PC Gamer has a gallery article up this week which is a paean to computer game boxes and the “feelies” — the manuals, maps, and bonus items — that used to ship with them.

…there was a time when the box was more than just dumpster stuffing. When it contained not just the entirety of the game, launch-day bugs and all, but the things that brought them to life in ways that digital just can’t replicate.

The loot, the swag, the tchotchkes, the feelies, the stuff that made it all real, and demonstrated to the outside world—should any member of the outside world happen to stumble into your room—the depth of your dedication to these wonderful worlds and adventures that came inside a humble cardboard box.

The gallery calls out Ultima on two separate occasions. Ultima Underworld gets singled out on image 3 (of 12):

Just about all of the Ultima games were wonderfully well-loaded, but Underworld stands out for a couple of reasons. First is that it’s not really an Ultima game at all. The name was slapped on and the Avatar story worked in to take advantage of the strength of the Ultima name, which at the time was a world-beater. It also remains, to this day, the single-best “dungeon simulator” ever created.

The centerpiece of the Underworld package was the set of small, metallic, and dangerously easy-to-swallow Runestones that came in a cloth drawstring bag, replicas of the in-game spellcasting stones. (I purchased a copy of Ultima Underworld on eBay years ago, but the runestones were missing. I’m still mad about that, and still looking.) The box also included a gorgeous hand-drawn map of the Stygian Abyss, on paper rather than cloth (just about all the Ultima games came with cloth maps) and the Memoirs of Sir Cabirus, a history/hintbook written by the founder of the Underworld.

And the rest of the Ultima series gets a shout-out in image 9:

Ultima Underworld got a separate mention because it stands apart from the rest of the series (aside from Underworld 2, obviously), and also because any time an opportunity comes up to talk about it, I’m all in. But the rest of the Ultima series deserves notice, too. The first Ultima was relatively lightweight, containing just a brief instruction manual, but the loot wheels started turning with Ultima II: Revenge of the Enchantress, which packed in the Second Age of Darkness book, a cloth map of the Earth, and a “Galactic map,” because that’s how Ultima rolled back then. (Remember when the Avatar went to Mars?) That started a tradition of boxed-in maps and lore that persisted all the way through Ultima IX Ascension, the final game in the series, which included a map, eight Cards of Virtue, and a pair of softcover books, a Journal and a Spellbook.

It’s probably worth mentioning these images and comments from Richard Garriott (about the Ultima 2 box and feelies) here. Because really, that is where it all started.