Keith Zabalaoui / Sierra On-Line · Commodore VIC-20 · 1983 · Released but nearly lost — the "holy grail" of game collecting
An Ultima game in name only, released on cassette for the VIC-20 in a run of a few thousand copies and never marketed — it vanished so completely that for years collectors doubted it had ever existed.
Ultima: Escape from Mt. Drash is the strangest entry in one of gaming's most storied franchises, and for a long time it was the most sought-after object in the entire hobby. Published by Sierra On-Line for the Commodore VIC-20 in 1983, it was written by Keith Zabalaoui — a friend of Richard Garriott who had worked on his earlier games — and it is connected to the Ultima series in name alone. Garriott had no direct involvement in its development. The reason it carries the Ultima name is purely commercial. Sierra had published Ultima II, and it named this unrelated maze game an Ultima specifically to improve its sales; Garriott granted permission for the branding as a favour. The game itself is a first-person maze survival title in which the player flees creatures through corridors, bearing no meaningful resemblance to the sprawling role-playing epics that made the series famous. What made it legendary was its disappearance. Unlike most VIC-20 releases, which shipped on cartridges, Escape from Mt. Drash was issued only on cassette, and Sierra produced just a few thousand copies — enough to satisfy a contractual obligation, and then never actively marketed it. The game sank without trace, and for years its existence circulated among Ultima fans as something close to rumour, earning it the title of the "holy grail" of classic game collecting. It was not until 2000 that the first copies were confirmed and announced, with the first online auction of a copy taking place in September 2003. Its scarcity has driven prices to extraordinary heights: in November 2017 a still-sealed boxed copy was listed on eBay from a seller in North Canton, Ohio, with a starting bid of $949.95. The auction closed on 10 December 2017 after thirty bids, selling for $9,002 to a collector in Kirkland, Washington. A game nobody wanted in 1983 became, forty years later, one of the most valuable artefacts in the medium.