Released back in 1992, Ultima VII: The Black Gate from Origin Systems was an RPG masterpiece. Featuring Richard Garriott’s Lord British and the ever-wholesome Avatar (literally the player’s avatar) you could spend hours doing what you liked, from exploring the edges of Britannia to baking your body weight in bread. I can’t say I’m shocked it took almost three decades to find yet another of the game’s secrets — a room containing a rather angry British.
Update: Turns out the room’s been known for a while! Here are more details, courtesy of Dominus on the Exult forums:
One day a QA guy came up to him and told him that a tester found something and Richard needed to see it. They had found the Trinsic cheat room and Richard didn’t know about it and got a bit upset. But he didn’t know who made that huge easter egg.
They then searched the egg that lead to the room and changed it to point at the anti-cheater room. So the next time the developer who added the Trinsic cheat room was using the teleporter egg, he was in for a bad surprise.
Original post follows.
According to a tweet by Medieval Nerd, it was added as a “cheat room” by one of the developers. However, Richard Garriott discovered it, and decided to add a little surprise.
U7 – The Black Gate – FAKE Cheat Room!?
Hopefully I got this right? ????
During U7 development a dev made himself a cheat room at this location. But when found out by @RichardGarriott. He made some tiny alterations to it… ????#Ultima #DOSGaming #RETROGAMING pic.twitter.com/m9HUK6lY2x
— Medieval Nerd (@MedievalNerdThe) August 8, 2018
Once inside the room, British cries “Busted!” and proceeds to unload on the player, declaring him a “thieving scoundrel bastard”.
After throwing a few more insults, British fires off a few lightning bolts, killing the player (this doesn’t happen in the above clip, as the recorder seems to be invulnerable).
As an aside — that Twitter thread goes on to talk about the many ways Lord British can be killed in-game and includes comments from Garriott himself. There are some intentional ways to go about it, but a couple — like giving him poisoned bread — were “accidental/oversights!”.
Medieval Nerd [Twitter]
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