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Until very shortly before its release, Ultima was not called Ultima, but rather Ultimatum. We can see evidence of this by listing the directories of the disks themselves; the file holding the title screen you see above is still titled “PIC.ULTIMATUM.” Why choose that name? Like so much in Garriott’s early games, simply because it sounded cool; certainly this title has no more bearing on the game’s plot, such as it is, than does the name Ultima. The change was made when Garriott and California Pacific discovered that there was already a tabletop war game in print under the name Ultimatum. Wishing to avoid confusion and legal complications, it was Al Remmers of CP who suggested that they shorten the name to simply Ultima because, once again, it sounded cool.