Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss

Trivia

Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss was named as #8 in the "100 Most Important PC Games of the Nineties" ranking by German gaming magazine GameStar (issue 12/1999).

Ultima Underworld was named #68 overall among the “150 Best Games of All Time” by Computer Gaming World Magazine (15th Anniversary Issue--November 1996).

Contributed by PCGamer77 (3025) on May 02, 2008.

Contrary to what is mentioned in the trivia below, Catacombs 3-D by John Carmack / John Romero for Soft-Disk was the forefather to 3-D first person gaming. It was released a full 6 months before Ultima Underworld in November 1991.

This was the only Ultima game released for the Playstation system, and only released in Japan. It can only be played on Japanese consoles because there are regional lockouts built in.

Supposedly the monster graphics were improved over the PC version and the title music was redone.

Contributed by Jeanne (58435) on Apr 07, 2003.

In 2002, ZIOSoft (www.ziosoft.com) released a Pocket PC version of Ultima Underworld. The new version is a faithful port of the classic game. Here is the direct link: http://www.ziosoft.com/product.html?n=9

The programmers' test image for the texture-mapping code was a digitized B&W photo of Abraham Lincoln. (Really.)

Near the Magic Academy there is a spectre called Warren floating around. This is a obviously a reference to Warren Spector and continues a tradition of him appearing in the non-mainstream Ultima games (Savage Empire and Martian Dreams).

Ultima Underwolrd is also the winner of the 1992 Origin Award for Best Science Fiction of Fantasy Computer Game

Contributed by Chris Martin (1116) on May 02, 2001.

Ultima Underworld (or just plain "Underworld" for its early development) is THE forefather of modern continuous-movement first-person texture-mapped gaming. Nothing like it had been attempted before (and precious little on the same scale as Underworld for a long time to follow.)

Reportedly it was a demonstration of the in-development Underworld technology that prompted John Carmack to write the Wolfenstein 3D engine. (Wolf 3D -- with its fast-but-simple engine and gameplay -- made it to the shelves only a short time after Underworld.)

Towards the end of the game you can learn a spell that will destroy all life. If you cast it, all other creatures, items, doors and even stairways are destroyed, leaving only the walls, floors and ceilings.

According to PC Gamer (July 2000), Warren Spector wasn't involved with Ultima Underworld until about a year into production.

Contributed by Kartanym (9910) on Jan 11, 2001.

This is an extract from a review of Ultima Underworld, published in the German gaming magazine ASM in ’92. I’ll include it here, as it’s fun to read from today’s point of view -- see how they described the entirely new concept of real-time 3D-graphics to their audience:

„In other Dungeon Games, be it Eye of the Beholder or whatever, the player can turn in 90 degree steps only. Consequently, all dungeons consist of rectangular corridors. This may be acceptable in man-made keeps, but looks rather strange in caves at the latest. The designers of Ultima Underworld considered this, and came up with a new system. It consists of a mixture of vector graphics and bitmaps, a quick zoom routine inclusive. The outcome is impressive: If the player turns, the screen is scrolled fluently. Movement in all imaginable directions is possible. Furthermore, there are almost no more solid, rectangular corridors, but hundreds of inclined, sloping walls, ledges and small passages. Players with claustrophobia beware! The next surprise awaits when moving down a corridor: The screen waves slightly up and down, as if the scene was filmed with a shoulder-mounted camera.“ (Translated from German)

If you delete the shades.dat in the DATA subdirectory, you don't need torches or lamps in your quest any more due to the lack of shade maps.

A complete version of Ultima Underworld is available on the July 2000 issue of PC-Gamer Magazine (CD-ROM edition).

Contributed by rstevenson (813) on Jun 23, 2000.