Re: Original Apple II Akalabeth (Ultima 0) for Sale

[mjmahon@aol.com (Michael J. Mahon)]

I found this bit of "trivia" about Akalabeth on Moby Games.  Is it possible
that there were actually only 11 copies of the "original" (baggie) distribution
sold?

====
Richard Garriott orignally wrote this game for his own benefit but was
persuaded by a friend at his local computer store to try to sell a few copies
there. He hand copied the disks and put them into ziplock bags with
instruction sheets and a copy found its way to the head of California Pacific,
who immediately bought the rights for the game. 

When he later wrote Ultima 1 for California Pacific the entire code of
Akalabeth was included as a subroutine for the dungeon levels. There were
only 12 copies of the original version ever sold and Richard Garriott owns
one of them. He does, however, have a box of unsold copies and did say
in an interview in 1999 that he would sell some on ebay just to see the
price they would fetch. He hasn't done it yet! 
====

In another page on Akalabeth, it is noted that the PC release was a
complete re-write of the original Applesoft code...  ;-(

-michael

 Email:  mjmahon@aol.com
 Home page:  http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/