Wizardry (universe)

A later Wizardry logo.

Wizardry is a fantasy setting created by Andrew Greenberg and Robert Woodhead based on the games the pair had played on the PLATO system, particularly Oubliette. The first game was released on the Apple II in 1981 and became a seminal dungeon crawler with several sequels. The games were initially published by Sir-Tech and were notoriously difficult, implementing permadeath and often pitting the party against foes which outclassed them.

The series continued to use the Apple II as its primary platform, even as the computer was nearing its end of life, and didn't bother to take advantage of newer hardware or even update the engine; the fifth game in the series doesn't look that different from the first game release seven years earlier. Even as late as 1988, the games were still using wire frame dungeons and releasing to IBM as PC booters with CGA graphics. By the time they finally introduced EGA graphics, VGA had already been out for three years.

The series was most popular in the 1980s, but, as other games eclipsed it technologically, its popularity waned in the USA. However, as the games were being translated and upgraded to Japanese home computers, it really began to take off in Japan in the early 1990s, and, even as nothing was released in the USA for several years, the Japanese market saw remakes and new side games. The 8th and final US game was released in 2001 to little fanfare and signified the end of the US market. However, in 2009, Japanese developers successfully revitalized the brand, but only in Japan. An MMORPG was made in 2013 and shutdown in 2016.

Personal

Despite loving fantasy RPGs when I was a kid, I didn't know anything about the Wizardry series, probably because I had so little experience with the Apple II. My interest in Wizardry first occurred in the mid-1990s. On a whim, bought a discounted Wizardry: Bane of the Cosmic Forge based solely on the box art, not even knowing it was the sixth game in the series. I absolutely loved the manual, but, found the game's EGA graphics weak and thought the game play was far too slow. My middle school friend Kevin and I played it a fair amount until I bought the much more attractive Wizardry: Crusaders of the Dark Savant. We dropped the previous game and switched focus to this one playing it for many hours. I remember us spending an entire Saturday on the phone, each of us at our own houses, playing the game on his own computer and talking about what we were doing in the game. One day, when we were at Best Buy together, he saw Wizardry Gold on the shelf. We assumed it was the next game in the series, and were disappointed that it was just Crusaders remastered for Windows. We played it for awhile, but got bored and then began messing around with the asset files. That was the last time I did anything with the Wizardry series, and, after reading about how grueling the earlier games are, I don't feel like I've missed out on very much. I was shocked to learn in the 2000s that an eighth game had been released, and shocked again in 2021, when I first made this page, that the Wizardry brand was so popular in Japan.

Works

Video Games

These are the core games in the series.

Released	Title	Notable Platforms
1981-09-??	Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord	Apple II, Commodore 64, Game Boy Color, Macintosh Classic, NES, PC Booter
1982-??-??	Wizardry: Knight of Diamonds	Apple II, Commodore 64, Game Boy Color, Macintosh Classic, Famicom, PC Booter
1983-??-??	Wizardry: Legacy of Llylgamyn	Apple II, Commodore 64, Game Boy Color, Famicom, PC Booter
1987-12-??	Wizardry: The Return of Werdna	Apple II, PC Booter
1988-??-??	Wizardry V: Heart of the Maelstrom	Apple II, Commodore 64, Game Boy Color, SNES, PC Booter
1990-??-??	Wizardry: Bane of the Cosmic Forge	Amiga, MS-DOS, Macintosh Classic, SNES
1992-??-??	Wizardry: Crusaders of the Dark Savant	MS-DOS, PlayStation, Windows
2001-11-15	Wizardry 8	Macintosh, Windows

Others

In Japan, the series spawned novellas, manga, pen-and-paper RPGs, and an anime.

Links