“This Is Greatest Game…Needs Greatest Package”: Notes About Ultima 2 (From Richard Garriott)
Richard Garriott has been going through some old boxes of archived game development material. He graciously shared these hand-written notes about Ultima 2 — some of his discoveries during that process — with the Ultima Codex.
The notes themselves are pretty self-explanatory; one records the need for Ultima 2 to be well-packaged for presentation, and the other lists a bunch of features — or events — that are present in Ultima 2. Interestingly, the game of Nim merits a mention in the feature list, though you’ll note that it has been crossed out. It would ultimately not be until Ultima 6 that a playable form of Nim would be included in an Ultima game.
The First Age of Update: Richard Garriott points out, via Twitter, just what the result of this note was:
@UltimaCodex All games were published in zip lock bags.Most games were coin op knock offs. Ultima was real! I wanted a box, maps & trinkets!
— Richard Garriott (@RichardGarriott) November 23, 2015
.@UltimaCodex Ultima ][ became the 1st game in the histpory of games, to be shipped in a box! Also the 1st use of cloth maps. Then trinkets.
— Richard Garriott (@RichardGarriott) November 23, 2015
And the rest, as they say, is history.
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We are, as always, grateful to Richard Garriott for sharing these glimpses into the history of Ultima 2’s development, and is hopeful that he will continue to unearth more such treasures.
