Origin System's 1992 release Ultima VII is frequently cited online as one of the best RPGs of all time. So it's understandable that there is a large contingent of players who might still want to revisit it in the modern day.
However, as the game was originally developed for DOS, compatibility with modern operating systems is pretty much non-existent, meaning you will more than likely have to rely on resources from the game's community, to get it to run on modern machines.
In the past, we've covered projects on the site like Ultima VII Revisited (from the RPG developer/programmer Anthony Salter), which aims to provide a replacement engine for the landmark title to make it run on modern machines in isometric 3D. But that isn't the only option available to fans of the game. For those who want a more faithful top-down experience, there is also another stand-in engine that you probably know about, called Exult, which has been around for a while now and was originally started by Jeff S. Freedman, aka "DrCode".
Why are we talking about all this now? Well, it appears Exult has just received a pretty exciting new update (update 1.12, thanks UltimaCodex!), which makes several improvements to Ultima VII Part Two: Serpent Isle, such as fixes for crashing, improved MIDI audio, enhancements to the unedited Serpent Isle intro graphics, and various other tweaks, ahead of the game switching from Simple DirectMedia Layer 2 to SDL3. This means there's really no better time than the present to jump into these classic titles.
Here's the full change list:
- Fixed crash in SI training.
- Running against doors properly opens and closes them.
- Scrolls in SI are now properly displayed.
- Schedules for eat-at-inn and desk work were broken.
- Antimagic rain caused by the cube generator is now dissipating fast enough.
- Fixed using too-close objects.
- Polymorphed NPCs will revert back to their original bodies when they die.
- List field fights in SI are now properly handled.
- Mini status icons in face stats.
- Emergency save game and crash log creation on Windows.
- New higher resolution icons for Exult and Exult Studio.
- Better graphics for the uncut SI intro.
- Several MIDI music fixes.
- Advanced Audio Settings for the MIDI drivers that individually allow for choosing which soundfont to use, MIDI conversion, chorus, and reverb.
- You can now use FluidLite instead of FluidSynth when compiling Exult.
- Bilinear scaler fixes and refactor.
- With bigger game resolutions the party speed changes sooner.
- The Android port now allows you to download games and mods you want to install.
- The GIMP 3.0 plug-in for SHP files.
- Aseprite plug-in for SHP files.
You can find the download here for MacOS, Android, and Windows. It's absolutely free, but do bear in mind, that you'll need a copy of the game's original files to make it run as intended.