The YouTube channel The Crawl, which focuses on dungeon crawlers, has finally gotten around to Ultima, and it has done so, as its host puts it, “in the most Crawl-core way possible.” Its new video, “When Ultima Came To PlayStation”, spends close to an hour on the Japan-exclusive PlayStation port of Ultima Underworld, a version of the game most Western fans have never touched.

From the video’s description, the aim is to find out whether the PS1 port is any good, “while ranting about video game control schemes, RPG combat, friction, and the Immersive Sim ‘genre’ along the way.” The chapter list shows how much it covers:

• the port’s history,
• story and character creation,
• Underworld‘s legacy,
• a direct comparison with the MS-DOS original,
• graphics, music and controls,
• an interlude on what an immersive sim actually is,
• survival mechanics, quest design, and death and resurrection.

It closes with chapters titled “The Strengths of the PS1 Version,” “Ultima’s Philosophy” and “The Silver Lining.”

One chapter heading stands out: “Ultima Underworld is Not A Combat Game.” This might seem an odd claim, given that Underworld is quite combat-heavy, as most first-person titles of its era tended to be. However, the thesis of that chapter is that the focus of the game is not the combat in and of itself, but the other elements of the game that make it stand out from its contemporaries of the day, and cement its place firmly in the Ultima canon.

(Hat tip: Chris Markusen)