Category Archives: Books

Ultima Completion Certificates

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These are an interesting bit of history going right back to the early days of Origin. From the release of Ultima 3, Origin started sending out personalised certificates when you completed an Ultima game. All you had to do was ring or write to them after you finished the game and they would mail it to you. Being in the UK, I never actually tried this out for myself. The games end screen would usually say to write to Lord British which was a problem when he was on the other side of the world. Mindscape were distributing Origin games in England at the time I finished my first Ultima (Underworld), I’ve no idea whether I could have written to them instead but I never tried it.

None of these certificates are mine, or even in my possession unfortunately. The scans have been provided by Natreg who in turn got them off the internet at some point. I remember seeing them myself years back but I can’t remember what the site was and if it’s still there I can’t find it. I’ve also included a scan of the Ultima Trilogy certificate which I’ve pinched off a wcnews.com article about some acquisitions of Joe Garrity at the Origin Musuem. There are several missing off the list here, so if anyone has them or knows where they are available I’d love to see them.


Ultima 3


Ultima Trilogy


Ultima 5


Ultima 6


Ultima Underworld


Ultima 7


Serpent Isle


Serpent Isle(Alternative)


Ultima 8

Ultima 8 – The Ultimate Strategy Guide

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This is my other Ultima 8 cluebook and this was published by Prima in 1994. I didn’t think too much of Origin’s attempt at a cluebook but am glad to say this was a lot more fun. Before I get onto the book itself, I have to say that I’m not so sure about that cover. Is it just me or does it look more than a little piratey? Other than the title of the game, nothing on there says Ultima 8 to me.

The title of the book is a little misleading also. The book does contain a standard full walkthrough (as an appendix) and a short section at the start of the book to give general tips on how to play the game but the vast majority is a novelised telling of the game, relating the story of the unlikely named Stencil as he journeys through Pagan. This section of the book does add in extra detail that would help you out playing the game so it is serving as a long-winded walkthrough as well as a mini-novel. This is far more entertaining than I might have expected, although I did skim over some parts which were giving routes through mazes and the like.

There are two appendices. The first is the brief walkthrough I mentioned before. The second is a complete transcript of every book in the game which is a nice feature. For something claiming to be the ultimate strategy guide, there is a lot missing though. There is no list of spells, no bestiary, no maps of the levels, etc.. You could get some information from the book transcripts but it seems to me that you would need to add both the two cluebooks together to give the full product.

This not being an Origin product is fairly apparent at times. Some of the tips given are close to exploits such as knapsacks within knapsacks and stacking items, which is useful advice but not something I’d expect to see in an Origin cluebook. The start and end of the story also give away the authors unfamiliarity with the series. The Avatar is supposedly snatched up by the guardian while sleeping at the start of the game, and at the end returns to the land of his birth. Inbetween this though, the dialog and plot are all from the game so it doesn’t cause any problems.

In short, this book isn’t the ultimate strategy guide it claims to be and is basically Avatar Adventures for Ultima 8. I quite like the Avatar Adventures books so this was right up my street. It’s been a while since I played Ultima 8 and reading through this brought it back to me without having to play the whole thing again.

Ultima 8 Cluebook

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I’ve actually got two different U8 cluebooks for some reason, one official and one not. I may as well look at both but I’ll start out with the official one which was published in 1994 by Origin. This is the last Ultima cluebook I scanned in for replacementdocs.com.

I can’t say that I liked Ultima 8 much and it is quite definitely my least favourite out of the entire series. There were a lot of good aspects to it though so it’s not going to put me off the cluebook.

There isn’t much in the way of narrative throughout Pentology but what there is, is written as though by Remvatos aka The Observer, son of Apathas who has been summoned for the purpose. For the most part, this takes the form of a page of introduction by Remvatos at the beginning of each section before it ploughs into fairly raw data. There also isn’t a lot of artwork in here and instead it uses graphics straight from the game. The maps are presented using the same isometric view straight from the game and the bestiary similarly uses the games graphics to show each creature.

The sort of hints that went along with the maps are now condensed into a brief 5 page set of prophecies which read a little like horrorscopes. These are reasonably well done if you don’t want to be told what to do which is just as well as the walkthrough is literally a bullet-point list of how to beat the game. Given how brief the hints were, I expect this is what you would end up using if you are stuck.

I’m not impressed at all by Pentology. My least favourite game in the series has turned out to have my least favourite cluebook as well. The little bits of narrative are quite well written but very brief and there is hardly anything in here adding value. The best section of the book was the bestiary which did at least say a bit about the creatures in the game. I gather that the game was pressed into release too early and this cluebook gives the same impression of being rushed.

Serpent Isle Cluebook

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This is another one of those cluebooks that I scanned in 2 1/2 years back and is still stuck in the uploads queue at replacementdocs.com. I’m not entirely surprised looking at some of the early pages as they are badly out of focus around the spine, and generally a bit of a mess. They get better later on and I can still read it all ok though. It’s a hell of a lot better than nothing at all so if you want to download it it’s available here.

I’ll keep this brief again since there isn’t a whole lot to say about all these Ultima cluebooks and you’d be far better off downloading them than reading my ramblings. It’s more about ticking them off the list than anything else. This one was published in 1993 by Origin and is along the lines I’ve come to expect by now. It’s supposedly written by Thoxa as a guide to a foretold hero who will restore balance. It starts out with a history of Serpent Isle, including the current occupants leaving Sosaria, their virtue system and a history of the islands previous occupants.

It then gets onto the stuff that will actually help you through the game with the standard town/dungeon guides. This is presented entirely as a travelogue by Thoxa as she goes to every corner of the realm gathering information and is easily the most entertaining guide that I’ve read in any of these cluebooks so far. It weaves in gentle clues to the story without resorting to lists and you could use all of this without risking of spoiling the game too much.

It then drops the pretense of being a guidebook and goes into the game mechanics. This is a dull but useful section with one table of data after another. Finally, there is a fairly straightforward walkthrough with two sets of answers, the first answers giving reasonably specific clues to what has to be done, whereas the second give very specific clues + details of all the optional tasks. It isn’t the sort of walkthrough you would want to read as a story but it is a format that lends itself to finding a specific answer without having to read the whole thing.

I think the content and structure of these books has in general improved steadily as I’ve worked through them, which makes this the best so far. I prefer the Ultima 3 cluebook as a collectible but this is a better guide to its respective game and more fun to read at the same time. I really wish there were interviews with the developers in all of these but they didn’t start appearing in Origin’s cluebooks until later. I’ll have to make do with the Official Book Of Ultima.

Ultima Underworld 2 Cluebook

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This was published in 1993 by Origin and in available to download from http://www.replacementdocs.com which is where I’ve pinched the above image from, being too lazy to scan it in again right now.

The book is supposedly compiled by Bishop, who was the equivalent of the Avatar in one of the other worlds you travel to during the game. Just like the U7 cluebook, he is only the compiler and other characters give you the background for each world along with all the maps and areas of interest. I don’t know if it’s just the fact that I’m such a massive UW2 fan, but I especially enjoyed this section and it gave the opportunity to learn a little of the history of all these worlds.

After this, Gems Of Enlightenment does something new for an Ultima cluebook and comes completely out of character. It stops pretending to be a guide written by a fictional character and instead is very much information about the game with a swathe of technical details about the mechanics. The included walkthrough is also just a walkthrough without the usual embellishments. It uses a Q & A format like U7 and has a general hint, followed by specific instructions.

If the walkthrough is too much detail, the final page of the book is a list of everything you need to do to complete the game. It’s odd to see a game that will take many hours to complete boiled down to a short list like this but if you are wondering what you need to do next, this would be the place to look.