Forty-two years of the Wulf
Every Sabre Wulf, from the 1984 Spectrum original to this remaster, and the other games Sabreman turned up in along the way.
Ultimate Play The Game, 1984 to 1986
Tim and Chris Stamper's Ultimate made Sabreman a star in one year: four games on the ZX Spectrum, each a different kind of game.
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1984
Sabre Wulf
The original. Sabreman lost in a 256-screen jungle, looking for the four pieces of the amulet.
The first Ultimate game at £9.95, up from £5.50, and the first in Ultimate's big box. The higher price was meant to fight piracy: pay more for a game and you are less likely to give copies away.
It worked. Over 350,000 copies sold on the Spectrum, and Crash readers voted it the best maze game of 1984.
The source code survives on paper: a fan-fold printout headed "Sabre Wulf code 6:6:84", with the 5¼-inch floppy disk it came from, labelled "6th June 1984, © 1984 A.C.G." (Ashby Computers & Graphics, Ultimate's company). With them are the logo stickers and an uncut printer's sheet of inlays, which shares its space with the inlay text for Ultimate's The Staff of Karnath.
Spectrum: the starting clearing, with Sabreman 
Spectrum: the guardian's gate 
The big box 
The inlay 
The tape 
Advert, £9.95 
Poster 
The source code, June 1984
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1984
Sabre Wulf
Converted by Paul Proctor, and published by Ultimate the same year.
BBC Micro advert
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1984
Underwurlde
The first sequel. Sabreman goes underground: a flip-screen platform game through a huge cavern, where falls are as dangerous as the monsters. Its exits name the games to come: Knight Lore, Pentagram and Mire Mare.
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1984
Knight Lore
Sabreman is cursed, and turns into a werewolf at night. He has 40 days to find a cure in a wizard's castle. Its 3D rooms, drawn with Ultimate's Filmation engine, changed what people thought a Spectrum could do.
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1985
Sabre Wulf
Converted by Greg Duddle of Mr Micro Ltd, and published by Firebird. The version Sabre Wulf Remastered starts from: the same jungle, screen for screen.
C64: the loading screen 
C64: the starting clearing 
C64: the guardian's gate
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1985
Sabre Wulf
Converted by Ashby Computers and Graphics, and published by Ultimate.
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Spain
Sabre Wulf
Spanish editions came from several labels: ABC Soft, distributed by Investronica; Microbyte, in a box like Ultimate's own; and Dro Soft, at a budget price in its Selección Mastertronic range.
ABC Soft 
Microbyte 
Dro Soft
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1986
Pentagram
Sabreman, now a wizard himself, searches for the Pentagram in another Filmation world. His last starring role for 18 years.
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Never
Mire Mare
The fifth game, promised in Underwurlde and Pentagram. It was to go back to a top-down view like Sabre Wulf's. It never came out, and how far it got is still argued over.
Greg Duddle and Mr Micro, 1984 to 1985
Not Sabreman games, but the same programmer and nearly the same engine: Greg Duddle wrote these two mazes before converting Sabre Wulf to the C64.
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1984
Treasure Island
A pirate-island maze built from simple 4 × 4 tiles. The C64 game keeps to two colours per character square plus the background, as the C64 Sabre Wulf would a year later. Willow Pattern would reuse its map.
The island is 8 screens across and 8 down, 64 in all: a quarter of the size of Sabre Wulf's 16 by 16 jungle.
The whole island
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1985
Willow Pattern
The same engine and almost the same map as Treasure Island, with new graphics and tiles: a Chinese garden in place of a pirate island. Willow Pattern moves to full bitmap mode, so each character square can have three colours of its own plus the background.
Like Treasure Island, the garden is 8 screens across and 8 down, 64 in all.
The whole garden
Rare, 2000 to 2015
Ultimate became Rare, and Sabreman became an in-joke: a cameo here and there, a comeback on the Game Boy Advance, and the originals on Xbox One.
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2000
Banjo-Tooie
Banjo finds Sabreman frozen in ice at Hailfire Peaks, where he fled from the Sabre Wulf. Once Mumbo Jumbo thaws him out, he says he has been stuck there since 1984.
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2002
Sabreman Stampede
A 3D adventure with animals to ride, in the works from 2002. It began as Donkey Kong Racing, and became a Sabreman game when Microsoft bought Rare. Microsoft trademarked the name in 2003. The game never found its shape and was cancelled in late 2005.
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2004
Sabre Wulf
A new game with the old name, out in Europe on 12 March 2004 and in North America on 8 June.
The villainous Dr Dolittle-Goode steals the amulet and lets the Sabre Wulf loose to terrorise the town and steal its treasure. Sabreman chases it through eight worlds, part platform game and part puzzle game, using the creatures he collects to get past each level.
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2005
Banjo-Pilot
Sabreman stands on the grass near the finish line of Jolly Roger's Lagoon, waving at the racers.
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2015
Rare Replay
Thirty Rare and Ultimate games on one disc, released on 4 August 2015. Sabre Wulf, Underwurlde and Knight Lore are all there, running on an emulated Spectrum.
The collection adds rewind, and Snapshots: short challenges cut from each game.
Genesis Project, 2017 to 2026
A remaster for the machine the C64 conversion ran on.
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2017
Sabre Wulf Re-imagined
JonEgg redraws the Sabre Wulf loading screen. It is where the remaster starts. See it on C64GFX.
Sabre Wulf Re-imagined
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2020
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2022
Preview V0.1
Released on 30 October 2022. On gp-64.com and on CSDb.
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2025
Preview V0.5
Released on 24 December 2025, and cracked by Triad soon after. On gp-64.com and on CSDb.
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2026
Sabre Wulf Remastered
The finished game, released on 25 October 2026. New graphics, new music and a lot more besides, 42 years after the original. See what's changed. On gp-64.com and on CSDb.
The title screen 
The starting clearing 
Beware of the Wulf
Know more?
Dates, versions and cameos are as we have been able to find them. If something is missing or wrong, tell us.
Sabre Wulf, Sabreman and the games above belong to their owners: Ultimate Play The Game, now Rare Ltd.; Microsoft; THQ; Firebird. The boxes, tapes, adverts and screens of the original are shown for their history; the Spanish editions belong to their publishers. Sabre Wulf Remastered is a fan-made, unofficial remaster.