Ultimate Play The Game (often shortened to
Ultimate) was a
video game developer in the 1980s. "Ultimate Play The Game" was the
trading name of
Ashby Computers & Graphics, Limited, a software company founded in
1982 by two ex-
arcade game developers
Tim and Chris Stamper. Ultimate released a series of successful games for the
Sinclair ZX Spectrum,
Amstrad CPC,
BBC Micro,
MSX and
Commodore 64 computers from 1983 until its closure in
1988. Ultimate are perhaps best remembered for the big-selling titles
Jetpac and
Sabre Wulf, each of which sold over 300,000 copies in
1983 and
1984 respectively, and their groundbreaking series of
isometric arcade adventures utilising a technique termed
Filmation.
Knight Lore, the first of the Filmation games, has been retrospectively described in the press as "seminal ... revolutionary" (
GamesTM), "one of the most successful and influential games of all time" (
X360), and "probably ... the greatest single advance in the history of computer games" (
Edge).