'Palace Software's marketing strategy provoked controversy in the United Kingdom, with protests focused on the sexual aspects of the packaging rather than decapitations and other violence within the game. The ensuing controversy boosted 'Barbarian's profile, helping to make it a commercial success.
'Barbarian: The Ultimate Warrior' proved to be a big hit, and 'Palace Software' started planning to publish a line of sequels. 'Barbarian II: The Dungeon of Drax' was released in 1988, and 'Barbarian III' was in the works. Van Wijk and Whittaker were hired again to grace the box cover and advertisements. After the success with 'Barbarian', 'Palace Software' began to expand its portfolio by publishing games that were created by other developers. Barbarian, however, remained its most popular game, best remembered for its violent sword fights and Maria Whittaker.
Barbarian: The Ultimate Warrior was first released for 'Commodore: 64' personal computers in 1987. Later on it was developed for 'Commodore: Amiga', 'Amstrad CPC', 'Atari ST', BBC Micro and 'ZX Spectrum'.
Barbarian's advertisements, showing a scantily-dressed model known for topless poses, triggered significant outcries of moral indignity. The controversy did not negatively affect Barbarian, but boosted the game's sales and profile tremendously. Some video game industry observers commented that the 'United Kingdom' public were more concerned over the scantily-clad Whittaker than the gory contents in the game. Conversely, Barbarian was banned in Germany for its violent content. The ban forbade promotion of the game and its sale to customers under the age of 18. A censored version of the game, which changed the colour of the blood to green, was later permitted to be freely sold in the country.
Instead of using painted artwork for the game's box, 'Palace Software' used photos of hired models. Feeling that most of the artwork on game boxes at that time were "pretty poor", Steve Brown suggested that an "iconic fantasy imagery with real people would be a great hook for the publicity campaign." His superiors agreed and arranged a photo shoot. The photos, also used in advertising campaigns, featured Michael Van Wijk (who would later become famous as 'Wolf' in the (UK) TV series 'Gladiators') as the hero and bikini-clad Maria Whittaker, a model who was then associated with 'The Sun' (UK) tabloid's Page 3 topless photo shoots.