Albyon was a game promising to be what Ultima was and a whole lot more. In an issue of ASM 12/88 (As highlighted to GTW by Zeldin), there was an article about the game’s creators (The authors of “Die Fugger“), viewing a demo of their new game.
Features were described, and there was also a screenshot to get people dreaming about how good the game could be.
The game was done in Ultima style, using 8 disk sides, 800 graphic icons (Ultima had 512), 10,000 sprites, proportional fonts, animated windows, 3D battle scenes, interactive characters and an own developed RPG-Interpreter.
Phew! A lot, and a demo proved the ambition was real at a party of “Der Computer-Club e.V.”, whom the owner at that time was Knuth Reuter.
More information is needed on how far the game got before it was scrapped. The game could even have been finished, though on the scale of the project, this may have been unlikely. Hopefully a trace of the game’s creators will lead onto more on this game, and maybe some previews which were shown at the party mentioned above.
In late 2025, Fabrizio Bartoloni found an advert in ASM 67/1989, where it said that the programmers of Die Fugger and Albyon were looking for a skilled graphic designer in the Hanover area. This was posted by Lars Martensen, who we believe was the programmer of this game.
As Fabrizio rightly points out in the comments, it seems that Lars assumes people knew about Albyon, and used it as a way of trying to find a new artist for another project. So, was Albyon actually doing the rounds in some shape or form? It seems unlikely, but why mention a game that no-one may have known or heard about?
Interestingly, Die Fugger is credited to “The Electric Ballhaus” (TEB) – so we’re not sure if they were involved on Albyon at all.
If you know anything more, please do get in touch!
Contributions: Zeldin, Fabrizio Bartoloni
The aforementioned ad was at page 121: https://archive.org/details/asm_magazine-1989-67/page/n119/mode/2up . The GB64 entry for “Die Fugger” (see https://gb64.com/game.php?id=2977&d=18&h=0 ), the other game from Martensen, credits its development to “The Electric Ballhaus” (TEB), I’ve tried to Google this but only leads to its Amiga and ST port.
Thanks Fabrizio! Added a scan and updated the page! :)
FWIW in a later issue of ASM (67/1989) there was an ad, in German of course:
” Die Programmierer von “Die Fugger” und “Albyon” suchen fähige(n) Grafiker(in) im Raum Hannover. Lars Martensen”
Which we could translate to “The programmers of “Die Fugger‘ and ’Albyon” are looking for a skilled graphic designer in the Hanover area. Lars Martensen”
So Martensen assumed people already knew about the game and used it as a credential to find a graphic designer for another project, this would mean it was widely circulating?