Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord
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| Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord | |
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| Developer(s) | Sir-tech Software, Inc. |
| Publisher(s) | Sir-tech Software, Inc. |
| Designer(s) | Andrew C. Greenberg Robert Woodhead |
| Series | Wizardry series |
| Platform(s) | Apple II, Commodore 64, MSX, NEC PC-9801, NES, PC booter, PC Engine |
| Release date | 1981 |
| Genre(s) | Role-playing |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
| Media | Floppy disk, Cartridge, CD-ROM |
| Input methods | Keyboard |
Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord is the first game in the Wizardry series of computer role-playing games. It was published in 1981 by Sir-tech Software, Inc..
This was one of the first Dungeons & Dragons-style role-playing games to be written for computer play, and the first such game to offer color graphics[1]. The game eventually ended up as the first of a trilogy that also included Wizardry II: The Knight of Diamonds and Wizardry III: Legacy of Llylgamyn. This game needed to be completed in order to create a party that could play in the remainder of the trilogy.
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[edit] Gameplay
Starting in the town, the player created a party of up to six characters from an assortment of five possible races (Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes, Hobbits), three alignments (Good, Neutral, Evil), and four basic classes (Fighter, Priest, Mage, Thief). There are also four elite classes (Bishop: priest and mage spells; Samurai: fighter w/mage spells; Lord: fighter w/priest spells, and Ninja: fighter w/ thief abilities). Priests typically cast healing spells, while Mages cast damage spells. Bishops, being a combination of the two, learn both sets of spells but at a reduced rate.
After equipping the characters with basic armor and weaponry, the party then descended into the dungeon below Trebor's castle. This consists of a maze of ten levels, each progressively more challenging than the last.
The style of play employed in this game has come to be termed a dungeon crawl. The goal, as in most subsequent computer role-playing games, was to find treasure including ever more potent items, gain levels of experience by killing monsters, then face the evil arch-wizard Werdna on the bottom level and retrieve a powerful amulet. The goal of most levels was to find the elevator or stairs going down to the next level (without being killed in the process).
The graphics were extremely simple by today's standards; the screen was mostly full of text, with about 10% of the screen devoted to a first-person view of the dungeon maze using wireframe 3D vector graphics. By the standards of the day, however, the graphics were a step forward from the text-only games that had been far more common. When monsters were encountered, the dungeon maze disappeared, replaced by a picture of one of the monsters. Combat was against from 1 to 4 groups of monsters. The automap feature standard in today's RPGs had not been invented yet — so the player actually had to draw the map for each level on a piece of graph paper as he walked through the dungeon maze, step by step. Failing to do this would often result in becoming permanently lost, as there were many locations in the maze that had a permanent "Darkness" spell upon the square (making the player walk blindly) or "Teleport" spell where the player would end up in a new location.
The game was often unforgiving of mistakes or bad luck, requiring the player to start over if the party was killed in combat or accidentally teleported into solid stone. But the challenge ultimately became part of the appeal, and the game still holds nostalgic appeal for many old-time computer gamers.
[edit] Cheats
At the easiest level was the ability to manufacture gold. Players could create new characters, pool their gold to one of them, then delete the others and repeat the process.
Another more common way to manipulate the game was through using a hex-editor. By altering the values stored at certain locations within a file, it was possible to alter many facets of the game, including the amount of gold (to buy better items), the experience points, character level or trait, even items in their possession.
But amongst computer gamers of the time, there was one Easter Egg that was quite helpful in winning this game - Identify #9. Members of the Bishop class were capable of "identifying" unknown objects in a player's inventory, but the list was only 8 items long. If a Bishop attempted to identify the 9th item and was successful, he would automatically be given one hundred million experience points. By then repeatedly resting at the Adventurers' Inn, the player's level (including hit points, spell-casting ability, etc.) could be raised to extreme levels. Three Bishops going through the maze after identifying #9 were all but invulnerable.
[edit] Development
Wizardry was initially coded in BASIC, but was rewritten in Pascal after BASIC proved too slow to be playable. The game was then delayed to wait for a run-time system which would allow the game to be played on any Apple computer. Ultimately the game took two and a half man-years to complete.[2]
[edit] Reception and Legacy
Wizardry became an instant classic, with publications like Computer Gaming World praising it as "one of the all-time classic computer games"; complex yet playable. With no major faults, the only minor fault described in the review is the ease with which parties can initially be killed.[2] The game eventually led to a series of eight games spanning twenty years, and helped set genre standards with its intuitive layout and interface[1].
[edit] Trivia
Werdna and Trebor were the names of the original programmers (Andrew C. Greenberg and Robert Woodhead) spelled backwards.
[edit] References
- ^ a b Crigger, Lara. Chasing D&D: A History of RPGs. 1up.com. Retrieved on 2008-06-05.
- ^ a b Marlow, Mark (May-June 1982), “Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord, a Review”, Computer Gaming World: 6-8
[edit] External links
- Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord at MobyGames
- Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord at GameFAQs
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