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My World’s Most Expensive Video Games article badly needs an update, as I wrote it four years ago. I mention this as Ultima Escape From Mt. Drash is one of the games listed there. Since then I wrote about it again, this time updating with some previously unknown information.
Few copies of this cassette have been found and the game holds the distinction of being one of the highest priced PC games ever.
The game itself is a very simple series of three-dimensional randomly generated dungeons, and the idea is to destroy all monsters that stand in way and exit to the next level. There is a time limit as well. The game doesn’t employ custom graphics, but rather uses VIC-20’s graphical characters to draw the game scenes.
There are several incorrect assumptions about the game that were disproved by a legit seeming comment on one of my original posts.
Basically, the game was complete legit in terms of licensing and the game was just too late to market. Plus it wasn’t very fun to play. This insider also believes there were slightly over 2500 of these made, but no more than 5000. If you believe the question on the auction as well from Richard Garriott he confirms that it was approved. I’m calling fake on the Garriott post though.
First copies of the game were discovered and announced in 2000 and the first online auction of a copy was in September 2003.
I have no idea where pricing on this is now. When I last wrote about it I quoted previous sales at $700.00 for a lose cartridge and $1,700 to $3,600 for a complete copy with a 2009 sale for a boxed copy sans manual fetching$1,875.00 U.S. Last I knew there were fifteen known copies, of which three are complete. One copy was even once sold by a zero feedback seller – quite an epic first sale I must say.
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