Got My Copy of the Ultima Ultimate Collector’s Guide 2012 – Did You?

I was planning on getting this anyways, but last week Amazon put it on sale for $39.20 and I couldn’t resist getting it immediately.

So just what is the Ultima Ultimate Collector’s Guide 2012 edition?

It’s a huge book written by Stephen Emond that covers:
* 520 main releases
* 286 books and collectibles
* Nearly 150 miscellaneous items
* A total of nearly one thousand items from 24 countries across 6 continents.
* Differences between releases of the same games, maps, etc.
* History and lore of the world of Ultima.

Oh, and it’s over 800 pages.

It doesn’t just cover the “main” Ultima games. It fully covers Ultima I-IX, Akalabeth (Ultima 0 as I like to call it), the Savage Empire and Martian Dreams games, the Ultima Underworld games, and the various editions, spinoffs, and Ultima-related games and add-ons that you might never have encountered. We’re talking 30 years of history here.

The 2012 part is important – Stephen Emond wrote a first edition in 2007, but this goes above and beyond that.

And just as importantly, he talks about possibly writing other guides in the future, such as Sierra (PLEASE!) and drum roll please, Ultima Online.

Seriously, if you like Ultima, go buy this book. This isn’t a formal review, I’m still drooling over it and trying to concentrate on reading it while thinking I have some other stuff I want to write and post. I’ll post a formal review this week, complete with pictures, but for now, just take my advice and buy the book. Hopefully Steve does well enough from this book that he can make a UO-specific book.

If you’d like to read more about his work on the 2007 edition, which applies to the 2012 edition, read this Artful Gamer interview.

And check out these photos of his collection of Origin games.

Ultima Aiera has a bit about the efforts that went into the 2012 edition, as well as an interview with Rocket Hub.

And don’t forget to bug the hell out of Jeff Skalski to get this book mentioned on the UO Herald and UltimaForever.com websites.

Update: You can download a sample – see this Ultima Aiera story for details.