this is some pretty obscure history for Ultima fans, but i thought i'd share it here in case it brings back some memories for someone else too.
back in the mid-90s, finding any information about upcoming Ultima games was a worldwide treasure hunt. Origin Systems/EA hadn't figured out the internet as a marketing tool yet, so fans would root around through every gaming magazine for a morsel of info on Ultima IX.
a single blurry, low-resolution screenshot appeared one day - I first saw it on Usenet. someone claimed it was a screenshot from Ultima IX, found in a german magazine. it was a knight in a suit of armour, standing on a staircase near a bookshelf in some kind of castle. the render was stunningly realistic (given the 3d capabilities at the time)
some believed it, many did not. people got *excited*, whether they were dubious or believers. i was among the many who wanted to believe.
a few years later, real Ultima IX screenshots started to appear, and that old screenshot was largely forgotten.
i thought about that screenshot for decades afterward, because i never really knew if it was real or a hoax. one weekend, i sat down to figure it out.
it took many hours of trolling through Usenet archives from the mid-90s, and digging through many false leads, but i found it. people had said in 1996 that it came from a German magazine called GameStar.
they were partly correct. it was a german magazine, but it was another one called PowerPlay. It was an extensive interview with Richard Garriott at his peak, rich with EA dollars and living like a pirate.
in between the interview columns were hi-res screenshots of Ultima IX as it existed in 1996. this was not (yet) the isometric engine that people fell in love with, but what appear to be renders in what i presume to be 3DS Max.
so here they are - 30 years later. i suspect these were mockups made to promote the game, rather than anything playable.
i've uploaded archival copies to IA here:
https://archive.org/details/ultima_ix_powerplay_screenshots
and if you read German, you can read the extended interview here (pp. 172-178):
https://archive.org/details/powerplaymagazine-1996-02
#digiPres #ultima #retroGaming #win95
vga256
DesertFOX
