Ultimate released "Sabre Wulf" for the ZX Spectrum in 1984 and the other Sabreman titles that were released later that year. "Sabre Wulf" was Ultimate's first game to use what would become the company's standard price and mysterious, unadorned packaging. Retailing at £9.95, Ultimate nearly doubled its usual price in what they saw as a "bold step" to combat piracy. They expected legal owners to be more protective over letting friends copy their more expensive games. Ultimate had seen competitor prices slowly increasing and felt that the price was fair for their time invested. The game retailed in a large, high-quality cardboard box with a glossy instruction manual, both upgrades over typical game packaging. It became Ultimate's standard packaging for new games. The company's game packaging was nondescript and showed no screenshots of the in-game world. Ultimate's games also did not display internal credits. The company hired outside developers to complete "Sabre Wulf" ports for other computers. Paul Proctor wrote the BBC Micro conversion, and in 1985, Greg Duddle wrote the Commodore 64 conversion, which was licensed under Firebird. "Sabre Wulf" later appeared in the 1985 compilation "They Sold a Million", a collection of Spectrum games that had together sold a million units. When the compilation was released for the Amstrad CPC, "Sabre Wulf" was converted for the platform and eventually released in a standalone edition. "Sabre Wulf" also appeared alongside "Underwurlde", its sequel, in a Commodore 64 pack, and in the August 2015 Xbox One compilation of 30 Ultimate and Rare titles, "Rare Replay". Reviewers appreciated the game's graphics and found its gameplay similar to Ultimate's previous game, "Atic Atac"—particularly in its opening sequence and maze format—but preferred "Sabre Wulf". Critics also noted the game's difficulty and above-average pricing. "Sabre Wulf" was a selected recommendation in "Crash" (July 1984), "Personal Computer Games" (August 1984), and "Popular Computing Weekly" (June 1984). The game was named "Best Maze Game" in the 1984 "Crash" Readers Awards. Ultimate's new pricing strategy was a success and "Sabre Wulf" topped the sales chart in the video game format. While "Retro Gamer" reported that "Sabre Wulf" broke the company's sales records, "Computer and Video Games" ("CVG") said that the release underperformed prior games, with only 30,000 copies sold by December 1984.