Ultima VII. One of the best CRPGs that has inspired or influenced most modern CRPGs. What happens when a golden oldie meets one of the hottest gaming handhelds in modern history? You get to relive a classic in style.
Introducing a port of Exult to the Playstation Portable platform, a framework that allows you to play Ultima VII: The Black Gate / Forge of Virtue as well as Serpent Isle / The Silver Seed.
It took a bit of wrangling and there were bumps along the way, but here it is, playable. We also made some cosmetic updates; I pixeled a few bits of custom graphics for an interface and illustrated a background for the PSP EBOOT and Chemical crafted a swank new logo for us and put together our online home to make the experience that much more enjoyable for you folks out there. ExultPSP isn’t perfect, however. It wasn’t written with the PSP in mind, so there is one remaining issue, namely memory consumption; I ironed out as many problems as I could, but Exult has quite the appetite for memory which slowly increases and increases as you play. Eventually, the PSP will be able to provide no more, resulting in a crash (it will however let you know that it has run out of memory). So you’ll have to save your game occasionally. Despite this, you should be able to get decent stretches of gameplay before this happens. Another issue that snuck up on me is that Serpent Isle isn’t playable in this public release. Rest assured this will be remedied in the next release. One final important note, do not suspend your PSP while ExultPSP is playing. I haven’t yet accounted for sleep mode, and doing so will wipe out critical memory – I don’t want to guess what kind of catastrophe can ensue because of it. Just quit ExultPSP before you shut off or suspend. Make sure you read the included readme text for all the info you need to get this up and running on your Playstation Portable!
And with that, I hope you Ultima fans of old and those new to this game enjoy this offering, as much as we had making it happen. My thanks to Chemical and the testers for their encouragement and support, as well as the Exult Team who deserve the reverence. Ultima VII truly is a remarkable game that has stood the test of time. Enjoy the Adventure that awaits!