| Wizardry series | |
|---|---|
The series logo |
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| Genres | Role-playing video game |
| Developers | Sir-Tech |
| Publishers | Sir-Tech |
| Creators | Andrew C. Greenberg Robert Woodhead |
| First release | Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord 1981 |
| Latest release | Wizardry 8 November 15, 2001 |
| Spin-offs | Tale of the Forsaken Land Nemesis: The Wizardry Adventure |
Wizardry is a series of role-playing video games, developed by Sir-Tech, which were highly influential in the development of modern console and computer role playing games. The original Wizardry was a significant influence to early console RPGs, such as Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy. Originally made for the Apple II, they were later ported to other platforms. The last official game in the series by Sir-Tech, the original developer, Wizardry 8, is available only for Microsoft Windows. There have since been various spin-off titles released only in Japan.
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Wizardry began as a simple dungeon crawl by Andrew C. Greenberg and Robert Woodhead. It was written when they were students at Cornell University and then published by Sir-Tech. The game was a success, selling 24,000 copies by June 1982 (in comparison, Temple of Apshai sold 30,000[1] and Ultima sold 50,000[2]).
The first five games in the series were written in Apple Pascal, an implementation of UCSD Pascal, and were ported to many different platforms by writing UCSD Pascal implementations for the target machines (Mac II cross-development).
David W. Bradley took over the series after the fourth installment, adding a new level of plot and complexity. Woodhead went on to found the North American anime import company AnimEigo and Greenberg went on to become an intellectual property lawyer and contributor to the Squeak open source project. Greenberg also wrote another game series, Star Saga.
The earliest installments of Wizardry were quite successful, as they were the first graphically-rich incarnations of Dungeons & Dragons-type gameplay for home computers. The release of the first version coincided with the height of D&D's popularity in North America.
Ultimately the initial game became a series:
The first three games are a trilogy, with similar settings, plots, and gameplay mechanics. Bane of the Cosmic Forge, Crusaders of the Dark Savant and Wizardry 8 formed a second trilogy, with settings and gameplay mechanics that differed greatly from the first trilogy.
The fourth game, The Return of Werdna, (Werdna being Andrew, one of the game's developers, spelled backwards) was a significant departure from the rest of the series. In it, the player controlled Werdna, the evil wizard slain in the first game, and summoned groups of monsters to aid him as he fought his way up from the bottom of his prison. Rather than monsters, the player faced typical adventuring parties, some of which were pulled from actual user disks sent to Sir-Tech for recovery. Further, the player had only a limited number of keystrokes to use to complete the game. It is generally considered one of the most challenging role-playing video games of all time.
Wizardry Nemesis was an even more significant departure from the rest of the series. It was done as a "solo" adventure, i.e. 1 character, no supporting party or monsters. All players used the same character—no class or attribute selection—and there were only 16 spells (compared to 50 in the first 4 adventures, and more in the subsequent ones). It was also the first Wizardry title where one saw enemies in advance, and thus could try to avoid them.
The following compilations were also released for various platforms:
When Wizardry was first introduced in Japan, the lack of available information as well as a low quality of translation led to the game being far more seriously interpreted by Japanese players due to overlooking in-game jokes and parodies. For example, in early games Blade Cusinart was introduced as "a legendary sword made by the famous blacksmith,[sic] Cusinart" as Cuisinart and its food processors were virtually unknown in Japan and thus its meaning was misinterpreted. However, this misconception appealed to early computer gamers who were looking for something different and made the Wizardry series popular. Conversely, the fourth game, The Return of Werdna, was poorly received, as, lacking the knowledge of subcultures necessary to solving the game, Japanese players had no chance of figuring out some puzzles.
The popularity of Wizardry in Japan led to the making of various light novels, manga comics, Japanese pen-and-paper role-playing games, an original video animation, and several original console sequels, spinoffs and ports. Most have been released only in Japan.
Yuji Horii drew inspiration from the Wizardry, Mugen no Shinzou (Heart of Phantasm), and Ultima series of games for making the popular Japanese role-playing game Dragon Quest. Horii's obsession with Wizardry was manifested as an easter egg in one of his earlier games, The PORTOPIA Serial Murder Case. In a dungeon-crawling portion of the adventure game, a note on the wall reads "MONSTER SURPRISED YOU." The English fan translation added a sidenote explaining "This is Yuji Horii wishing he could have made this game an RPG like Wizardry!".
In 1982, California-based Datamost published a utility for the Wizardry series entitled WizPlus. The program allowed players to edit most aspects of their Wizardry I and II characters, including maxing out skills and attributes.
Wizardry inspired many clones and served as a template for role-playing video games. Some notable series that trace their look and feel to Wizardry include The Bard's Tale and Might and Magic. Wizardry also established the command-driven battle system with a still image of the monster being fought that would be emulated in later games, such as The Bard's Tale, Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy. Following a convention established by the PLATO dungeon games Moria, Avatar and Oubliette, it was the first game for home computers to adapt the now-familiar WASD set of keys for moving forward and turning left and right (the S was not used for movement; it updated the status display). The party-based combat in Wizardry also inspired Richard Garriot to include a similar party-based system in Ultima III: Exodus.[3]
Wizardry was the first game to feature what would later be called prestige classes. Aside from the traditional classes of Fighter, Mage, Priest, Thief and Bard, players could take Bishop, Lord, Valkyrie, Ninja and Samurai if they had the right attributes and alignment. In the case of Lord and Ninja, at least in the first episodes of the sequel, it was impossible to receive all the attributes needed when first rolling characters, so the player would need to gain levels to achieve those attributes and then cross classes, thus they can be considered proper prestige classes. Wizardry VI allowed starting with any class given the player could invest enough time during the random character attribute generation.
Wizardry is the major inspiration to the Nintendo DS title The Dark Spire. While the game follows its own story and maps, much of the game utilizes the same game play mechanics, even going as far as adding in a "classic" mode that removed all of the game's graphics, replacing it with a wireframe environment, 8-bit-style sprites for monsters and characters, and chiptune music. The game's publisher, Atlus, also published another Wizardry spin-off, Wizardry: Tale of the Forsaken Land.
In the 1980s, Wizardry also entertained fans that included celebrity figures such as Robin Williams, Harry Anderson, and the Crown Prince of Bahrain. The latter even called Sir-Tech personally on the phone.[4]
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