The name of this device was Mockingboard, an extension card build by Sweet Micro Systems and sold for $179 in 1983 (more than $470 adjusted for inflation). In addition, Exodus had a very interesting innovation: an original soundtrack created by Kenneth Arnold and available only to players who had installed a custom board in their Apple II. Other important changes were: animated tiles for enemies in the overworld map (in Ultima II, only the sea tile was animated), and a new combat system with a top-down view in a custom map for both the overworld map and the 3D dungeons. And he had big plans: he was going to abandon the graphic style of his first three games, the High-Resolution Mixed mode with its two screen panels (top panel for the graphics, bottom one showing 4 lines of text), to build a new interface, with the well known blue borders around the map, the party window, and a small box for text, chats with NPCs and combat information. Ultima II was programmed by Garriott and Arnold, Ultima III would be Richard’s solo project with a minor addition from Arnold.
While Akalabeth was written entirely in Applesoft Basic by Garriott, and Ultima was mostly done in Basic with the overworld map coded in Assembly by Kenneth Arnold, Ultima II and Ultima III were coded purely in Assembly.
This game had to be a hit, or his newly founded company, Origin Systems Inc., would go bankrupt in less than a year. He immediately started working on his new game, “Ultima III: Exodus”.
After leaving On-Line Systems, Garriott founded his first company with his brother Robert, his father Owen, and one of his best friends, Chuck Bueche.
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