Game:

Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss (1992)

Duration: 10:07

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This is a recording of gameplay from the demo version of Ultima Underworld. It's a cut-down portion of the game that fit on a single 5.25" floppy disk (the full game came on five 5.25" floppies, or four 3.5" disks) and was distributed to retail stores that sold PC games to demonstrate the (at the time) groundbreaking 3D graphics and gameplay. It's limited to the first level of the Stygian Abyss, and Underworld players will recognise the handful of level 1 locations the demo player explores.

It's also a playable demo - clicking at any time during the ten minutes of pre-recorded gameplay will start the level anew and give you full control, letting you test out the entire first level of the game! This demo must have been created pretty close to the game's release - it's very, very close to how the full game works and plays, with only minimal differences between the two.

While playing the demo yourself, if you happen to die, make it to level 2, or just leave the game idle for 20 seconds or so, it'll wipe your progress and restart the pre-recorded gameplay. It must have been pretty neat to find in a store in 1992 - the demo slightly randomises your stats, but makes sure you start off as a Fighter with some magic ability, and all of level 1's friendly characters and enemies are there to talk to or fight, so there's a surprising amount of depth of gameplay available.

I've recorded this demo using DOSBox at 13,000 CPU cycles - it was the best balance I could get between a watchably smooth framerate, and the demo's jumping actions not being ludicrously fast (for some reason jumping in the recorded gameplay is super quick, but it's totally normal and familiar in the playable part).

If you want to try it out yourself, you can download it from here: https://underworld.ultimacodex.com/the-ultima-underworld-demo/

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