Now in Microsoft MPEG 4 Format

Serpent Isle Intro 160x120 2,911KB Zip 12,708KB Uncompressed	Serpent Isle Intro 320x240 4,494KB Zip 16,665KB Uncompressed	Serpent Isle Intro 320x240 2,902KB Uncompressed MS MPEG 4 codec

The original 256 color, 320x240, flc files from which this avi was constructed only amounted to about 8 meg. This was still too big a file to ship on 5 1/2 inch floppies that only held about 364KB of data each. So the intro was reworked to include only long shots of the sailing ship passing through narrow gaps in a motionless ice flow. Having only tiny areas of the image animating at any one time cut the size of the intro to a managable level, and that was what was seen in the shipped game.

However, news of the unseen intro leaked out, and now, years later, Richard Garriott (aka Lord British) and I still get requests to see the original intro. So here, for the first time, is the Ultima fan's chance to see the original intro to Serpent Isle that was too big to ship. Enjoy.

Many thanks go to Richard Garriott and Origin Systems for their permission to release this early work.

(Please bear in mind that this is the raw animation. The long shot in the sanctum where Lord British and the guard view a magical whirling effect would have included the superimposed face of the Guardian speaking to the two, but that face was inserted later by the programmers to facilitate lip synch, and so is not seen in this animation.)