Ultima - Worlds of Adventure 2 - Martian Drea

Year 1991, I'm sitting at my 486 and trying to understand what's happening — on Mars I meet Sigmund Freud and Nikola Tesla. Sounds like a nightmare after a bad dinner, but that's exactly how Martian Dreams begins.

It's an RPG from ORIGIN Systems, the second and final installment of the Ultima: Worlds of Adventure spin-off series. While the first game, Savage Empire, took players to a prehistoric world inside the Earth, this one went with a Victorian sci-fi dream — an expedition from the end of the 19th century unexpectedly arrives on Mars and you have to get it back. Historical figures like Tesla, Freud, or Rasputin aren't just window dressing, but actual participants in the story. In 1991, that was something worthy of attention.

The engine is the same as Ultima VI — isometric view, fully interactive world where you can take, open, or break almost anything. Mouse and keyboard controls work, though the interface today feels like a puzzle in itself. The Martian world is quite expansive, full of crumbling Martian cities, mysterious dream spheres, and NPCs with things to say. Exploration is rewarding, but the pace is slow and navigation without a map or notes hurts. Anyone who doesn't read the dialogue carefully will soon be lost.

What keeps the game afloat even after thirty years is the atmosphere. The visual style — colorful, detailed for its time — truly evokes old illustrations of science fiction novels. The music on Sound Blaster reinforced that strange mix of otherness and Victorian nostalgia. The story wasn't afraid to be mature and slightly melancholic. What aged worse is the controls and the lack of any help for lost players — back in the nineties, that was solved by a thick manual that few people have today.

Today Martian Dreams will suit fans of old RPGs who have patience for slower pacing and enjoy exploratory games where the story doesn't scream at you every minute from all sides. If you've never encountered Ultima before, this isn't the best entry point — but as a curiosity that took the genre to the Red Planet before it was fashionable, it's worth checking out.