Origin/Blue Sky Productions‘ classic MS-DOS RPG, Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss, was released for the FM Towns in 1993 by Electronic Arts Victor, Inc.*

*= Electronic Arts Victor was a joint venture between Electronic Arts and the Victor Musical Industries subsidiary of JVC, established in September 1992 in Tokyo. Electronic Arts Victor‘s mission was to translate Electronic Arts‘ library of games to Japanese language and to distribute them in Japan, as well as to create original titles for the Japanese market.

Although The Stygian Abyss is all in Japanese (there’s unfortunately no English language option), it is still very playable – if you already know the basics of how to play the game. Where non-Japanese readers may come unstuck, though, are in the conversations with non-player characters. If you’d prefer to play Ultima Underworld in English, you’d be better off playing the original, which is still for sale on gog.com (at the time of writing).

The Stygian Abyss has eight large 3D levels than can be explored and documented with an annotatable automap. Runes and Mantras can be found and used to cast spells. Weapons and armour are very useful for the real-time combat; magical items can give you even more of an edge when it comes to attacking and defending. And keys and doors play an important role in the gameplay (you won’t get very far unless you find some keys and figure out how to unlock certain doors). Overall, this is the archetypal American Role-Playing Game, and back when it was first released it was revolutionary in its presentation.

Other than this being in Japanese, this port is pretty much identical to the original DOS version and runs very well on the FM Towns. The Stygian Abyss runs off CD-ROM (although you’ll need to set up a floppy disk for saving your game), and is all controlled using a mouse, so is relatively easy to get up and running in an emulator like Tsugaru (just make sure you select “Ultima Underworld” in the Application options, otherwise you might have some mouse control issues).

I played this port for a number of hours recently and was surprised by how far I managed to get in such a short space of time. My Ultima Underworld muscle memory served me well, as should yours if you know what you’re doing.

The superb sequel, Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds, was also released for the FM Towns in 1995.

More: Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss on Wikipedia
GOG.com: Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss on GOG.com