Richard Garriott’s Ultima 2 Notes

Richard Garriott spent some time in late 2015 going through some of old boxes of archived game development material. He graciously shared these hand-written notes about Ultima 2 — some of his discoveries during that process — with the Ultima Codex.

The notes themselves are pretty self-explanatory; one records the need for Ultima 2 to be well-packaged for presentation, and the other lists a bunch of features — or events — that are present in Ultima 2. Interestingly, the game of Nim merits a mention in the feature list, though you’ll note that it has been crossed out. It would ultimately not be until Ultima 6 that a playable form of Nim would be included in an Ultima game.

And, as Richard Garriott points out, Ultima 2 was the first game in history that shipped in a box, and the first to include a cloth map and a trinket. And we know, of course, what followed from that.

The Ultima Codex is, as always, grateful to Richard Garriott for sharing these glimpses into the history of Ultima 2’s development, and is hopeful that he will continue to unearth more such treasures.