Around four years ago, I asked the question of whether there was any interest in upscaling Ultima 9’s cutscenes using then-emerging AI-driven image and video upscaling technologies (inspired in part, funnily enough, by Bill Randolph’s efforts to upscale music videos for his favourite band, Blondie; many of the videos on their YouTube channel feature his handiwork).

It turns out, however, that I was asking the question a year too late; YouTuber nsm53project evidently upscaled the entire set of cutscenes from Ultima 9 back in 2020, and posted them online.

I haven’t tried to download them yet, to see if the Ultima 9 engine supports the use of videos at 4K or FHD resolutions, but it’s on the list for the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, check out the full playlist: