Dino's Ultima Page is one of many fan websites dedicated to the Ultima series of games. The site started in 2002 to host a copy of a long-lost Ultima fanfiction, and quickly grew into one of the leading Ultima news and information websites.
Although the site took a long break starting at the end of 2011, and its function of reporting news about the Ultima community has waned with the decline or completion of most major Ultima remakes, it is still regularly updated.
More importantly, Dino's Ultima Page still serves as an important hub of Ultima information. Aside from helping people to find relevant information by means of thousands of links to external websites, Dino's Ultima Page also hosts its own extensive guides to some of the games including Ultima 1, Ultima 8, the lesser known The Savage Empire, and the obscure Ultima: Escape from Mount Drash.
Finally, Dino's Ultima Page also tries to preserve some of the history of the Ultima community's online presence via its Ultima Web Database 2 and also by hosting either entire Ultima websites created by other people, or individual pieces of information and media that would otherwise be lost.
Ultima is a series of computer role-playing games (CRPGs) created by Richard Garriott (also known as Lord British) and his company Origin Systems, Inc. Ultima set a high standard for CRPGs even back in the early 1980s, with the games featuring open-world exploration, memorable characters, and rich packaging.
However, the series matured considerably with Ultima 4, when it departed from its Dungeons & Dragons roots and focused more on a system of virtues, complex plot, and a living, breathing world instead of the usual quest to defeat the next villain.
The series spans nine mainstream games, as well as several spin-offs (including the critically acclaimed Ultima Underworld and its sequel) released over a period of about 20 years.
In 1992, during the development of Ultima 7, Origin was acquired by Electronic Arts. Ultima 9, released in 1999, was the last mainstream game in the Ultima series, and Origin was shut down in 2004. Since 1999, there have been other games announced under the Ultima trademark, but they were either cancelled or short-lived.
The Ultima series has been highly influential, and attracts a strong fan base to this day. The Ultima Dragons Internet Chapter (UDIC), founded in 1994, succeeds the earlier Ultima Dragons group that started on Prodigy in 1992, and has been the main Ultima fan group ever since. It is one of the oldest fan communities on the internet, is still very active, and numbers many thousands of members.
UDIC members each use an alias that ends in "Dragon". This is a tradition that still exists, but was more popular in the earlier internet days. Many people use their real names on social media nowadays.
The group does not really have any specific rules, other than the usual basic respect. UDIC members come from all walks of life and bond over shared interests that include Ultima but also many other games and hobbies.
Hi! I'm Daniel D'Agostino, creator and still maintainer of Dino's Ultima Page. I joined the UDIC as Dino the Dark Dragon in 2002, a month and a half before Dino's Ultima Page first appeared on the web.
Over the years, I've made several contributions to the Ultima community. The most significant are here at Dino's Ultima Page, such as the guides, walkthroughs, fanfictions, Ultima Web Database 2, interactive exhibits (such as the Ultima 1 Map Viewer, Ultima 4 Dialogues, Savage Empire Cutscenes, and Ultima Underworld 1 Magic), and discoveries (such as the Zeta Bug in Ultima 6, the structure of geographic areas in Ultima 8, and the source of the Gold Falls Bug in The Savage Empire). However, I have also been involved in various Ultima-related projects at different levels including:
More recently, I've done a few speedruns of The Savage Empire, and I hold the record for the fastest run.
© by Daniel D'Agostino 2002-2024