Ultima Underworld…a retro treasure!
Want this? You can get it!
I just stumbled across this, and figured it’d be worth a repost, since it basically speaks most of my own thoughts about Ultima Underworld in relation to the first iD Software titles:
Some people still believe that DOOM was the epitome of early 90s PC gaming in 3D. They are of course wrong, for Origin’s Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss was the true king of the era. It also was the first truly (and fully) 3D game to hit the PC, an architecturally beautiful virtual world and a truly excellent action-CRPG. You too can now love it in the privacy of your home with a little help from this Ultima Underworld auction. It’s the complete and lavishly boxed edition of the game and the seller ships to N. and S. America, United Kingdom, Australia and Germany.
Currently going for a bit over $15 USD, it’s actually quite a reasonably-priced auction item. It is used, but the seller asserts that it is in excellent condition, and the picture supplied with the sale certainly includes all that I remember pulling out of the box when my grandfather handed me his copy of Ultima Underworld back in the day.
So if, good Dragons and Dragonettes, you’ve never played Underworld before, or if your Ultima collection is missing this key piece, why not stop on by the eBay auction and place a bid? You’ve got about four days left to do so.
I love dungeon crawls and Ultima but I just can’t get into Underworld. It’s too clunky, jerky and imprecise. I can run it in DOSBox slowly, normally or ultrafast, but no matter what it’s still a struggle to go where I want, maneuver properly, or God forbid try to pick something up.
Wolfenstein 3D was just a revelation compared to this, despite similar graphic resolution, so it’s not just about slick 3D graphics.
That said though, it’s a shame there has never been a full playable remake with smoother gameplay, and even slightly enhanced graphics. Arx Fatalis is a good substitute but it’s a completely different game and if anything, the graphics are almost distractingly complex.
Ultima Underworld wasn’t as defining a moment in my personal history of gaming as say, Ultima IV, but it was pretty badass on it’s own level.
If I remember correctly, wasn’t there a config file you could edit to change the frame rate or something similar? I ran it once on a much faster system and remember playing with it to improve the experience.
I’m just glad I still have my original copies of Ultima IV, V, VI and VII. And my Official Book of Ultima which is pretty sweet. An original UU would be a hell of an addition now that it’s been suggested…
I have a boxed copy of this game. I actually have original boxed copies of all of these:
Ultima III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, Underworld 1 and 2
I will never part with them, my son will get them when I pass:)
Underworld is an awesome game, I don’t think a 3D dungeon crawler since has had the amount of interaction or interesting things to find as this game does. Not much filler to this game, each level has something interesting to explore. Only complaint is it doesn’t feel much like Ultima.
Doubt it goes for 15$ though, its worth at least 30$ for that complete set. My boxed copy has a bad with the magical runestones in it. I think I have the british version so not sure if the others had that as well.
Honestly, I just played it vanilla, and I never really had a problem with it.
Though, come to think of it, that seems to be my track record. People will tell me “I had massive problems with game X”, and I’ll wonder “really?”, because I’ll rarely see the same issues. Call it luck, I guess.
Okay, granted, the first Wolfenstein game was smoother overall, and controlled easier. But it also set 3D technology back about five years, because while it a) ran on slower hardware and b) sold more copies both because of that fact and due to its shareware distribution model, its engine was positively primitive in comparison to what Underworld had going for it.
WTF DRAGON:
> Though, come to think of it, that seems to be my track record.
> People will tell me “I had massive problems with game X”, and I’ll wonder “really?”, because I’ll rarely see the same issues. Call it luck, I guess.
That’s what custom AUTOEXEC.BAT’s and CONFIG.SYS’s were for. Good ol’ DOS.
SAXON1974:
> I have a boxed copy of this game.
> I actually have original boxed copies of all of these:
> Ultima III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, Underworld 1 and 2
> I will never part with them, my son will get them when I pass
That is badass. I have the Ultima I-III collection, but not the originals. I’m scared to look those up on eBay. I’m too poor for that level of self-flagellation. At least I can say I still have Thexder and Defender of the Crown, but how I pine for my old collection. Adventure Construction Set, The Bard’s Tale… Actually most of my stuff was pirated now that I think about it. Aaargh, serves me right, arrrr…
Don’t really have framerate issues, like I said I can run things very fast in DOSBox. But fast doesn’t equal smooth. The interface is still an unwieldy combination of mouse and keys, and hard-to-get-to corners, and treasure spots you keep overshooting.
Anyway… since we’re all talking about our collections, I FINALLY found the garage box with my old Apple II software and was reunited this weekend with my original Apple versions of Ultima 1 – 5! Some time ago I apparently threw out the original Ultima ziplock, but the rest is all there including my first “Odkin” savegame from 1981!
Hate to be the jackass, but when I read this article I began a little to fear for Aiera. Please don’t start to list every other Ultima auction , even if the seller is a friend.
It’s not news. It’s a bit like reporting that a sack of rice fell in china, since there are always great ultima auctions with good pieces.
Except for the big auction on which the comment flame war was playing out here… 🙂
And sorry, I had to write this….
Dominus: Don’t worry, I don’t often report on auctions & other sales…just stuff that seems noteworthy for one reason or another. In this case, I liked the summary of the game that the other author wrote…and it had the desired affect as well: it got people talking about UW1 and its place in the history of 3D gaming.
Saxon, an original copy of Ultima III with cloth map and manuals can be purchased off of Ebay for under 60 dollars, which adjusting for inflation, is still probably like half the original retail price of the game back in 1983. A decent original copy of Ultima II with manuals and cloth map will probably run you over double that, usually between $100 – $150. That’s probably a good deal more than the original retail price. An original Ultima I or Akalabeth will probably cost you $500+. For some reason, even the 1986 remake of Ultima I (without coins), has been retailing on ebay for consistently well over $100 recently, which is odd, since when I bought my copy off of ebay about a decade ago, it was $20. Weird how prices fluctuate.
Underworld is one of those games you needed to play 20 years ago. The interface is pretty terrible by modern standards, but it was pretty efficient back in 1992 – you could play it all with the mouse and it worked.
It’s a shame none of those Underworld engine remake was completed – I don’t know if you guys had tried the Labyrinth of Worlds engine but it was very impressive: full screen graphics, mouselook based engines, new UI and so on…
DosBox is nice enough, but it’s lame compared to the possibilities a real engine recreation would offer.
Richard Garriot have to made Ultima 8 in Underworld engine (with outdoors, of course) and do not wait until Elder Scrolls stoles the genre. Underworld predates Arena and U9 predates Morrowind, i think so.
I don’t think the virtual world approach would have been viable in a 3D Engine back in 1994.
Arena (which was indeed made after Underworld – UW actually influenced Bethesda) and Daggerfall were designed around that time but they actually do prove my point since they’re actually very trite and lifeless as far as virtual world and interactivity goes.
I wouldn’t say the TES of that time stole anything though – while there are people now who like to hail them as “classics” they were very controversial back in the day, and people who were more into the Ultima philosophy kind of design really cared about them.
There’s a reason Garriott only thought of going the full 3D approach (since the original U9 albeit 3D was isometric) with 3D Acceleration saw the light of day – that’s because it probably wouldn’t have been conceivable without it.
Morrowind was better in that regard, albeit behind Ultima IX and Gothic which predated it. I’d say however Oblivion was a marvel of world simulation – it really demonstrates that Bethesda wants to follow and expand upont the Ultima kind of philosophy, and this is good because very few developpers follow that philosophy anymore (except for Risen really that school of thought is very much dead).
I also like that Bethesda is trying to push these things forward with their Radiant AI approach. This is exactly the kind of technical advancement Ultima would be trying to do if the series still existed today.
I like the Underworld inferface but then I did play it 20 years ago so my opinion isn’t that objective. I suppose it’s one of those interfaces that works well when you get used to it but is not exactly intuitive.
To be fair to id they did get there before Underworld with Catacombs 3D, but that and Wolfenstein don’t stand up too well now. I liked Wolfenstein at the time as it ran at a decent frame rate on my 386, which is more than can be said for Underworld, but the actual gameplay was seriously repetitive. I remember spending half my time wandering around empty maps looking for the exits. Underworld was technically impressive but there is a great game in there as well and it’s one of my favourites to this day.
Yeah Catacomb 3D was basically an EGA equivalent of the Wolfenstein 3D Engine, and there was even another predecessor a few month earler called Hovertank which was the asme engine, but with plains textureless walls.
However it should be pointed that this engine came to pass after John Carmack saw a demonstration of Ultima Underworld, which lead him to think and boast he could create a similar engine faster – which as it happens he did, altough technogically this was really a 2D engine giving the illusion of 3D.
Underworld wasn’t the first 3D engine either – The Freescape engine existed before and was used into the ’80 for multiple games, and later released as a game creator called 3D Construction Kit. It was however limited to simple geometric shapes and angles, and of course no textures.
This is why the UW engine was so revolutionnary: it was fully textures, allowed all kind of angles and slopes, and basically allowed for two location to exist on a same vertical line one above the other. True 3D to the core.
The irony is that I had to turn most of the textures off to get it running at a playable speed. I remember a mate asking me if I’d done something to speed my PC up when he saw Wolfenstein 3D. I only really appreciated UW when I upgraded and went back to it. I could say the same about plenty of other games back then.
Whoa I couldn’t imagine playing UW without the texture off that would have been so ugly. I wonder what computer that required for the game to need the textures off, it ran fine on a 386 DX back then
>> Odkin
I remember playing Ultima Underworld on DOS was way smoother than playing on DOSBox. I just don’t know why, but in DOSBox the Avatar seems slide a lot more and his movement seems to be jerkier. Strange.
In addition, I used to use the keyboard for basic movement (similar to FPS’s). Controlling the Avatar with a mouse was way too slow.
Dominus,
At least it gets a good thread going 🙂
So is that confirmed that Ultima Underworld was before Wolfenstein and Doom?
Good old Looking Glass studios. I remember it coming out and was completely blown away with the graphics and sound. Not to mention the fluid motion and scrolling :O
Configuring DosBox can be problematic. Pre Vista/Seven I would actually recommend using VDM Sound to play UW/UW2 instead. I had to put a crzay about of cycles within Dosbox to get a good framerate with UW, by default it did ran better with true Dos than with it.
as long as we have a nice discussion about UW, I’m fine 🙂
I still enjoy UW a lot, even though I like UW2 better, the different worlds make it dear to me 🙂
I love UW1, but I just love UW2 more beause really, the first game just doesn’t feel very Ultima-ish. It -was- shoehorned into the Ultima mythos and it shows while UW2 fits very well without much need for rationalization even if the Guardian feels a bit off to me.
I didn’t have to turn all the textures off, just the floor and ceiling although I still wouldn’t call it smooth. I had a 386SX at the time which was the minimum spec as I remember.
I know Underworld 2 is the better game but Underworld was revolutionary at the time, not to mention the first Ultima I ever played in the series so it’s the one I remember most fondly.
There were a few aspects of UW2 I didn’t like as much. I loved the ending of the first game with the chase through the void but the end of UW2 was brief for such a huge game. I also didn’t like the music in the sequel as much which is a big deal in a game that size when you spend hours listening to it.
Oh yeah with 386 SX I can understand there might issues. I had a friend who had a SX and it was like night and day compared to our DX. I guess there’s a reason the SX were nicknamed 386 SuX by some heh.
You’re right about the revolutionnary aspect of Underworld – it trully was unique at the time. I mean in essence Underworlds is but an evolution of the Dungeon Master concept, but the execution and technology was unique. Underworld II merely refined the concept, but brought it close to perfection.
I can understand the prefere for UW1’s music too. I loved UW2’s but the score the Fat Man did for the Abyss was more atmospheric.
What chance would there be for someone to take Arx Fatalis and convert it to Ultima Underworld III? As it was meant to be. I have not finished the game (still playing it) so not sure how much hacking and chopping would need to be done with the story etc? Would be good for someone to get hold of the source code and re work it?
Anyone know if there was another story? Perhaps the “Ultima Underworld III” one?
The source code of Arx Fatalis has actually been released, so the sky’s the limit!
Admitedly there is no toolset available though but there are probably stuff that can be done.
Not sure what point there would be of turning Arx into UW3 though – I figure when Arkane pitched UW3 to EA it probably had a different story.
Speaking of this I’d really love to know what was the planned story concept for Underworld 3 back when it was still planned at Origin.
Sergorn: If TES: Arena stole from anywhere, it stole from Legends of Valour more than from Ultima Underworld.
Legends is an interesting little game…though not a particularly good one. It had a roughly Wolfenstein-quality engine (lower-resolution), with a somewhat Underworld-like interface, and was set in a city that was supposedly “a mile wide”. And to be fair, it was a big damn city to walk around in. The tone of the game was somewhat Norse in nature, but…mreh, it wasn’t anything incredible.
Zygon: Ultima Underworld was released in March 1992. Wolfenstein came out in May of that year; Carmack had seen a tech demo of the game some time in 1991. Doom released near the end of 1993. (And Legends of Valour came in out in 1992 as well, come to think of it.)
Also, as regards Arx Fatalis…the source code has of course been released, but as Sergorn points out, there is no extant toolkit for it. Moreover, none of the game’s assets (including e.g. conversations and plot scripting) were released with the source, so any attempt to “remake” Ultima Underworld 3 would be a “from scratch” attempt rather than any kind of tweaking of Arx.
Maybe we’ll all get lucky, and one day our good friend at the Origin Museum will stumble across the plot documents for Underworld 3. At least, we can hope. But outside of his doing so, we’re unlikely to ever hear anything about what the next Underworld title could have been.
It wasn’t just Wolfenstein 3D’s economical game engine that made it a smash hit. It was the brilliant game design (for the time) that put Wolfenstein 3D on everyone’s shelf. Sneaking around, shooting things in the face, and looking for secrets was a winning formula that hadn’t really been explored yet. It was easy to get into, offered that beautiful ultra violence that we gamers craved, and had lasting depth in the secret hunting.
Ultima Underworld (2 anyway, never played SA) was ambitious, to be sure, but it was also a headache to get into. The objectives at any given moment are extremely obtuse. Most of the time it is up to you to simply walk around and hope you find something useful that progresses you (which leads to a lot of accidental stumbling into monsters that you aren’t meant to encounter yet, which leads to surprise dismemberment). Also, the skill system they use is awful. It is all too easy to put points into one of the many useless skills that will end up hamstringing your character. Really, there are like 20 skills to put points into and 80% of them are pointless.
Ultima Underworld 2 will always have a special place in my heart, but the game that has a special place on every one of my desktops (ie: the game that I actually still play from time to time) will always be Wolf 3D.
Now, as for all this Daggerfall hate I’m hearing: How dare you! Daggerfall was the first (and maybe only) RPG I ever played that let me actually play as a functional cat-burglar (or even an actual cat cat-burglar!)! That was just pure awesomeness. Yeah, it crashed all the time and was full of hilarious bugs (like being able to walk backwards and achieve massive critical backstabs on baddies that were actually facing my character), but I loved it nonetheless.
Sadly, I’ve never been able to get Daggerfall to work in Dosbox, so it too goes unplayed for me.
If you say so, Handshakes. I’ll grant that Wolfenstein was way easier to get into, and had simpler gameplay mechanics that were the rudiments of the “thirty seconds” formula that now forms the basis of most FPS gameplay (and even a lot of action-RPG gameplay, for that matter).
But to be honest, I find the Wolfenstein games to be tedious bores, with the exception of a handful of levels spread across all the episodes. Now, to be fair, both Underworld games can also get tedious at times, as the levels are often quite large and occasionally rather empty…but at the same time, there’s a lasting quality to the engagement that the games do build which I just don’t feel is there in Wolfenstein.
When you’ve shot one Nazi, you’ve really shot them all in that German castle. But the Abyss keeps you guessing.
To be fair I think even remotely comparing Underworld and Wolfenstein is silly on account they are both first person games is silly – it’d be akin to comparing Gauntlet and Ultima VII because they both had an overhead perspective.
In essence both were just putting known formulas with a new spin on it – though I’d argue Underworld brought more to the table in the RPG genre all things considered (amongst other things it was one of the first RPG to use full senteces dialogues and bring choice into it) while Wolfenstein there are been plenty of games exactly like this before… just not from an overhead perspective. (And of course Wolfensteint kinda lost his novelty aspect when you bring Catacomb 3D into the mix).
I also don’t feel Underworld was tedious by any means – as a matter of fact in some ways it would feel streamlined compared to some older Dungeon Games (Chaos Strike Back I see you!). Now of course it was less accessible than Wolfenstein… but this is true of any RPG compared to any shoot you know…
“If TES: Arena stole from anywhere, it stole from Legends of Valour more than from Ultima Underworld.”
Oooh! I thought i was the only one who knew that game 😛 You’re right that Legends of Valour felt very much like an Elder Scroll – except that it played in a single (big) town. I played that game very late, but it was vert vert much like a Elder Scrolls game… which means it did bore me pretty quickly though I guess it was decent enough.
I’ve also always wondered how the Amiga and Atari ST versions of this looked – having an engine lke this on those computers sounded impossible to me 😛
I don’t know if Legend of Valour influenced Bethesda or not, but they did cite Ultima and Underworld as influence many times (indeed you just need to look at the character creation process to see the Ultima influence heh).
I played Legends Of Valour back when it came out although I never got too far. It was touted as an Underworld beater but it was a huge letdown when I got hold of it. The engine was quick but that was about the only thing it had going for it that I recall. It’s a long time back so maybe I didn’t give it a fair go but I always thought of it as a poor attempt to copy Underworld rather than being anything original.
I didn’t think Underworld was often tedious either. You can complete the whole game in about 20 minutes if you know what you are doing. I could see a problem if you needed to locate a particular item, but I’d rather have that than be led around from place to place. Wasn’t Underworld the first RPG to include an automap as well? I loved this feature compared to having to map everything manually.
It’s curious that Sergorn mentions Chaos Strikes Back as an older RPG when I’d not even been able to play Dungeon Master at this point. I’d gone straight from a ZX Spectrum to the PC and it took so long for Dungeon Master to make it to the format that it ended up coming out several months after Underworld did.