TO I NFINITY & BEYOND

1991-1997

There’s a reason the ’90s are considered a gaming golden age. Everything seemed possible. Every game had the potential to be its own thing. Is Ultima Underworld, released in 1992, an evolution of dungeon crawlers like Dungeon Master? Yes, but to call it so is to do it a huge disservice.

Underworld wasn’t about fighting through a dungeon, but experiencing it. You play as Ultima’s Avatar, falsely accused of a crime and thrown into the Stygian Abyss with nothing but the clothes on your back. What you find is a living community with its own characters and histories. Learning to survive is learning to be part of it, trading for supplies and making allies. Creator Blue Sky Studios, later Looking Glass Systems, called it a dungeon simulator, pioneering a new way of exploring RPG spaces that would be refined in its sequel, in its spiritual successor System Shock, and in virtually ever other RPG.

This was the era where ideas and technology could go hand in hand, or so it felt at the time. In practice, there were obvious limitations—things like AI, the use of sprites, and low resolutions. The price for Ultima Underworld’s real-time graphics and 3D engine was a viewport that barely took up more than a third of the screen. Its sequel boosted that to three quarters. But that was fine. This was a jaw-dropping achievement. To put it in context, Underworld came out before Wolfenstein 3D— both appearing mid-to-early 1992.