PSX-Port of Ultima Underworld

Ultima Underworld I is the only Ultima ever ported to the Sony Playstation (PSX). It is the last console port of an Ultima game ever made. The game was only released in Japan, so no English version of it exists. The reason for why Origin made this decision is unknown up to this day.

The port came rather late, compared to when the original came out, in 1997. Since the gaming hardware had made huge steps since then, it was decided to make changes to the game engine so that the game would be acceptable for gamers of the time. While most of the surroundings and the items stayed the same, the NPC and monster models were overhauled significantly.

The fact that a gamepad can't replace a combination of mouse and keyboard complicated the control scheme. Also, the inventory bug, which made items disappear and was fixed in the CD-version of the original game, was again present in this port. More on both below.

Since the game is in Japanese, it is difficult to determine if story differences exist.

Changes

 * All the creatures and NPCs are now polygon models, although the polygon count is rather low. Everything else, from the surroundings to the items, is still the original bitmap graphics, only slightly blurred.


 * The game is fullscreen, with only some indicators (like health, mana and torch) visible. The inventory and the spellcasting area are in a separate screen, which makes both of them less readily accessible and more complicated to handle.


 * The intro and endgame were completely redone. They also have more dialogue.


 * Numerous character portraits were changed to give them a more anime-like look.


 * All of the music was remixed. Most of it has a slight resemblance to the original music.


 * The PSX-port has many digital sound effects, while the original had no digital sound effects (apart from the voice acting).


 * As described above, the inventory bug is back with a vengeance in this port, although it is impossible to imagine how that happened. In the worst case, the whole saved game can be ruined by the bug.