back in '03 i spent two weeks in urban japan, exploring its many train stations and alleys
imagine my shock at finding not only an #Ultima Online ad on a billboard, but showing it running on a flip phone five years after I had stopped playing it
i was always mystified by the billboard, and thought about it on and off for 20 years
i was finally able to track down the story behind the ad. it turned out to be a real game, but not#UO was we know it.
Ultima Online Mobile Edition was a completely different final fantasy-style pixel art combat game for the NTT DoCoMo network. it even had a monster/pet breeding minigame.
sadly, the game is lost to time - the game was only playable on a handful of japanese handsets, and no one ever thought to dump it before it disappeared.
what little information we have about it linked below. thank you to @bombbloke for their help in tracking this all down:
