Stephen Emond's Ultimate Collector's Guide for Ultima Is Available For Order
Stephen “Cmdr Falcon” Emond has published his massive tome, Ultima: The Ultimate Collector’s Guide, through Amazon’s Createspace publishing service (you can also grab it [amazonify]1467934607::text::::directly from Amazon[/amazonify], if you’d rather). Most of you are probably familiar with the book and its genesis already, but in case it’s news to you that it exists, here’s how the author describes it:
For more than 30 Years the Ultima series has defined the RPG genre, from Akalabeth to Ascension to Ultima Online and Beyond. Lord British’s enduring legacy will forever live in the hearts and minds of gamers around the world. The Quest of the Avatar is Forever.
This mammoth 826 page tribute to the Ultima series contains highly detailed information and pictures for 520 main releases, 286 books & collectibles, and 149 miscellaneous items. A grand total of 955 items from 24 countries across 6 continents!
In addition to regular entries there are comprehensive variation guides for each game. They provide side-by-side comparisons illustrating the differences between different maps, boxes, books, discs, etc. There’s even some history & lore for extra flavoring.
Every game in the series is covered in exhaustive detail including Ultima I-IX, Akalabeth, Mt Drash, Runes of Virtue I & II, Savage Empire, Martian Dreams, and Underworld I & II as well as the many Collections & Compilations. Also included are bonus chapters for Ultima X, Ultima Online & Ultima Media.
This really is the definitive guide for anyone either currently engaged in collecting Ultima memorabalia or contemplating entering into that pursuit. The good Mr. Emond has put a tremendous amount of work into creating a book of exquisite detail and comprehensiveness. I know I’ll be ordering a copy as soon as I can scrape together the necessary funds; I suspect it will be handy in fielding the occasional “is this or that trinket authentic?” questions that occasionally arrive in my inbox.
If you want to pick up a copy, you can do so through either of the links above. Apparently, Cmdr Falcon gets a bit higher percentage of the revenue if you purchase through Createspace.
Also: this is cool:
As further proof that Ultima was truly a worldwide phenomenon that managed to inspire people everywhere, Ultima TUCG was preordered in 13 countries across 4 continents: USA, Canada, England (UK), Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Finland, Hong Kong (China), Singapore, Indonesia, and Australia 🙂
Let’s see if we can’t add a few more nations to that list, Dragons and Dragonettes.
I Would like to have seen a digital version…
Which I am surprised not to see, at it would have been easier to produce and not have to pay publishing and print costs. And e-readers are the rage now, willing to bet more money to be made if sold for $9.99 as an epub, which would reach a wider audience.
I did make a point of using Amazon’s “request this for Kindle” link, and I quite agree…this is something I’d love to see in an e-reader format.
I seem to recall Stephen explaining that there were a few formatting-related issues with some of the images, I think, which made publishing to e-format problematic. Not sure what those might be…unless he has images that span two pages, I suppose.
Believe me I’ve gotten numerous requests about digital versions… What you have to remember is I started writing this long before people knew what e-readers were. Most of the conversion methods I’ve checked into thus far completely mess up the original formatting. That might not be particularly crippling for books that are primarily text, but when you have 826 pages with almost 2000 entries and roughly 10,000 pictures all formatted down to the pixel… That’s a migraine I don’t particularly feel like tackling right now. The main problem is these formats don’t just scale pages like a picture, they change font sizes and alignments. A 1% size shift messes the formatting of the entire book.
That’s not to say a digital copy will never happen, but it unfortunately won’t happen in the immediate future.
Right…there we are then.
Amazon just lowered their price to $39.20 on Ultima TUCG 2012 to undersell other vendors who are starting to list the book, so it’s a good time to grab one!
Thanks for this amazing book. I just received my copy the other day (in Austria). I got the 2012 Edition, so I think I read that the original Edition comes with an extra booklet with changes and that is in the 2012 Edition. Right? No idea where I read this…
Interesting reviewers on Amazon.com. Amazing feedback.
@WTF, seems this book needs a special entry or tag to easily find the articles about it 🙂
Also I tried ordering this book via your amazon link, only exchanged the amazon.com part with .de (since Austria gets serviced via the German Amazon branch). I’d like to know if you get any points from Amazon when I did it like that (or if you could even tell that you got from German Amazon as well)…
I have no idea whether it worked or not. If it did, great, and if not, hey…you get the book, which is what counts.
It is a pretty sweet book.
Thanks Dominus, I’m glad you’re enjoying it! As far as I know you’re the first person to get one from Austria 😉 Don’t worry, all sales through Amazon are counted the same way regardless of which local Amazon you go through.
The original book was incredibly limited and was first released in 2007. When I updated everything for a 2012 release I made a “2012 Addendum” which I sent to everyone who got one of the originals. It added in roughly 50 new items that weren’t in the 2007 Edition as well as the new Appendix chapters (UXO, UO Checklist & Media Guide).
When the UO Guide is released this fall, there will also be a revised “2013 Companion” which will include updates to Ultima’s 2012 Edition. I will make the updates themselves available as a free PDF so everyone who bought the book will have the most current information available.
As for easy to find information on the book, aside from Ken’s helpful updates on recent developments, your best option for now is probably the Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Ultima-The-Ultimate-Collectors-Guide/265577196842522). There will be an official site coming soon though, we’ll keep you posted 😉
Hmm, seems you have to include information on the book itself in it 😉
As weird as it sounds but with it already having different editions and addendums it makes sense to me 😉
LOL, check page V46 😉
Mr. Falcon, while checking this page out I found on that very page some errors concerning the German hint/solution books.
The two UW1+2 hint books have probably been written by Holger Taschke as I have the two individual books by Hint Shop and both say “solved and edited by Holger Taschke”. The Publisher is Hint Shop/Christian von Mellenthin. So correct author entry are probably both Taschke and von Mellenthin.
I made big scans of front/back and first page of those two solution books. These two books are in a very good condition 🙂
http://www.dropbox.com/gallery/7737184/1/UltimaHint?h=ba460e it’s still uploading as I made 600dpi scans.
I also have a hint book for U7, FoV and SI by CPS. That book is very worn out as you can see in the scan. There was nothing in the back so only front and inner page scans.
Don’t mind the names of the scans, I only quickly uploaded it from a number of other unrelated scans 🙂
Excellent, thanks for the clarification Dominus! There were a LOT of German books and many seemed to have alternate versions. Sadly very few have information readily available.
I only had a picture of the front cover to go by for the UW 1&2 combo book, and the only name listed was Christian – even the German Amazon page lists him as the only author. Ironically Holger Taschke was the author of the UW1, UW2, and UW1&UW2 books for Dino Entertainment. I don’t suppose you have any idea if Dino became Hint Shop do you?
Another oddity is for UW1 for example the Dino book is 28pg and Hint Shop is 52pg. So it might be based on the Dino book with extra material?
…oh please send me an email too for the contest, and I’ll probably have a few follow up questions on page counts, etc.
cmdrfalcon at hotmail dot com
(Some email address assembly required. I went 20+ years posting that everywhere and never got spam until a few days ago, sigh…)