The name is Dungy, and some of you might know me as an editor over at the Codex of Ultima Wisdom.  I also sometimes help out Withstand The Fury by sending him news and updates from the Codex as well as other sites.  I also occasionally wrangle up content for him to post here.  In  my spare time, I’m also a medical student and a fiance, so life is busy.

For the first 20 or so years of the computer industry, one of the main ways software gaming companies advertised their projects was through full page advertisements in software magazines.  Some of the more famous of these were Softline and Computer Gaming World (CGW), and fortunately thanks to the Computer Gaming World Museum, a nearly complete catalog of these publications can be found.  Origin Systems purchased rights to the back page of CGW for over a decade, and a number of beautiful full page Ultima advertisements were released.  As well, magazines like Nintendo Power and foreign language publications also ran advertisements by Origin Systems.

Here for your viewing pleasure is a number of these full page advertisements.

Personally, I love the quirkiness of the NES Power advertisements, especially Ultima III for the NES, where it claims to be the first real roleplaying game for the system.  The Ultima I/II 2-page advertisement shows just how big some of these old ads were.  The Ultima V advertisement is notable for its use of unique artwork, and Ultima VII really stresses the technical merits of the new entry into the Ultima series.  The Ultima IX ads I think are the lowest in quality, telling little about the game, and they stress the importance of combat, while completely ignoring any technical or plot elements about the game.

Anyway, enjoy these ads, and I hope you get as much entertainment out of looking at them that I did collecting them.