Category Archives: Books

Ultima 3 – Perfect Guidebook To Overcome (Japanese Hint Book)

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Ultima 3 Perfect Guide To Overcome

I have electricity again so it’s back to plan A and another scan of a Japanese Ultima 3 guide. This one is the Perfect Guidebook To Overcome, published in November 1987 by Family Computer Staff. It’s the shortest of the lot at 64 pages, but from my point of view of not being able to read Japanese the best of the three as it is jam-packed full of cartoon artwork. I’ve put a scan in the downloads with the others here.

This guide came with a large fold out sheet full of dungeon maps attached to the inside of the back cover. I didn’t fancy scanning this in so I just took a couple of photos:-

Ultima 3 Perfect Guidebook To Overcome - Map Sheet Front

Ultima 3 Perfect Guide To Overcome - Map Sheet Back

For the true completist there are at least 2 variants on this book, as the inside slip cover and back page on my two copies carry different adverts.

Challenge Personal Computer AVG & RPG 2 (Includes Ultima 3 Guide)

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This wasn’t the planned post for today but I’ve been forced to improvise. In what we misleadingly call a British Summer, my cellar was flooded a couple of weeks back which meant my electric meter ended up submerged. Apart from the display on the meter not working, this hadn’t been causing me any problems until yesterday when the guys replacing the cut-out did half a job and then buggered off leaving me without any power. Aside from not being able to scan anything, I’ve entirely missed out on some “virtuous things” I could have been doing last night, which I’m more than a little peeved about.

PCAVGCover

Since I’m now left sat around all day with no power waiting for someone to turn up and fit a new meter, I may as well do something with the time before my phone battery runs out. So to finally get on topic, Natreg was kind enough to send me a scan of a Japanese hint book last week. I’ve no idea of the source but among plenty of other games it includes a guide to Ultima 3, which more than warrants it a place on here. It covers one of the computer versions rather than the Famicom.

It’s not as colourful as the standalone guides although it does have one unusual feature in the form of sheet music for some of the games in a section near the back. This doesn’t include Ultima 3 I’m sorry to say. If it had you would have been suffering my attempts to play it on the guitar at this point.

I’ve put the scans into a pdf which can be downloaded here.

Ultima 3 – Perfect Solution (Japanese Hint book)

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This was the first Japanese guide to Ultima 3 on the Famicom being published in October 1987 by Ponica/Fusousha:-

Ultima 3 - Perfect Solution

The presentation is very similar to the Perfect Solution Technique guide from yesterday with plenty of original art. This guide was slightly cheaper, and apparently came with a glossy map (which I don’t have). It’s all equally unintelligible, at least to me, but a scanned copy is now available in the downloads.

I’m not done with Japanese Ultima 3 guides yet, so expect another tomorrow.

Ultima 3 – Perfect Solution Technique (Japanese Hint Book)

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Anyone who has ever browsed through the Ultima Ultimate Collector’s Guide won’t fail to have noticed the amount of Ultima memorabilia that came out of Japan. I don’t have any ambitions to try and track all of this down but I have been picking bits up as and when I see them cheap.

One thing that wasn’t in short supply for the Japanese Ultima fan was books, with plenty of Ultima games having numerous guides, novels, mangas, etc. I thought I’d scan some of these in for posterity starting with this:-

Ultima 3 - Perfect Solution Technique

Thanks to the Collectors Guide, I can tell you that this is the Ultima 3 – Perfect Solution Technique hint book, published in 1987 by Tokuma Communications. It’s a small paperback with a glossy cover sheet and covers the Famicom version of the game. Since I can’t understand a word of it, I can’t say much else other than it’s in colour throughout and there are loads of pictures along with all the maps you would expect. These little paperbacks aren’t the easiest to scan in but it’s now available in the downloads for anyone who wants a look.

The ultima(te) completion certificate

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As an overly keen Origin fan and collector, something that has bugged me for years is not having any of the completion certificates for the Ultima games. I’m not even sure if Mindscape sent them out over here in the UK but I was definitely on the wrong side of the world to reach the authors if I had wrote in and I’m not really the sort of person who writes fan letters in the first place. Besides which, I played most of these games years after release and assumed that no one would have been interested.

The certificates do occasionally come up for sale of course but would I really want one with someone else’s name on it? I’ve got pictures of them on the site which kind of suffices and I’ve never actively tried to get hold of the real artifact.

After posting those pictures on here, I found out that the Serpent Isle certificate was actually made and sent in by a fan as no official certificate was ever created for that title. This gave me the inkling of an idea to do the same thing myself, except for the whole Origin catalog.

This thought sat around for a while until a certain ex-Origin and currently Portalarium employee got in touch and I slightly cheekily took the chance to ask if he would be able to get a certificate signed by Lord British himself. I didn’t expect him to actually say yes but after a round trip to the States this arrived in the post today:-

Origin Completion Certificate

I attempted to make the certificate as authentic by “borrowing” artwork and phrases and filled in the rest by mentioning as many Origin games as would fit on there (which wasn’t all that many in the end). It’s even printed on parchment. Now I get it back again I notice a slight clipping issue on the giant L which wasn’t on my test prints. This is what happens when you use Microsoft Word for more than letter writing. It’s also somewhat worse for wear after the 10,000 mile round trip but it all adds character and I think I might just have a new favourite item in the collection.

Safe to say this is going to be framed and hung up on a wall somewhere. I’d like to give a big, big public thank you to David and Richard.