Courtesy of Pix and Natreg Dragon, Ultima Aiera is pleased to present over 30 images of the pages for the manuals two separate Apple II versions of Ultima 2: the original, and the “grey box” version. As you can well imagine, Dragons and Dragonettes, the manuals for each version of the game were a bit different from each other, owing in no small part to the fact that each was authored by a different person,

The differences between the two versions of the manual here are not as stark as was the case with Ultima 1; both focus on the same basic material (the game, its controls, and some additional gameplay details) and present it in roughly the same order. The art differs somewhat, although that is to be expected. The original manual was penned by Richard Garriott himself, whereas the “grey box” manual was written by one Mary Taylor Rollo.

Also: someone please tell me I’m not the only one who mistook the Ultima 2 logo on the cover of both manuals for the Batsymbol?

Anyhow, enjoy! Pull up the images, download the documents, and pore over them. Search out every little detail. Ultima Aiera is indebted to Pix for collecting all these documents, to Richard Garriott and Mary Taylor Rollo, and to anyone else who worked on the original documents at Sierra.