EA has put 25 games from its back catalogue on Steam this week, and the entire mainline Ultima series is among them. As IGN reports, the release includes all nine numbered games plus both Underworlds, eleven Ultima titles in all:

• Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness
• Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress
• Ultima III: Exodus
• Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar
• Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny
• Ultima VI: The False Prophet
• Ultima VII: The Complete Edition
• Ultima VIII: Gold Edition
• Ultima IX: Ascension
• Ultima Underworld I
• Ultima Underworld II

Before anyone gets too excited, TechSpot notes that the Ultima games are “straight ports.” Sadly, Ultima hasn’t seen the sort of official remastering that went into the seven new Anniversary Edition titles that are also in the mix here, which cover six Wing Commander games and the 1996 PC version of Road Rash. The Ultima titles are $4.99 each, and the Anniversary Editions are $9.99. Right now, though, everything is 50% off on Steam (and GOG) until November 19, and that includes the Ultima bundle on Steam.

The Wing Commander remasters are well worth a look on their own, it should be noted. In March 2022, EA senior producer Jim Vessella found a storage room at the company’s Redwood Shores campus holding nearly 20,000 archival items, including Betacam, VHS and D1 tapes, along with film reels. Among them were the master tapes for the full-motion video sequences from the later Wing Commander titles. From those, EA re-edited more than 1,000 cutscenes for Wing Commander III and IV, frame by frame, and included these reworked versions into what became the Anniversary Edition of each game in the series. Players can choose to play with AI-upscaled versions of the scenes, or with the original 1990s video. The Privateer 2 masters, meanwhile, turned up in the attic of the game’s cinematics director, which is about as Origin a story as one could ask for…and these, too, were reworked for that game’s remaster. EA’s own statement makes a point of crediting the community:

For each restored Wing Commander title, these improvements were made possible by the dedicated community, who were open and eager to collaborate with the passionate team at EA to incorporate their mods into the official releases.

That’s not just talk. Matt Wells’ Enhancement Patch has been built into the Wing Commander III and IV remasters, and fan patches WCAT and WCDX are included with the first two games. And as a bonus: if you already own a Wing Commander game on GOG or the EA app, the Anniversary Edition upgrades are free.

The timing is interesting, too. As TechSpot points out, these ports have arrived only months before Richard Garriott expects to reclaim the Ultima copyrights in 2027, under the US rule that lets creators take back their work after 35 years. (I wrote about his plan when he outlined it at Dragon Con.) EA would keep the Ultima trademark, of course, and Garriott has said the two sides are in active talks about working on something together. I wouldn’t read too much into a $4.99 Steam listing, but I wouldn’t read nothing into it, either; copyright and trademark law do require the holders thereof to occasionally do something with the properties in question, after all.

In any case, if you’ve ever wanted the Ultima games sitting in your Steam library right next to everything else, the Ultima bundle will put it there. Grab it while it’s on sale!