Ultimate series (Johnsonverse)

The Ultimate series is a series of games by Johnson Games, first released in 2013. These are some of the largest and most expensive video games ever created, and seek to create the "definitive experience" associated with the property.

Thus far, there have been three series of games. A fourth was released on November 28, 2020.

Series 1
The first series of games had five games: three with licensed properties, and two original, non-licensed games.

Ultimate Godzilla
The first game in the series, Ultimate Godzilla revolves around the Godzilla franchise, as well as the Gamera, Ultraman, Cloverfield, King Kong, and Evangelion franchises. The game sees the player in a sandbox environment encompassing the entire planet Earth, to-scale, with USGS topographical data and fully-detailed cities. The game features every monster from the Godzilla franchise and Toho films, as well as appearances from monsters in the aforementioned series. The game has four campaigns revolving around an original story, a historical campaign in which the player plays through the history of Godzilla within the Johnson Aligned Universe, plus several Brawl modes and an online mode.

Ultimate Transformers
Released several months after Ultimate Godzilla, this game is identical in concept to the first one, but on a much, much larger scale. The player controls an Autobot or Decepticon, be it a named character, generic background character, or a custom-made character. The game, like the last one, has a Free Roam mode, which is to-scale, with topographical data and accurate transportation systems. The campaign for the game is divided into four chapters: War for Cybertron, Rise of the Dark Spark, Fall of Cybertron, and Transformers G1, all corresponding to pre-existing media (with the fourth and final campaign being the longest). The first three chapters, however, are modified to fit into the Johnson timeline, which is presented as an alternative version of the G1 series. In addition, there is also Conquest (plays like Risk), Bounty (kill Autobots and politicians), and Action (made up of various modes akin to standard shooters, such as Assault, Capture-the-Flag, and Arena, plus a mode for racing as Autobots).

Ultimate Star Wars
The third and largest game in the series, this game takes place on a galactic scale. Players can tweak the game to their liking, whether it be an RPG, third-person shooter, first-person shooter, tactical squad-based shooter, role-playing game, or real-time strategy. The game revolves around basically being a huge sandbox for players to recreate key moments in the series, change them up to create alternative history scenarios (e.g. the Rebels deal a humiliating defeat to the Empire on Hoth, several clone units refuse to heed Order 66, Luke misses and Yavin IV is destroyed, Anakin doesn't get incinerated on Mustafar, IG-88 launches his droid revolution during the Battle of Endor, Kylo Ren is disarmed by a distrusting Han Solo and captured, and Qui-Gon Jinn survives on Naboo), or create their own scenarios. There is no story mode, though every game created after 1992 is featured, ranging from X-Wing to Bounty Hunter, from Republic Commando to The Force Unleashed II. The in-depth online mode features a player-run economy and constantly-shifting galactic politics. Since the game's launch in 2014, there have been four galactic wars, three galactic government changes, a Jedi Purge, 55 planets destroyed or rendered uninhabitable, and over 500 smaller conflicts between smaller factions or systems, with the death of some 500 million NPC sentients, 300 million bounties claimed, and so many credits spent, Johnson Games had to upgrade the system.

Ultimate Space Program
The first game in the series not based on a licensed franchise, the game is best described as Kerbal Space Program with humans. The game sees the player taking charge of the space agency of their choice, in the time period of their choice. Career mode has pre-set objectives, not the least of which include beating the Americans/Soviets to the moon, while sandbox allows players to change spaceflight history (e.g. the Nixon administration cancels the Space Shuttle and continues funding Apollo, Space Shuttle Columbia being the centerpiece of the most spectacular space rescue since Apollo 13, the Apollo 1 fire iss averted thanks to concerned engineers at North American putting a blow-hatch function on the capsule, and Space Shuttle Challenger safely escapes the disintegrating stack and makes a spectacular RTLS abort).

Ultimate Warfare
This game is the ultimate war simulator, going from ancient times to the far future, with everything in between. Players can zoom out as far as Pluto until interstellar travel is researched, and close to the heat of the action. One can simulate pretty much any scenario, from a small border skirmish to a land war in Asia, from a small but significant espionage operation to a nuclear holocaust, in full detail.

Ultimate NASCAR
The ultimate NASCAR simulator, this game has every series, every driver, every track, and every car, ranging from the hot rods of 1949 to the Strictly Stock Car of 2014, and everything in between. The game features many features found in past NASCAR games from other companies, the Team Communicator, Share Draft, Intimidator, and Allies/Rivals system from the EA Sports games (though the Allies/Rivals system has been greatly improved so that drivers won't get angry at drivers who hit them unintentionally). All series, past and present, are included, and the game is constantly updated with paint schemes run in that week's races. It also has Steam Workshop support, allowing players to download cars, tracks, and seasons, including those from outside NASCAR such as ARCA, IndyCar, Formula One, and V8 SuperCars.

Ultimate Marvel
This game, featuring every Marvel game released after 2000, and based on every Marvel-based film, lets the player control all the Marvel superheroes, including Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four, X-Men, Captain America, etc., and just like Ultimate Star Wars, lets players tweak the game to their liking, and create alternate universe scenarios, including Spider-Man turning to evil and Thor aiming for Thanos' hand.