'A good idea, infinite drive, and lots of Diet Pepsi': How YouTube essayist Majuular's life changed course telling the story of Ultima across 2 years and more than 20 hours of documentaries

The monsters in Akalabeth: World of Doom—the precursor to the Ultima series, sometimes called "Ultima 0" by fans and series creator Richard Garriott himself—look ridiculous. The thief is just a floating cloak, the mimic is a featureless cube, and the final monster (straight-up called a Balrog) looks a bit like Firebrand if he was crushed under a cartoon steamroller. To be fair, it was 1979 and Garriott was a teenager; the Apple 2 could only draw a pittance of lines on screen at a time, so he designed...