The Making of Wizardry - Robert Woodhead Interview

Wiz 8 the best game ever. Didn't I already say that ? Pity there is no better wiz 9.

I enjoyed Might and Magic a little more than Wizardry. Wizardry had some wicked puzzles in the earlier games that my fragile brain could not solve This was before the internet and you had to call help lines and pay per minute. Come to think of it, I couldn't win M&M1, so what the hell was the Secret of the Inner Sanctum?

I enjoyed Wizardry eight a great deal, but the first four games rank as some of my absolute favourites of all time. The sixth and seventh games also were quite good, Heart of the Maelstrom was a bit odd, still enjoyable but I'm not certain where I'd rank it in the list.

Carnifex said:

I enjoyed Wizardry eight a great deal, but the first four games rank as some of my absolute favourites of all time. The sixth and seventh games also were quite good, Heart of the Maelstrom was a bit odd, still enjoyable but I'm not certain where I'd rank it in the list.

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you should play wizardry empire 2 on pc, recently fan translated into english by codexer mrrichard999.

you can get game iso from the iso zone, and the eng patch from romhacking dot net.

this wizardry game came out in 2002, made by starfish, same devs that now make elminage original and elminage gothic games. take it from me, a fan of wizardry, it is an amazingly great wizardry game.

I'm pretty certain I could never figure out how to do those downloads, but I'm patient and can wait till it pops up on a client that will do the job for me. I totally suck at installing those things, though I bet you are right, it does look like something I would fancy quite a bit.

wolfsrain said:

And with the whole legal problems that Wizardry now entails, that is the least likely series to make a comeback.

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Next quote answers that

you said:

Wiz 8 best game ever. Pity they sold the rights to a Japanese company that will never make another true Wiz game

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Sirtek finally got sued for good when their old family friends Woodhead (who still sucks btw) and Greenberg managed to get the last $40k from the trust the bankruptcy court had when Sirtek-Canada paid themselves for the rights to Wizardry which they did not own. The guys licensed it in one of the earliest commercial software deals in history. They were seeking $150k based on their being experts on the product which the court acknowledge but went the judge went with the 3rd party appraiser. They only had that much in the trust anyway.

To this day, I do not know why they didn't demand the courts acknowledge that Sirtek-Canada did not own the rights to it or why they didn't use the sales figures of the previous 7 incarnations of the game, and the licensing agreements with the Japanese companies as proof of its value.

Sirtek-Canada tried to setup a numbered shell corporation to hide the fact they were selling the rights to a Japanese company but they were outed pretty quickly. I believe that company launched Wizardry Online which failed.

Greenberg went on to be a lawyer due to all this mess but I think all the legal issues are finally behind them and settled.

wolfsrain said:

What is funny, is that a lot of people forgot how those old series were actually a mix between fantasy and science-fiction. Wizardry and M&M would have aliens and spaceships in the stories, while Ultima's Avatar would breach the space and time to get in the Britannia.

Sadly, you don't see that combination in the western RPG's in our days. But it would be fun to see that mix again, especially if it would be implemented properly.

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Yeah, this is part of the problem with the whole article - he doesn't realize the franchise did just that. The whole article is a mess.

As it turns out, quite a while. For one thing, the game itself moved at a decidedly leisurely pace; because Woodhead and Greenberg had programmed the game in BASIC, it didn't run as quickly as it might have had it been coded closer to the metal.

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It wasn't written in BASIC, it was famously written Pascal because Apple-Pascal had memory management tools. There was no such thing as virtual memory back then.

The author does a lot of comparison to Ultima - i.e. no overland travel, story almost non-existent - and does not understand just how D&D was played back then. Almost every game was a dungeon crawler and was mostly combat centered with a backstory. He doesn't understand that these were Pen and Paper campaigns first.

A lot of people also don't realize that Wizardry was heavily lifted from Ubliette which the guys acknowledge in hints. But if you want to compare, look at 1993's Ubliette port compared to Wizardry. It is absolute genius what they pulled off in 16k of RAM.

Carnifex said:

I'm pretty certain I could never figure out how to do those downloads, but I'm patient and can wait till it pops up on a client that will do the job for me. I totally suck at installing those things, though I bet you are right, it does look like something I would fancy quite a bit.

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I'll PM you a dropbox link with whole thing ready to go in a zip file. Just unzip to anywhere and click on executable to launch game.

i don't know if it sent or not cos after clicking submit and refreshing itself the sent items section keeps saying 0.

Hastar said:

Wizardry had some wicked puzzles in the earlier games that my fragile brain could not solve

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I really enjoyed the puzzles, riddles and logic games in early RPGs (remember those puzzle chests in Betrayal at Krondor?). I'd love to see more of that in today's games. I assume they fell out of favor due to the Internet, but who cares? Not all of us are cheaters… that is, unless the riddle is a real head-scratcher.

Vindicator said:

I'd love to see more of that in today's games. I assume they fell out of favor due to the Internet, but who cares? Not all of us are cheaters… that is, unless the riddle is a real head-scratcher.

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Maybe I'm being overly pessimistic, but I think it's probably more due to the fact that today's younger generation of gamers are too lazy to deal with a significant amount of puzzles. They've been groomed to have most things easy.

the (same codexer) mrrichard999 (and others) also translated into english WIZARDRY Gaiden 4: throb of the demon's heart for SNES.

i haven't personally finished it yet, but it is a mix of classic wiz and the races/spells/stuff introduced in wiz 6-7. it takes place in feudal japan.

you can find the SNES jp rom in the usual places you find such things, and the eng. patch in romhacking dot net website.

most places already offer the rom pre-patched.

aside from those two fan-translated games, i also recommend checking out:

Wizardry Gaiden 6: Prisoner of the Battles (it's a JAP release but it has menu options to turn text into english) for PS 2 (playstation 2).

that one is a straight classic Wiz interpretation offering a similar experience to Wiz 1-5, except with the newer additions of the later games like dual wielding and item crafting and enchanting.

very little npc dialog in that one, it is a straight dungeon crawl, and it is glorious!!!! absolutely love it.

I also recommend checking out the PC games Elminage: Original and Elminage: Gothic, made by japanese Wizardry developers. These are the true Wizardry successors and they are amazing games, especially Elminage: Gothic in particular (my favorite RPG).

Other Wiz-clones or first-person crawlers made by ex-jap wiz devs:

- Wizardry: Chronicle for PC (fan-translated; iso is in iso zone, eng patch in romhacking site)

- The Dark Spire for Nintendo DS (made by the jap devs who did the PS1 remakes of Wizardry 1-3)

- Paper Sorcerer for PC (not from ex wiz devs but a fantastic modern first-person crawler made in the style of Wiz 4, except not as hard-core obviously)

- Stranger of Sword City for PC (made by exp. inc, who used to be the studio involved in the Wizardry XTH/Generation XTH games for PS2; also SoSC itself is FUCKING GREAT, a fantastic 'crawler)

I'm surprised you didn't mention Wizardry: Tales of the Forsaken Land. That's the best non-American Wizardry imo.

I remember that one. Although TotFL is no Wizardry 5-8, it's not bad for those craving more.

Yeah these all sound amazing and things I'd love to play at some point, but I'm such a luddite I'd likely end up killing or wounding my poor computer!