Dost This Image Remind Thee of Ultima Too?
Forum user and Ultima Codex commenter Grav Por posted the above image to the Sword & Shield, noting that it reminded him of Ultima in some way.
The image was drawn by Ian Higginbotham, whose work covers a variety of genres and topics (fair warning: a couple of the images on his site could be construed as NSFW by a sufficiently irate HR person). At his site, you can also find an alternate version of the image above.
If Ian doesn’t know what’s up with Ultima then that’s one hell of a coincidence. Then again, I think Garriott got the idea of moongates from Time Bandits. I can’t remember if it ever showed anything like an Ultima moongate though. I just remember him saying he paused the movie on the map shot and tried to copy it down on paper.
Time Bandits did, and it even opened up from bottom to top like some of the later Ultima ones did if I remember correctly. I actually always like the moongates from Ultima III the best for some reason best.