Mire Mare retrospective

Even now, in those corners of the Internet devoted to the machines of the early 80s, the possibility of unearthing a copy of Mire Mare is still talked about – in spite of the fact that there was never any proof of its existence beyond a single mention of the name. Some people are just mental.
The story behind it goes like this: one of Ultimate’s early Spectrum releases, Underwurlde, ended with the player locating one of three possible exits. Each of these acted as a carefully vague mini-preview of the next instalment in the Sabreman saga, one pointing the way to Knight Lore, another to Pentagram and the last of the three to Mire Mare. As it turned out, this final title was the only one that failed to materialise.
The omission was never intentional, as work did begin to some extent on a game that would have been more akin to the top-down Sabre Wulf than any of the isometric Filmation titles which dominated Ultimate’s later years. The basic game design and cover art were both completed, but when the actual coding aspect became entangled in the chaos of the company’s hectic career-peak schedule, it became inevitable that Mire Mare would never see the light of day…