At the time, when Square tested the game out and saw the Ultima bug, it was definitely a problem, and Sakaguchi said “How did this happen? Fix it.” However, the person that programmed it replied with the following statement:
“All of that legendary stuff, it dates back to an age that didn’t even have proper techniques. If you were to look at such things now in the present’s point-of-view, it would be natural that they look inferior. For this reason, it’s a given that Ultima’s abilities would be bad.”
“As for those who struggled and ultimately acquired it only to find out that it’s useless… well, that’s something that often happens in life. So, I’m not going to fix it!”
Naturally, Sakaguchi was rather irritated by that reply and said “whatever, just give me the source,” so he could fix it himself. As it turned out, the programmer had ciphered the source, so he ended up being the only one who could do anything with it, and it was just left the way it was.
Read more at http://www.siliconera.com/2014/10/20/final-fantasys-first-ultima-spell-useless/#ltqWvU0UkCq4Vbxl.99
