Jarrod Kailef, Author at Old School Gamer Magazine

The Ultima Series – by Jarrod Kailef

Jarrod Kailef — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 17:35:50 +0000

if you spent your entire lifetime doing so. From amazing modern masterpieces to the most primitive, barely playable first-generation games, it’s hard to determine what’s worth your time and what isn’t. But for old-school gamers like us, one of the best ways to identify early standouts is to look at which games inspired successful modern developers, and my friends, nothing is as well-regarded in the CRPG genre as the Ultima series from Origin Systems. Ultima was preceded by the DND series that Ultima creator Richard Garriott wrote in high school on a DEC….

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Apple II Gaming Firsts – by Jarrod Kailef

Jarrod Kailef — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 14:43:57 +0000

Most people remember the Apple II for classrooms, word processors, and maybe Oregon Trail, but that is only half the story. From 1977 through the late 80s, the Apple II was also a serious game machine. It launched careers, birthed franchises, and set blueprints for entire genres. It did all of this with quirky color, a single-bit speaker, and very little memory. The limitations did not hold it back however; they channeled a wave of creativity.

The Stage, Late 70s to Early 80s The Apple II arrived in 1977 with something unusual for the time: openness. There were expansion slots for add on cards, a friendly BASIC programming language pre loaded in ROM, and graphics modes that, while idiosyncratic, were available to anyone willing to learn them…

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Blockbuster and Final Fantasy II – By Jarrod Kailef

Jarrod Kailef — Sat, 23 Nov 2024 13:31:27 +0000

Spring Break, 1992. It started the moment the final bell rang, signaling the start of a glorious week free from high school… A week I had carefully planned. But it wasn’t the beach that called to me; it was something else entirely: a rented Super Nintendo from Blockbuster Video, accompanied by four games that would shape my entire vacation. I had Pilotwings, F-Zero, Super Mario World, and the North American release of Final Fantasy II. Little did I know, only one of these games would capture my attention so fully that time itself would lose all meaning. That first day was electric. I was practically vibrating with excitement as I hooked up the rented console, untangling the cords with care and slipping in the first cartridge: Pilotwings. The screen flashed to life, and I played. It was fun, don’t get me wrong, but I didn’t feel connected to the game. I lost interest in less than half an hour and moved on.

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Tour of Stern Pinball Factory – by Jarrod Kailef

Jarrod Kailef — Wed, 09 Oct 2024 12:00:12 +0000

Walking into the Stern Pinball Factory just outside Chicago was an experience that left me in awe. Stern Pinball, a company that dominates the market with their self-estimated 90% share of all pinball machines sold today, operates an incredible facility that blends offices, an assembly line, a testing area, a showroom, and more into one cohesive operation. Our tour guide for this fascinating journey was Joseph Marshfield, a member of the marketing department at Stern Pinball, whose passion for the industry shone through every word he spoke.

The Tour: Inside the Production Line We began our tour at the heart of the factory: the main production line. This is where the magic begins, with raw materials and components coming together to form the intricate playfields that will later be housed inside the pinball cabinets. It’s here …

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Ultima IV and Ultima V – by Jarrod Kailef

Jarrod Kailef — Mon, 10 Apr 2023 18:33:44 +0000

The Ultima series certainly stands as one of the most influential and enduring computer role-playing game (CRPG)
franchises of all time. However, Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar and Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny are considered by many CRPG aficionados, myself included, to be representative of the greatest advancements to ever happen to CRPGs.

While Akalabeth (the unofficial Ultima 0) and the first three Ultima games were certainly important foundational examples of the genre, the lasting impact of Ultima IV and V persists even today, almost forty years later. Many ofthe unique features in those games became a blueprint followed by developers for the vast majority of the open world CRPGs created since then. This includes many successful and well-known franchises such as Mass Effect, Fable…

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Lord British – by Jarrod Kailef

Jarrod Kailef — Fri, 07 Apr 2023 07:06:10 +0000

Richard Garriott, AKA Lord British, is one of the most well known names in computer gaming, both old school and modern. His influence is still clearly felt today by scores of developers that credit his games for much of their inspiration. He is the creator of Akalabeth, one of the earliest commercially successful computer RPG games of all time. He is also the mastermind behind the Ultima series of games, a massively successful trilogy of trilogies whose releases spanned two decades, which was crowned by the 1997 release of the first commercially successful MMORPG, Ultima Online, which still operates today.

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Ultima VI – IX by Andrea Contato and Jarrod Kailef

Jarrod Kailef — Sun, 02 Apr 2023 18:40:51 +0000

In March of 1988, Richard Garriott was already hard at work on Ultima VI – The False Prophet. Following the same general
game design strategies he had used previously, the new Ultima was to have an improved and more powerful engine, expanded gameplay, and new features. In the Gamers’ Forum on the online service CompuServe, Richard
revealed some details of the game he had in mind, along with the system requirements. He emphasized that it would not be
available for all Apple II owners, as the game would have 1024 unique tiles, shaded lighting, and a bevy of other features. Richard said it would likely require at least 128K of RAM for the Apple II release, if not more.

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Price of Persia – by Jarrod Kailef

Jarrod Kailef — Fri, 10 Mar 2023 12:52:59 +0000

Prince of Persia is a name well known to both modern and old school gamers, especially after it rose to prominence following the 2010 release of the feature film Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, based on the video game of the same name. The mostnsuccessful video game movie of that era, it earned over $336 million at the box office and held that record for six years.

As one of the most widely ported video game series of all time, there’s a pretty good chance that Old School Gamer readers have played at least one of the many Prince of Persia releases. The games of the series were ubiquitous, available almost everywhere throughout the 2000s. From Windows PCs to every generation of console and mobile platform released by Sony,Nintendo, and Microsoft, all had…

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The History of Ultima Part 1: Humble Beginnings and Zip-Top Bags

Jarrod Kailef — Thu, 29 Sep 2022 16:36:36 +0000

The humble plastic zip-top bag is great for storing a sandwich, but what does it have to do with old school gaming? Quite a bit, in fact! Back in 1979, a young man programmed a video game that was distributed in a zip-top bag, which would come to spawn a trilogy of trilogies, countless spin-offs and ports, and one of the world’s first commercially successful graphical MMORPGs. This series still provides inspiration to game developers all around the world, even today. But, I’m getting ahead of myself! Let’s focus on the beginning:

At the tail end of the 1970s, high school student Richard Garriott worked a part time job at ComputerLand, a well known and successful chain of computer stores. In his spare time throughout high school he had been programming a game on his school’s DEC PDP-11 minicomputer that he called DND. This game produced printed output on a teletype, much like many early games of that era. However, when Richard Garriott received his first home computer from his father, an Apple ][+, he converted his game to a graphical adventure which he named Akalabeth.

After showing the game to friends and co-workers, his boss at ComputerLand suggested that Richard package the game up and sell it at the front counter of their store. While Richard had never intended the game to be published and sold, he decided to give it a try. After spending about $200 dollars to gather materials, quite a large sum back in 1979 for a high school student, he set to work. With cover art drawn by his mother Helen Garriott and a homemade, stapled manual, everything was ready. These would go, along with the 5.25″ floppy disk that contained the game, into a plastic zip-top bag. Roughly twelve of these were sold, before one of them made its way into the hands of California Pacific Computer Company, which at the time was a successful computer game publisher. They saw the potential for great commercial success in Akalabeth and offered Richard a publishing deal where he would receive $5 for each copy they sold. After a plane trip to California, the deal was struck, although Richard chose to use the alias Lord British as the author of the game, rather than his own name.

California Pacific had new cover art and a new manual professionally designed, but as was standard at the time, still sold the game in a plastic zip-top bag. The venture was highly successful, as 30,000 copies of Akalabeth were sold by the end of 1981. This brought Richard Garriott $150,000 in profit, which at the time was even more than the salary of Richard’s famous SpaceLab astronaut father, Owen Garriott. The then 20 year old Richard had a decision to make. Program another game, or head to college?

Richard discussed his options with his family and collectively they decided that he should give a shot to programming another game while still attending college. Richard himself was quoted as saying, “Gee, if what I’m doing for fun can make money, it’s logical to write a much better game intended for publication.” (1)

Richard’s next programming project would be known as Ultima, the first of a series which would launch dozens of games over two decades, and spawn hundreds of similar titles that are still being produced today!

-Jarrod Kailef
https://www.kailef.com

(1) The Official Book Of Ultima by Shay Addams

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