considering the hardware and prior titles.

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It was great but nowhere close to Doom in terms of frame rate and tempo which I think made all the difference.

Yes Ultima Underworld was like the modern 3d RPG appeared in one stroke, fully formed. Also it's world was full of things and NPCs one could interact with, where the Doom maps were largely empty.

You could argue that Akalabeth was the original FPS!

Indeed. I remember getting Akalabeth and it’s floppy disk in a ziplock plastic bag. Rushed home to play it on my apple //c. I was hooked. Played all the ultimas, including other origin games. In those days, I also played the original wolfenstein on the apple. It had synthesized sound for speech. That same sense of wonder and fun I experienced with these games hit me again when I played wolfenstein 3D, doom, and quake. Some of today’s games like assassin’s creed, Witcher, Zelda on switch give that same mix of emotion and fun.

>wolfenstein on the apple. It had synthesized sound for speech

"Hoo ta ta" "Ay eeeeeeeee!"

I may not remember what I had for breakfast this morning, I can remember sound effects for a computer game I havent played in 20 years :)

Edit: Thought you meant Wolfenstein 3d when you mentioned original Wolfenstein. I cant remember the sound effects for original Wolfenstein.

Guards would scream movie Nazi German snippets at you. "Achtung!" etc. Seems a bit simple now, but almost nothing else like it on the Apple II and C64 when it came out.

No, Maze War was the original FPS. Maze War came out in 1973; Akalabeth didn't come out until 1979.

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