My final item for the Ultima Underworld 20th anniversary is a game story design document for the never released Underworld 3. This details an entire potential storyline for the game as of August 22nd 1997 and is available as a pdf from here.

The Ultima connection appears to have been dropped in favour of another fantasy world and the game is far less dungeon based than UW1 & 2. The document is only a brief outline and there is precious little about gameplay unfortunately. I find it hard to form an opinion of how Underworld 3 might have turned out based on this alone but the scale of some of the events was certainly ambitious for 3D engines of the time and the potential was there. It’s hard not to think that this would have been in direct competition with Ultima 9 which could be one reason why it never happened.

There is far more detail on Underworld 3 in the archives at the University of Texas. That would be something of a lengthy round trip for me and all I’ve seen of it is on this Facebook page.

For the penultimate Underworld post today, I thought I’d pick out some of my favourite Underworld related scans/items already on the site. I of course like anything to do with Underworld but I’ll limit myself to 3:-

First off I have to mention More Avatar Adventures. This is a large paperback published back in 1993 which is part hintbook but mainly novel and tells the entire story of Ultima Underworld (as well at Ultima 7) as related by the Avatar. My review is available here and a scanned copy of the book is available from here. This book is a fantastic way to relive the game without actually playing it.

Secondly, I did a post fairly recently with scans of some of the artwork and cutouts used when designing the map which was included with the game. This post can be seen here. I always love bits and pieces like this that were used in the design stages, especially when it’s to do with Underworld.

Finally there is a scanned review of Underworld from the May 1992 PC Review. This particular article was ultimately responsible for getting me into Ultima and RPG’s in the first place. It therefore has a lot to answer for and has to deserve a mention in this top 3. This can be viewed here.

This is without a doubt one of my favourite pieces of gaming memorabilia. It’s a giant store poster for Ultima Underworld which is unusual enough not to have made it into the Ultima Collector’s guide first time around:-

This is roughly 4 feet tall and made of plastic rather than cardboard or paper meaning that it still looks fantastic 20 years later. It has pride of place on the wall of my games room these days.

This is an early version of the Memoir’s Of Sir Cabirus manual from Ultima Underworld. Other than the cover, I didn’t spot any changes except some minor layout alteration and a lot of the bestiary features the same drawing of a Goblin as filler. For anyone curious, the scanned pdf is available here.

Just about all of today’s Underworld posts are going to involve various Underworld relics I’ve been able to acquire. The first of these is a laminated carboard stand with one of the commonly used magazine adverts for Underworld + a little extra information around the frame. I’m not entirely certain but I think that this was probably used by Origin themselves at a trade show rather than in game stores. I’m only speculating there so if you know more than I do, I’d love to hear from you.