Ultima or Zelda?

Ok so which is the best? You have to answer why with reasonable responses as well as the question below.

1.) Which was more important to gaming?

I personally think that Ultima was the most important since it helped to pioneer RPGs on a gaming platform as well as revolutionize them in the 90s. Ultima 4 was the first to introduce "choices and consequences" aspect as part of the gameplay which obviously can be found in most new or highly regarded RPGs of the late 90s or today.

zelda. 20 years of quality bar 2 dodgy games. thats impressive.

ultima is a good series also but its a bit hit and miss. ultima 9, for example, was a broken shoddy mess. a very ambitous mess but a mess none the less. ultima online was a real revolution though and a crackin mmo.

There's a reason the Zelda series is as hailed as it is. Ultima was great, no doubt, but looking at what games like Zelda: LTTP and OOT did for gaming, and it's not much of a contest imo.

When people are arguing the best game of all time - no one brings up an Ultima game.

Am I alone or does this seem like an odd comparison to anyone else?

This is actually a very tough'n.

Zelda has kept a steady line of games for over 21 years and has created a genre of its own, inspiring many a company to make something to add to this steamer.

Ultima though, is something else. It made its own style of RPG and was one of the first graphical ones you could find. It's very free-form and allows you to pretty much take whatever side you like; either go on and doing quests or stealing from stores in towns and kingdoms, killing guards and merchants and even your own king! It's quite an interesting and long series on its own.

Although since Zelda has a simple and straight-forward plot, and just has kept stable after all these years, I'd have to vote for it. Sorry, Origin!

What's Ultima? Lol, since it doesnt seem to be popular, and since it hardly has any new games, well just look at Ocarina of time and I think we know which franchise is better ;)

What's Ultima? Lol, since it doesnt seem to be popular, and since it hardly has any new games, well just look at Ocarina of time and I think we know which franchise is better ;)

Matthew_han

It doesn't seem to be popular? You could've at least wikied Ultima to get a better understanding of it. Anyways, Ultima has always been a popular franchise and to this day Ultima Online is being played by thousands upon thousands of people on hundreds of servers. Besides the fact that Ultima Online helped pioneer the MMO, Ultima Underworld helped pioneer the FPS. The creators of Doom took the idea of Ultima Underworld and ran with it to make one of the most important FPS in existance. Ultima 6, 7, and Ultima Underworld continue to populate Top 50 and Top 100 lists all over the net and game mag world. ;)

You can compare Zelda to anything and most of the time Zelda will win(opinions differ I guess)

You can compare Zelda to anything and most of the time Zelda will win(opinions differ I guess)

blingchu55

I never expected Ultima to win. :(

I guess I was hoping there were more old-geezers like me on these boards...

Hopefully this thread and the comment I just made two posts ago will broaden the gaming history of a few of these new gamers. I see too often where people say that the RPG was created with Final Fantasy and that gaming died completely in the 80s and picked up in the 90s. No, console gaming died in the 80s and RPGs started with DnD for computer but really took off with Ultima 1.

Ultima smokes zelda.. Zelda is kiddy compared to Ultima. Ultima is actually well-written. Only a nintendo fanboy whose never played Ultima (from at least Ultima 3 onward) would claim otherwise.

What I miss most about the early Zeldas:

The smell of the popcorn my best friend & I ate while adventuring through Hyrule.
The excitement when we finally beat that annoying boss.
The TV commercial for the original Legend of Zelda with that crazy dude in tights.
The main theme song.

What I miss most about the early Ultimas (1 through 5)

Actually playing them.

Then again, that pretty much sums up any comparison between a Nintendo game & any other real clas sic.