Ultima VII Part II - Old NBC News Clip

I thought a few of you would be interested in an old interview clip from NBC for The Serpent Isle. You can thank the ultimacodex for sharing the video.

The video is interesting for a number of reasons, actually…beyond the way NBC horribly intercuts footage and concepts from Serpent Isle and The Black Gate. It begins with Richard Garriott discussing his ambition to journey into space, a dream he would not realize for another 14 or so years after this clip was aired (which was in late April of 1993, apparently). The report then gives a brief overview of the history of Ultima, before turning the discussion to a sometimes confused mish-mash of both parts of Ultima 7, although the majority of the focus is placed on Serpent Isle.

Click to expand...

More information.

Wow. This is the one. I remember coming in to watch my mom's morning news show (Today in NY) and seeing this clip before getting on the bus for school. This is the clip that elevated my interest in RPGs (Ultima in particular) from pretty enthused to obsessed. Especially since I didn't have a computer strong enough to play VII but I played the hell out of VI.

And when I upgraded to my next computer a few years later, the whole weird memory thing with the Origin games at the time would make Ultima VII unplayable, at least until Exult came out in the early 00s when I was in college. Thus, ultimate VII was the holy grail for a while and I can trace it back to this clip.

Man that was a great clip. Thanks for finding it. You the man Couch.

Great trip down memory lane. That is a fun clip to watch. Thanks for posting that!

Yes very good clip...thanks!

Great video - who has the rights for Ultima? - could be the biggest Kickstarter ever...

Not sure if this question was meant seriously, but for everyone who is wondering:

EA owns the license, Ultime Online is still up and running, now maintained and worked on via a company called Broadsword who is doing this Job for EA.
And EA wouldn't be EA if they didn't use the license for cool new stuff like...Browsergames. It's called Lord of Ultima. But you won't be able to create a new account anymore. The game is canceled in may.

And to those who think about what Garriott aka Lord British is doing:
He is still working on the spiritual successor for the Ultima series called Shroud of the Avatar.

I wonder how many years we have heard the "video games aren't just for kids anymore!" in newsclips like this. I think they started around the early 80's and are still doing it.

it was awesome

I for one actually tinkered with a DOS bootup script to free expanded memory by removing unneeded devices, leaving only mouse,keyboard, and sound blaster soundcard. This was in late 90's. I played it in native DOS on a 486DX2 66MHz with 16MB RAM.