Wizardry 1 NES (HQ Remake) - Temple of Cant (Orchestral) (2022 Remake)
13Wizardry 1 was the beginning of an amazing video game developer by the name of Sir-Tech. In those days, CRPGs were pretty rare. In fact, Wizardry was the first CRPG to feature color graphics. It would make its way all the way over to Japan, along with Ultima, where it had a huge impact on what would be the formation of JRPGs as we know and love them today.
The game itself is fairly simplistic by today's standards. Much of the game was text based, with a tiny window for graphics. It featured four basic classes to choose from: Fighter, Thief, Mage, Cleric, and character with exceptional stats could become one of the four elite classes: Lord, Samurai, Ninja, and Bishop. You would randomly roll your character's stats -- there was no point buy system. You would sit there for hours rerolling over and over trying to roll the perfect combination of stats that would allow you to make a character who was an elite class (who would often be killed right away). Character alignment would further complicate things as good and evil party members could not be added to the same party.
This dungeon crawler features turn-based combat. Combat was text based and party members faced up to 4 groups of monsters, whose pictures were shown on the screen (a big deal back then). There was no map. Players of that era were notorious for always having graph paper handy. Developers, however, knew this, so they LOVED to add darkness, teleporters, and spinners to absolutely ruin your map (this feature was also prevalent in Bard's Tale Trilogy, and even went so far as Dungeon Master into the 1990s).
This game is brutal and unforgiving. You cannot save in the dungeon, and the game features permadeath. You could, however, collect the items and bodies of your fallen players. Beating Wizardry 1, which could take hundreds of hours, was required to play Wizardry 2 and 3, as they would port your characters over to face new challenges in the sequels, of which there are a total of 8 Wizardry titles.
Wizardry would go on to be ported to a number of different systems (Apple II, C64, C128, FM-7, Game Boy Color, Macintosh, MSX2, NEC PC-9801, NES, IBM PC, Sharp X1, Super Famicom, TurboGrafx-16) almost a full decade after release, and it would go on to outsell Ultima. By the end of the 80s would sell more than 500,000 copies, especially dominating in the Apple market. This number may not seem that special today, but there were fewer people in the world back then, and fewer still who had a home computer.
In conclusion, the influence that this series had on modern RPGs cannot be overstated. We all owe a great debt to this game and its developers. Unfortunately, I could find nowhere that sells this game, so that means that it is likely abandonware. I can't say you'll have an easy time with this game, but at least there are some luxuries like cheats and well-drawn maps that original players of this game did not have. It will definitely still offer you an unforgettable experience, which may or may not be a bad thing depending on your patience levels. :)
The music from this remake is from the NES version.
Original score was written by Kentaro Haneda 羽田健太郎 (はねだ けんたろう) using a special program created by Nobuyuki Ohnogi 大野木 宜幸 (おおのぎ のぶゆき) ©1987
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Special thanks to MobyGames!
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