Madden '93 and immersive sim origins: the secret history of Ultima Underworld

gamedeveloper.com:

30 years after the launch of Ultima Underworld, one of the most ambitious 3D games of its era, its original creative director somehow still hungers to do for modern video games what his classic "immersive sim" did for games of the ‘90s.

"The only reason I'm still doing this today is, I see creative opportunities to innovate," longtime designer and programmer Paul Neurath says from his home in New Hampshire. “The industry is still immature.” The industry veteran doesn’t come to this conclusion lightly, having programmed and produced games since the early ‘80s.

But after a fumble with the 2018 launch of Underworld Ascendant, Neurath is taking an anniversary-timed opportunity to reflect on the original Ultima Underworld—to tell its stories and to recalibrate his current game-making compass.

Ultima Underworld heralded a new wave of first-person action gaming, even if its impact took years to bear out in the larger market. While it never achieved the widespread fame of controversial shooters like DOOM and Wolfenstein, UU eventually racked up over half a million units in sales—which Neurath says came well after the game’s first 90 days on store shelves ("That was a genuine surprise"). And its robust 3D tech, as combined with an "adventure however you want" mindset, eventually inspired the likes of Thief: The Dark Age and System Shock, two series that Neurath eventually contributed to.

Neurath knows where his game’s impressive tech, complete with first-of-its-kind 3D texture mapping, lands in the PC gaming timeline: "Wolfenstein 3D came out a few months after Ultima Underworld, so we kind of, in some sense, beat id Software to the punch." He pauses. "Not that that matters at all."

And he means it: this many years later, the