Product: Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss
Developer: ZioSoft
Web Site: www.ziosoft.com
Category: Game – RPG
Price: $29.95
Requirements: Pocket PC:
Casio Cassiopeia E-125, EM-500, E-200
HP Jornada 560 series
Compaq IPAQ 3600, 3700, and 3800 series
NTT Docomo G-Fort
UR There @migo 600-C
Toshiba Genio-e
NEC Mobile Pro P300
Audiovox Maestro PDA1032
O2 XDA

Software:
Microsoft ActiveSync
Desktop Windows 95 / 98 / Me / 2000 / NT / XP

Pocket PC OS:
Windows CE 3.x (Pocket PC 2000)
Pocket PC 2002

Pocket PC CPU:
StrongARM / MIPS

Color:
256 Colors

Storage Memory:
14MB of RAM

In 1979, Richard Garriott, a student, son of a NASA Astronaut, and a part-time worker in a computer store, created a game in his spare time. Richard wrote Akalabeth for his own enjoyment, but the game turned out to be so much fun that his boss convinced him to sell it. Soon a publisher got its hands on a copy and convinced Richard to allow them to publish it. Thus began one of the biggest, most successful series of computer games in history. The Ultima series was a major force in the creation of the RPG (role playing game) genre and eventually grew to 15 games in the series including Ultima OnLine, the first successful massively-multiplayer game for the internet. Ultima is one of the true classic computer games.

Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss, was the first of the two-part Underworld saga. Now ZioSoft has brought this classic game to the Pocket PC. You will explore the 8 levels of the Stygian Abyss in this complete conversion of the original game. The Abyss is a huge cavern filled with many perils, monsters, and an endless maze where dark magic rules. The story and characters will immerse you in the Ultima world. A big part of the early RPG was creating a world where the player can use their imagination to actually experience a living story.

Each time a new game is started, you will create a character for your quest. You can be male or female, choose from 8 different character types with different skills, select a difficulty level, be right or left handed, select a portrait, and enter a name. By allowing the player to customize their character, the game will be played and experienced in a different way each time you start a new quest. This allows for a fair amount of replay value.

The control system works very well. Using a combination of buttons and stylus, the player can easily maneuver through the maze and handle all the actions in the game. I find that it is best to use the cursor button to move through the maze and the stylus to perform actions and make selections. If you choose, the game can be played completely by using the stylus. Managing the limited number of items that you can carry and where you carry them is a classic element of RPG games. It can sometimes be annoying how close you have to be to an object to pick it up or interact with it, but you soon get used to it. There many areas to explore in the 8 levels of the game. With many opportunities to fight and explore, you will need to learn over 20 skills that your character can master as well as how to use 24 different rune (magic) stones in combinations to cast 40 different spells.