[ Retro Scan of the Week ] Ultima VII Immortality Contest
July 9th, 2007 by Benj Edwards
Once upon a time, Origin ran a contest in conjunction with the 10th anniversary of the Ultima series. The developer included a “black orb of the moons” (a piece of polished obsidian) in most boxed copies of Ultima VI, released in 1990. But in the case of ten lucky owners, they included a reproduction of an Ultima rune (I assume ten, anyway — it’s the number of runes pictured on the flier). Folks who found a rune in their box automatically won a spot as an NPC character in Ultima VII. Click on the image above to see the full flier describing the contest.
I’ve read about people winning the Ultima VII contest somewhere before, so I assume Origin went through with it. Did anybody out there get a rune or otherwise become an NPC in Ultima VII? By all means, let us know!
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July 9th, 2007 at 5:39 pm
Informative links about this:
Google Groups
Gamespy Forum Link
And from http://www.bootstrike.com/Ultima7si/Online/spec.html
“The pictures of the 12 winners of the Ultima VII contest are actually used in the game (obviously doctored a bit to put them in proper costume).”
July 9th, 2007 at 7:18 pm
Awesome, Jason. Thanks a ton for the links.
July 9th, 2007 at 10:19 pm
Who besides me remembers when Lord British’s online avatar was offed by someone who’d hacked the game? IIRC, it was when they were rolling out an expansion or some such.
July 10th, 2007 at 11:48 am
Dennis,
Lord British was killed during the UO beta. For more info, check out this cool site, which even includes a screenshot:
http://www.aschulze.net/ultima/stories9/beta.htm
July 10th, 2007 at 3:41 pm
Benj,
Great link! I’m happy that I was able to recall that bit of trivia ten years on.