The RPG Fanatic Review Show - Wizardry Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord NES
308https://rpgfanatics.com Review for (NES) Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord (1987)
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 on 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 Originally made for the Apple II, they were later ported to other platforms.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.
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, just behind Temple of Apshai's 30,000 sales and ahead of Ultima's 20,000 sales at the time. In the June 1983 issue of Electronic Games, Wizardry was described as, "without a doubt, the most popular fantasy adventure game for the Apple II at the present time." The game was influenced by earlier games from the PLATO system, most notably by the game Oubliette.
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. The earliest installments of Wizardry were very 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.
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.
When Wizardry was first introduced in Japan, it suffered from the culture barrier compounded by low-quality translation. This meant that the game was taken seriously by players who overlooked the in-game jokes and parodies. For example, Blade Cusinart was introduced in early games as "a legendary sword made by the famous blacksmith, Cusinart" but its meaning was misinterpreted because Cuisinart food processors were virtually unknown in Japan.
Wizardry Online is a free-to-play MMORPG developed and produced in Japan by Gamepot, Inc based on the classic Wizardry computer games originally created by Sir-Tech. On June 2012, Sony Online Entertainment announced that it would publish Wizardry Online outside of Japan. Closed beta testing began 29 October 2012.
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