Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress, by Lord British, still in factory shrinkwrap.  It can be worth anywhere from $5 to $200 depending on who you ask, but can you really put a price on art?

Computer Role Playing Games (CRPGs, or RPGs for short), can profoundly impact game players, much like their pen-and-paper based ancestors.  Players take on the "role" of a character, escape to another world and help their alter-ego evolve.  Since story and imagination often take precedence over graphics and technology, even the most primitive RPGs can be truly timeless.  Much like a great piece of literature, people tend to get attached to their favorite RPGs and remember them fondly for the rest of their lives. 

The Ultima series, created by Richard Garriott (A.K.A. Lord British), includes some of the best and most innovative role playing games ever created.  Therefore, they are also some of the most valuable games for collectors.  At auction, rare Ultima games generally fetch prices well beyond all other computer games.  The most valuable Ultima's tend to be the original games published by California Pacific: Akalabeth (the precursor to Ultima) and the original Ultima. 

While most of the Ultima titles were published by Origin Systems, this was not always the case.  In addition to the highly collectible nature of Ultima games, another reason they have earned a place here in the Collectibles section is so all of the Ultima games published by California Pacific, Sierra, Origin and Electronic Arts could be be listed in one area.  Of course, none of these esteemed publishers limited themselves to producing ONLY Ultima games (as viable as that might seem).   See GOTCHA's Publishers section to learn more about each of these companies.

Resources

GOTCHA's Sierra page.

GOTCHA's Origin page.

GOTCHA's Electronic Arts page.

GOTCHA's Richard Garriott page.

To learn more about the Ultima series than we could ever hope to tell you, check out this incredible site:  The Collectible Ultima.

The Museum

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Last modified: February 19, 2004

Copyright 1998 - 2004 Hugh Falk International Interactive Enterprises Industries Incorporated Limited Etceteras.  All rights reserved.