Email: About Ultima VII box art

Keep up the great work.It’s not completely black, is it? The symbol is its branding.

Aside from the title and company logo, there is nothing on the Ultima 7 box. No branding image whatsoever. It’s just… black.

While Part 2 is its own separate game, the branding is the snake head (which obviously fits with a name like ‘Serpent Isle’).

When Ultima 7 was re-released by EA, with all the expansion packs and both Ultima 7 and Ultima 7 Part II together on a CD, it looked like this:

Someone might ask, “Did people feel ripped off because the Ultima 7 box was just black?”

Are you kidding? The best video game packaging ever has been the Ultima games. Jewel box, cloth map, trinket, fictional books inside, spell guides, etc. etc. etc. Every version was like a Collector’s Edition without the massive art book or soundtrack disc (as there were no disks in that time period). The art was portrayed in the fictional books that actually existed in the game.

Because of the graphic limitations of old school games, there was much focus on how to stimulate your imagination outside the game. A nice manual, a cloth map, a fictional book, and other things did that very well. It is also why box art was so extremely important to a gamer’s enjoyment.

These were games from 1979-1980 I think. I am still amazed at the vivid Atari cover work.

Activision, the very first third party game company (who left Atari) protested against the ‘luscious’ box art by slapping images of the game on instead. It became a common complaint from consumers that the cover looked amazing but the game, itself, was like stick figures.

A Japanese video game company was apparently an admirer of Activision’s publishing game images on the cover back then.