I absolutely adore your vocal delivery and tone. I also LOVE wizardry. Thanks for producing such great content for so many years. As a new subscriber I have A LOT to catch up on!
I remember watching older kids play this at the public library in Easton, PA while my mom studied for her degree. It was the best babysitter. I was fascinated.
I lived in this game in the early 80s after I got my Apple for Christmas. Spells are not random. If you can find the copy of the original manual, you will see the spells come by mage/priest level. Having to memorize and type in full names of spells was par for the course. Tiltowait; the nuclear blast that was very powerful and only way to disperse some of the higher level monsters, esp Werdna and her minions at the end. There was no save feature so if you lost power or had a glitch in middle of dungeon, you were hosed. You could lose a whole day of exploring, gathering and leveling up if you didn’t make it back to edge of town before you exited. Dying was early and often for weaker classes. You HAD to be persistent to play this game....I personally think it taught me levels of patients I never knew I had. Oh, and copy protection on this bad boy made your Apple ][ disk drives sound like they were about to throw a bolt at you when checking. Good stuff. Thanks Edit: remembered that I loved this game so much that when I got my Apple ][gs a few years later I created a clone of it in a BBS language called ACOS when I ran the RABBS ][gs BBS. Running on prodos/ACOS and using newly developed extended character support in dial up software you could draw and use ascii art, and even position on the screen with pseudo windows like functionality.
I remember going to my local library in the early 1980s and Wizardry was available for loan within the library. Playing this game was a wonder at the time.
My first experience of Wizadry was its eighth iteration, so I was pretty late to the party. I found the story engrossing and really enjoyed having a large band of characters that I created myself - I grew really attached to those guys! I may go back to try some of the older Wizadry games some time. Cheers, Matt!
Many late nights with my buddy on his Apple II with this game back when I was a kid... Fight, fight, fight, parry, parry, parry until your mages got decent spells!\ The best was the funny artwork in the manual. "Matu!" being yelled by a mage & a fighter up front saying "gesundheit"
Always been a faithful follower of Lord British, but Wizardry always had a certain charm and is indeed a fatally overlooked classic. Great vid, subbed!
Your the author of Dungeons and Desktops? That book was great! I can't believe you are doing you-tube videos. This is great! I loved that book! Being 31 and having all my friends abandon gaming over the years sucks. I have had to rely on computer rpgs for my escapist fix. Just want to let you know your book was incredible! Pure gold for a rpg fanatic. Have you written anything else? I have played around 70% of the games in that book, but it did tell me about a few new ones I never heard of.
Great videos.. I loved all the old crpgs ... back in the 80s ..I am still mad that wizardry, might and magic, ultima, eye of the beholder, bards tale, gold box AD&D, and baldur's gate, planescape, diablo, vampire the masquarade, etc... are no more :( All we have now are a trickle of rpgs every few years and way to many mmos. Dragons Age(PC/PS3) and Demons Souls(PS3) before that... Neverwinter Nights 2(PC) and The Witcher(PC) from 3 years ago. I miss when developers made great rpgs every year!
Did you know? This type of RPG still has a very devoted following with Japanese Developers? Etrian Odyssey, Class of Heroes, Dark Spire and especially SMT: Strange Journey are all modern games in this style. They have both great challenges and modern day perks to them (automapping anyone?) And they recently released Wizardry: Pledge of Life & Dungeon of Imprisoned Souls for DS and PS3 in Japan only as well.
Freaking awesome. You're covering games that no one is covering. You really need more subscriptions because people need to know about these classics that paved the way for modern RPGs.
Man I love me some Wizardry. I've only played 8 but man have I put the hours into that one haha. Love your channel but didn't realize you'd been doing these matt chats for 5 years! Craziness
I've put over 4 hours into The Dark Spire so far, played mostly in classic mode with the music off, which makes it very much like the original Apple II Wizardry in look and feel. You can turn the music on to get more of a NES feel, though it's still just a wireframe dungeon. You can of course turn on modern graphics and music, but the art style is a bit busy. It's damned hard. Over 4 hours in and my characters are only level 3 and I've only explored the lower levels of the tower.
Very good video Matt Barton! I'm a big fan of the series and have been since the mid-80's. I even got into playing the new Wizadry Online game but sadly SOE is dropping publication of the game in US/EU in July. The game will still be developed and available in Japan. Unfortunately it was strife with problems at release and SOE did not do anything to try and recover from all of the early bad press. I'm not sure if you're aware, but Wizardry 7-8 (collectively known as the Dark Savant series) was re-released on Steam and GoG.com. Sadly the older versions Wizardry 1-6 are all still only available via emulator.
I do those 4 hours in spurts around bed-time. Maybe 20 minute spurts ever other night or so. It's conducive to bite sized playing because of the difficulty. You have to constantly head back to town. Luckily you can save any time and there are three save slots.
lol, MaximumRD! Great review. I'm glad I found your videos. I had a C64 packed away and just got a new boxed one two days ago so I'll have to try and get this game for it.
I had a lot of fun with the NES version as a kid, although I had no idea what I was doing. I didn't develop the patience for graph paper until I grew up.
@blacklily8 The dark spire is great! It even has a "Classic" mode that turns all the graphics into wireframe. Be warned it's a very hard game, more so even then a lot of the early crpgs. Another good recent game to get is Demon's Souls, not old school, but it retains an old school feel like a present day Ultima Underworld, only much more unforgiving. It makes you think about combat, puzzle solving, leveling & crafting gear. Souls of the dead are your currency and exp U loose them when you die.
This has probably been mentioned already but there's an even better SNES version out there. It was made in the late nineties and has better graphics and even more streamlined controls. With a SNES emulator you can also of course use save states to save the game, which comes very much in handy with these ridiculously hard games with no proper save function. I'm currently playing it and I can say it's been a long time since i've been so excited about a game.
The battle cry of spell deficient parties, easy mobs, and lazy Wizardry players: Fight, Fight, Fight, Parry, Parry, Parry! Repeat until out of maze or dead.
It really has the atmosphere I miss in early Ultima and it has the depth and especially (more) complete storyline and sequels rather than alternate reality was missing, which was a disappointment for me. Even Bard's Tale can't reach the good balanced gameplay of the Wizardry series. The manual is also awesome! IMHO those "3D" cRPGs are more immersive than top-down view. only roguelike stuff is an exception. I started cRPGs in the early 90s with Might & Magic 3 and Wizardry 6 on the Amiga.
awesome matt! I loved how the old wiz's (II/III) were expansion packs but it sure limited playability for folks who didnt come through from wiz1... Wiz IV and V are my favs of the early series.
I don't remember playing these games. I've played Gateway to Apshai, and like it, but it's not one of the games you did mention, so I guess I'm off-topic somehow.
it may not be too well remembered in the states but in Japan Wizardry still has a solid following and still sees new titles being released to this day. Seriously some Japanese studio bought the rights to the series after Sir Tech went under.
i was a graph paper child. my mate and i would take turns to map out what we were playing.......we never played this though.....pools of radience..yep....dungeon keeper...yep...uncharted 2 yes but we no longer have the graph paper ( i miss it sometimes :( )
Great review, had never seen this game before. The problem I have with such old RPGs is they often lack much storyline... which is a very important aspect to me. But if I had been playing this game back then, I'm sure I would have loved it.
I have the MS-DOS version that I play on DOSBox. The graphics seem very similar to the Commodore 64 version you showed off. Though I think when I say similar, I mean that the colours of the monsters are different.
Another nice and informative video and W00t!!! My name was in the video :) Also Matt, did you ever play Ultima Online? I'm playing it for the first time (The Second Age version) and it's a really superb game. :)
In regard to the Lord having to be good. That's not true since i got the item that transforms a character into a Lord and said character stayed evil. Hence, i did have an evil lord and they fit right into my party of totally evil characters. A less common way was to either kill everything or let everything go that gave you the dialogue of wandering monsters. Alignment changes could happen due to one's actions.
I'm going to include The Dark Spire, which I'm playing now, in my video response. It's practically a 1:1 clone of the original Wizardry, and more specifically the features of the NES version.
maximumrd is in your party, that's awesome! 5-stars from me, great coverage. Do you have a Coco2? I'd love for you to play Dungeons of Daggorath (have you ever played it??).
Matt i was playing this game, and it pisses me off.I had started all over 5 times in a row because of wipes.It has some interesting good ideas, but holy fuck this game is mean.Even with the gold exploit,i still get downed too fast.
I absolutely adore your vocal delivery and tone. I also LOVE wizardry. Thanks for producing such great content for so many years. As a new subscriber I have A LOT to catch up on!
I remember watching older kids play this at the public library in Easton, PA while my mom studied for her degree. It was the best babysitter. I was fascinated.
I lived in this game in the early 80s after I got my Apple for Christmas. Spells are not random. If you can find the copy of the original manual, you will see the spells come by mage/priest level. Having to memorize and type in full names of spells was par for the course. Tiltowait; the nuclear blast that was very powerful and only way to disperse some of the higher level monsters, esp Werdna and her minions at the end. There was no save feature so if you lost power or had a glitch in middle of dungeon, you were hosed. You could lose a whole day of exploring, gathering and leveling up if you didn’t make it back to edge of town before you exited. Dying was early and often for weaker classes. You HAD to be persistent to play this game....I personally think it taught me levels of patients I never knew I had. Oh, and copy protection on this bad boy made your Apple ][ disk drives sound like they were about to throw a bolt at you when checking. Good stuff. Thanks
Edit: remembered that I loved this game so much that when I got my Apple ][gs a few years later I created a clone of it in a BBS language called ACOS when I ran the RABBS ][gs BBS. Running on prodos/ACOS and using newly developed extended character support in dial up software you could draw and use ascii art, and even position on the screen with pseudo windows like functionality.
I remember going to my local library in the early 1980s and Wizardry was available for loan within the library. Playing this game was a wonder at the time.
I salute you for paying homage to one of the grandfather's of Rpgs ...
Cheers from the old school!!
My first experience of Wizadry was its eighth iteration, so I was pretty late to the party. I found the story engrossing and really enjoyed having a large band of characters that I created myself - I grew really attached to those guys!
I may go back to try some of the older Wizadry games some time. Cheers, Matt!
@Dawn Razor I never did, mate. Any recommendations?
There was a photo of Robin Williams at Sir-Tech's booth. He was a fan of Wizardry.
Many late nights with my buddy on his Apple II with this game back when I was a kid...
Fight, fight, fight, parry, parry, parry until your mages got decent spells!\
The best was the funny artwork in the manual. "Matu!" being yelled by a mage & a fighter up front saying "gesundheit"
Always been a faithful follower of Lord British, but Wizardry always had a certain charm and is indeed a fatally overlooked classic.
Great vid, subbed!
Your the author of Dungeons and Desktops? That book was great! I can't believe you are doing you-tube videos. This is great! I loved that book! Being 31 and having all my friends abandon gaming over the years sucks. I have had to rely on computer rpgs for my escapist fix. Just want to let you know your book was incredible! Pure gold for a rpg fanatic. Have you written anything else? I have played around 70% of the games in that book, but it did tell me about a few new ones I never heard of.
Great videos.. I loved all the old crpgs ... back in the 80s ..I am still mad that wizardry, might and magic, ultima, eye of the beholder, bards tale, gold box AD&D, and baldur's gate, planescape, diablo, vampire the masquarade, etc... are no more :( All we have now are a trickle of rpgs every few years and way to many mmos. Dragons Age(PC/PS3) and Demons Souls(PS3) before that... Neverwinter Nights 2(PC) and The Witcher(PC) from 3 years ago. I miss when developers made great rpgs every year!
Back here again after I left a comment 11 years ago. I guess it's time to play this game again.
Did you know? This type of RPG still has a very devoted following with Japanese Developers? Etrian Odyssey, Class of Heroes, Dark Spire and especially SMT: Strange Journey are all modern games in this style. They have both great challenges and modern day perks to them (automapping anyone?)
And they recently released Wizardry: Pledge of Life & Dungeon of Imprisoned Souls for DS and PS3 in Japan only as well.
Freaking awesome. You're covering games that no one is covering. You really need more subscriptions because people need to know about these classics that paved the way for modern RPGs.
Man I love me some Wizardry. I've only played 8 but man have I put the hours into that one haha. Love your channel but didn't realize you'd been doing these matt chats for 5 years! Craziness
I've put over 4 hours into The Dark Spire so far, played mostly in classic mode with the music off, which makes it very much like the original Apple II Wizardry in look and feel. You can turn the music on to get more of a NES feel, though it's still just a wireframe dungeon. You can of course turn on modern graphics and music, but the art style is a bit busy.
It's damned hard. Over 4 hours in and my characters are only level 3 and I've only explored the lower levels of the tower.
Very good video Matt Barton! I'm a big fan of the series and have been since the mid-80's. I even got into playing the new Wizadry Online game but sadly SOE is dropping publication of the game in US/EU in July. The game will still be developed and available in Japan. Unfortunately it was strife with problems at release and SOE did not do anything to try and recover from all of the early bad press.
I'm not sure if you're aware, but Wizardry 7-8 (collectively known as the Dark Savant series) was re-released on Steam and GoG.com. Sadly the older versions Wizardry 1-6 are all still only available via emulator.
I would like a remaster of the first 7 Wizardry games. And a totally different wizardry 8.
I just discovered this channel. Nice equpiment. good mixup between gameplay footage and just... talk.
I like it. I Subscribe
I noticed as well the interface on the NES version reminds me of the old-school JRPGs. Thanks for the shoutout at the end!
I've heard of Wizardy before. Never knew that there is NES version too. Gotta get one, coz prices of those Wizardry cartridges on Ebay looked fair.
Great video! Wizardry is one of my favorite games & series! I remember playing a ton of the NES version, I should pick that game up again!
It's impressive how fond of RPGs I am, and how many titles I didn't even know of. Thanks, Matt, for expanding my RPG universe with this reviews :P !
Really enjoyed this vid...definitely gotta get this for my nes
Excellent extended discussion of Wizadry in your first book. Heads up folks!
I do those 4 hours in spurts around bed-time. Maybe 20 minute spurts ever other night or so. It's conducive to bite sized playing because of the difficulty. You have to constantly head back to town. Luckily you can save any time and there are three save slots.
lol, MaximumRD! Great review. I'm glad I found your videos. I had a C64 packed away and just got a new boxed one two days ago so I'll have to try and get this game for it.
I had a lot of fun with the NES version as a kid, although I had no idea what I was doing. I didn't develop the patience for graph paper until I grew up.
@blacklily8
The dark spire is great! It even has a "Classic" mode that turns all the graphics into wireframe. Be warned it's a very hard game, more so even then a lot of the early crpgs. Another good recent game to get is Demon's Souls, not old school, but it retains an old school feel like a present day Ultima Underworld, only much more unforgiving. It makes you think about combat, puzzle solving, leveling & crafting gear. Souls of the dead are your currency and exp U loose them when you die.
Don't use Forward at the door. Use Kick when you are at a door. That avoids the "Ouch"
Great video! I've recently been playing Sorcerer on the iPhone which is a Wizardry remake - it brings back lots of great memories.
This has probably been mentioned already but there's an even better SNES version out there. It was made in the late nineties and has better graphics and even more streamlined controls. With a SNES emulator you can also of course use save states to save the game, which comes very much in handy with these ridiculously hard games with no proper save function. I'm currently playing it and I can say it's been a long time since i've been so excited about a game.
The battle cry of spell deficient parties, easy mobs, and lazy Wizardry players:
Fight, Fight, Fight, Parry, Parry, Parry! Repeat until out of maze or dead.
Thanks to you for these great videos!
And thanks for the shout out in yellow text! :-)
It really has the atmosphere I miss in early Ultima and it has the depth and especially (more) complete storyline and sequels rather than alternate reality was missing, which was a disappointment for me. Even Bard's Tale can't reach the good balanced gameplay of the Wizardry series. The manual is also awesome!
IMHO those "3D" cRPGs are more immersive than top-down view. only roguelike stuff is an exception.
I started cRPGs in the early 90s with Might & Magic 3 and Wizardry 6 on the Amiga.
awesome matt! I loved how the old wiz's (II/III) were expansion packs but it sure limited playability for folks who didnt come through from wiz1... Wiz IV and V are my favs of the early series.
I don't remember playing these games. I've played Gateway to Apshai, and like it, but it's not one of the games you did mention, so I guess I'm off-topic somehow.
Great video, Matt! I made sure to rate it this time, I usually forget about that.
it may not be too well remembered in the states but in Japan Wizardry still has a solid following and still sees new titles being released to this day. Seriously some Japanese studio bought the rights to the series after Sir Tech went under.
i was a graph paper child. my mate and i would take turns to map out what we were playing.......we never played this though.....pools of radience..yep....dungeon keeper...yep...uncharted 2 yes but we no longer have the graph paper ( i miss it sometimes :( )
Thanks a lot for the mention by the way!
Egads! My username went across the screen! Darn I'm at work with no access to a video camera! Hold on Matt!
Great review, had never seen this game before.
The problem I have with such old RPGs is they often lack much storyline... which is a very important aspect to me.
But if I had been playing this game back then, I'm sure I would have loved it.
I have the MS-DOS version that I play on DOSBox. The graphics seem very similar to the Commodore 64 version you showed off. Though I think when I say similar, I mean that the colours of the monsters are different.
Awesome review as always! Keep 'em coming!
Another nice and informative video and W00t!!! My name was in the video :)
Also Matt, did you ever play Ultima Online? I'm playing it for the first time (The Second Age version) and it's a really superb game. :)
Wow, aweseome video man! Arrrg, now u made me wanting to take my C64 out again, to clean it up and play some games ;-D
Bad ass game collection,
Really great series.
In regard to the Lord having to be good. That's not true since i got the item that transforms a character into a Lord and said character stayed evil. Hence, i did have an evil lord and they fit right into my party of totally evil characters. A less common way was to either kill everything or let everything go that gave you the dialogue of wandering monsters. Alignment changes could happen due to one's actions.
Nice vid, I fondly remember Wizardry on the Apple.
wizardy now thats a series i havent really collected
Great coverage once again. This game was WAY to text heavy and advanced for me back then haha.
Just posted my first ever video response. Why isn't it showing up in the video responses tally!!?? AAArrrgh! Better bloody win!
I played and beat the game in the IBM version and the Apple IIc version. Don't remember that opening graphic.
Great, informative vid. Wonder what you make of a self-conscious game like the DS's "The Dark Spire"?
Im still waiting for a game to affect me like Wizardry did.
I'm going to include The Dark Spire, which I'm playing now, in my video response. It's practically a 1:1 clone of the original Wizardry, and more specifically the features of the NES version.
maximumrd is in your party, that's awesome! 5-stars from me, great coverage. Do you have a Coco2? I'd love for you to play Dungeons of Daggorath (have you ever played it??).
It's come up on my page but I guess that doesn't count! Come on youtube, work dammit!
Just sent my video response, I think it went through. Am I #5?
are you the same matt barton who wrote the book "dungeons and desktops?"
i think he is.
Yes, he is. Also, do yourself a big favor and BUY IT, damnit!
Matt i was playing this game, and it pisses me off.I had started all over 5 times in a row because of wipes.It has some interesting good ideas, but holy fuck this game is mean.Even with the gold exploit,i still get downed too fast.