Wizardry
Genre	Role-playing
Developer	Sir-Tech
Publisher	Sir-Tech
Creators	Andrew C. Greenberg Robert Woodhead
First release	Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord September 1981
Latest release	Wizardry Variants Daphne October 15, 2024
Spin-offs	Nemesis Wizardry Gaiden series Wizardry Empire series 20 more games

Wizardry is a series ofrole-playing video games originally created by American publisherSir-Tech. The series was influential in the evolution of modern role-playing video games alongsideUltima andMight and Magic.^[1] The originalWizardry was a significant influence on early console role-playing games such asShin Megami Tensei,Dragon Slayer,the Shining series,Fire Emblem,Final Fantasy andDragon Quest.^[2][3] Originally made for theApple II, the games were later ported to other platforms. The last game in the original series by Sir-Tech wasWizardry 8, released in 2001. There have since been various spin-off titles developed for theJapanese market.

Wizardry began as a simpledungeon crawl byAndrew C. Greenberg andRobert Woodhead. It was written when they were students atCornell University and published bySir-Tech. The game was influenced by earlier games from thePLATO system, most notablyOubliette.^[4] The earliest installments ofWizardry were very successful, as they were the first graphically-rich incarnations ofDungeons & Dragons-type gameplay forhome computers. The release of the first version coincided with the first wave of Dungeons & Dragons' popularity inNorth America.

The first five games in the series were written in ApplePascal, an implementation ofUCSD Pascal. They 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. In 1998, the rights were transferred to 1259190 Ontario Inc., and in 2006, to Aeria IPM. In 2008, Aeria IPM merged withGamepot, the developer ofWizardry Online^[5] and in 2017, Gamepot was shut down and absorbed into its parent companyGMO Internet.^[6][7]Drecom announced they had acquiredWizardry from GMO Internet on October 29, 2020.^[8]

In May 2024, a 3Dremake ofWizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord with the same name as the original was released on modern platforms. Said remake was developed byDigital Eclipse, who wasn't previously involved with theWizardry series.

Datamost released the menu-drivenWizPlus, a utility program that allowed users to make changes to both the characters and also to the playing environment ofWizardry; Bob Reams reviewed the utility forComputer Gaming World, and said that "WizPlus should be used with great caution or the spirit of adventuring will be diluted and, more importantly, you will not be able to continue with this exciting series".^[9]

The originalWizardry series is composed of eight different titles. All of the titles were first released in North America, and then ported to Japanese computers. Some of the titles were also officially released in Europe. The first three games are a trilogy, with similar settings, plots, and gameplay mechanics. A second trilogy is formed by installments 6 through 8 –Bane of the Cosmic Forge,Crusaders of the Dark Savant andWizardry 8 – with settings and gameplay mechanics that differed greatly from the first trilogy. The fourth game,The Return of Werdna, was a significant departure from the rest of the series. In it, the player controls Werdna ("Andrew", one of the game's developers, spelled backwards), the evil wizard slain in the first game, and summons groups of monsters to aid him as he fights his way through the prison in which he had been held captive. 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.

In Japan, theWizardry series was translated byASCII Entertainment, and became very influential during the 1980s, even as its popularity at home declined.^[10] When first introduced, the games 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 [sic]" but its meaning was misinterpreted becauseCuisinartfood processors were virtually unknown in Japan. However, this misconception appealed to early computer gamers who were looking for something different and made theWizardry series popular. Conversely, the fourth game,The Return of Werdna, was poorly received, as, lacking the knowledge of subcultures necessary to solving the game, Japanese players had no chance of figuring out some puzzles.

The eight main titles in the series are:

In 1996, the series received the first (and, so far, only) spin-off developed in North America, titledNemesis: The Wizardry Adventure. Every other Wizardry spin-off has been developed in Japan.

Nemesis is played as a solo adventure: one character only, with no supporting party or monsters. All players use the same character, without the ability to choose class or attributes. In addition, the game contains only 16 spells, compared to 50 in the first four adventures, and more in the subsequent ones. It is also the firstWizardry title where the player saw enemies in advance and thus could try to avoid them.

The popularity ofWizardry in Japan inspired several original sequels, spin-offs, and ports, with the series long outliving the American original.^[10] As of 2022, thirty-nine different spin-offs were released in Japan, with six of them being localized and released worldwide. The latest released in both Japanese and English in 2024.

All the games in this sub-series were developed byStarfish SD.

Due to the nature of the Japanese mobile system, English localisations of the following games are unlikely.

The originalWizardry game was a success, selling 24,000 copies by June 1982, just nine months after its release according to Softalk's sales surveys.^[19][20] In the June 1983 issue ofElectronic Games,Wizardry was described as "without a doubt, the most popular fantasy adventure game for the Apple II at the present time". While noting limitations such as the inability to divide the party, or the emphasis on combat over role-playing, the magazine stated that "no other game comes closer to providing the type of contest favored by most players of non-electronic role-playing games... one outstanding programming achievement, and an absolute 'must buy' for those fantasy gamers who own an Apple".^[21] In the May–June 1982, issue ofComputer Gaming World, the reviewer praisedWizardry as setting a standard by which all fantasy role playing games should be compared to, and call it an all time classic.^[22] The series had sold over 1.5 million copies by 1987,^[23] 2 million by 1992,^[24] and over 5 million by 1996.^[25]

Spin-offs originally released in Japan received generally positive reviews in North America.GameSpot reviewedWizardry: Tale of the Forsaken Land in 2002, and awarded it a score of 8.5 out of 10.^[26] In 2011,Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls was also reviewed by GameSpot and received a score of 7.5 out of 10.^[27] In Japan, readers ofFamitsu magazine considered the Famicom port of the originalWizardry I to be one of the 100 best games of all time.^[28] The series was ranked as the 60th top game (collectively) byNext Generation in 1996. They cited the huge dungeons with elaborate quests and tons of differing enemies.^[29] Fans of the series includedRobin Williams,Harry Anderson, and the Crown Prince ofBahrain; the latter even called Sir-Tech on the phone.^[30]

Together with theUltima series,Wizardry established the conventions of role-playing video games.^[31] The command-driven battle system with a still image of the monster being fought would be emulated in later games, such asThe Bard's Tale,Dragon Slayer,Shining Force,Fire Emblem,Dragon Quest, andFinal Fantasy. The party-based combat inWizardry also inspiredRichard Garriott to include a similar party-based system inUltima III: Exodus.^[32] Otheruser interface elements were influential in Japanese role-playing games. The laterWizardry games implemented multiple endings, some of which were only accessible to people who imported characters from previous games.^[33]

Wizardry features what would later be calledprestige classes. Aside from the traditionalcharacter classes, such asfighter, players could take more advanced ones that combined the abilities of multiple classes if they had the right attributes and alignment. In the earlyWizardry games, some classes were inaccessible duringcharacter creation due to the high requirements; this meant the player needed to first gain levels and then change their class.^[33]Wizardry VI allowed starting with any class if the player invested enough time during the random character attribute generation.

Wizardry inspired many clones and served as a template for role-playing video games. Some notable series that trace theirlook and feel toWizardry include 1985'sThe Bard's Tale and theMight and Magic series. The specificWizardry formula, that of a turn based RPG taking place primarily in a dungeon via first person exploration, is referred to as adungeon crawl.

Wizardry is the major inspiration to theNintendo DS titleThe Dark Spire.^[34] While the game follows its own story and maps, much of the game uses the same game play mechanics, even going so far as including a "classic" mode that removes all of the game's graphics, replacing them with a wireframe environment, 8-bit-style sprites for monsters and characters, andchiptune music. The game's publisher,Atlus, also published another Wizardry spin-off,Wizardry: Tale of the Forsaken Land.

While designing the popular Japanese role-playing gameDragon Quest,Yuji Horii drew inspiration from theWizardry series, 1986'sMugen no Shinzou (Heart of Phantasm), and theUltima series of games. Horii's obsession withWizardry was manifested as aneaster egg in one of his earlier games,The Portopia Serial Murder Case in 1983. In a dungeon-crawling portion of that adventure game, a note on the wall reads "MONSTER SURPRISED YOU".

Wizardry's legacy continued in Japan after the parent company ended, with titles such asWizardry Gaiden,Wizardry Empire, andWizardry XTH, being developed after the original games were released and generally keeping the same tropes, themes, and mechanics.

NotablyWizardry XTH: Academy of Frontier swapped the original's Gothic themes for a modern day military school setting, adding item crafting and party member compatibility to the Wizardry formula. Much like the original Wizardry, XTH spawned a direct storyline sequel,Wizardry XTH: Unlimited Students. The second XTH game was used as the basis for and shared code withClass of Heroes, which swapped the modern science fiction elements for a combination of High School, High Fantasy, and Anime aesthetics. Class of Heroes would go on to spawn several sequels and spinoffs itself.

Following the shutdown of Michaelsoft, the director ofWizardry XTH,Motoya Ataka took a group of programmers he called "Team Muramasa" that had worked onEmpire andXTH and went on to foundExperience Inc., creating a series of PC games with Wizardry XTH's mechanics calledGeneration Xth. These would later be ported to thePlayStation Vita, their ports localized asOperation Abyss andOperation Babel. Experience would go on to create several other DRPGs usingWizardry's mechanics as a starting point, includingStudents of the Round,Stranger of Sword City, andDemon Gaze.

Starfish, the development team behindWizardry Empire, would later go on to createElminage, a series of DRPGs that retained the original Gothic aesthetic (and difficulty) of the westernWizardry games.Elminage was notable for using the expanded "kemonojin" races fromWizardry Asterisk, also by Starfish, as well as the summoner class fromWizardry: Summoner —these included "Were-Beast", "Dragonnewt", "Fairy", and "Devilkin" as well as expanded classes such as "Brawler" (a hand to hand melee specialist), "Alchemist" (a combination crafting class and spellcaster), and "Summoner" (a spellcasting class that can tame and summon monsters from the dungeon). These "expanded" Japanese Wizardry mechanics would be reused in future Elminage games as well as notablyClass of Heroes.

After cancellation ofWizardry: Stones of Arnhem in the mid 1990s, one of the developers, Cleveland Mark Blakemore, started work on the gameGrimoire: Heralds of the Winged Exemplar which is heavily inspired byWizardry. It was eventually released in August 2017.

In 2009, several Japanese publishers and development teams started a "Brand Revitalization plan", which they called the"Wizardry Renaissance". After Sir-Tech, the originalWizardry creator in the US, was dissolved, several semi-official games were created in Japan of varying quality and thematic elements. "Wizardry Renaissance" aimed to "rebuild" the brand by agreeing to a certain "worldview" and quality standards to these semi-officialWizardry games.

Wizardry Renaissance titles include:

• Wizardry Online, a PC MMORPG, shut down in 2016.
• Wizardry: Torawareshi Tamashii no Meikyū, a PlayStation 3, iOS, Vita, and PC RPG (localized in the West asWizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls).
• Wizardry: Seimei no Kusabi, a Nintendo DS title.
• Wizardry: Bōkyaku no Isan, a Nintendo DS title, which re-used elements fromSeimei no Kusabi.
• Wizardry Online Mobile, a mobile phone MMORPG, shut down in 2011.
• Wizardry: Torawareshi Bōrei no Machi, a PlayStation 3 RPG.
• Tōkyō Meikyū – Wizardry 0, a social-networking card-battle RPG using the Mobage service on smartphones, shut down sometime in 2012.
• Wizardry: Senran no Matō, a social-networking RPG for smartphones, shut down in 2015.
• Wizardry Schema, anincremental game RPG for smartphones, shut down in 2017.
• Wizrogue: Labyrinth of Wizardry, an isometric roguelike RPG withgacha game elements, originally shut down in 2015, it was re-launched in 2017 with the gacha elements removed.

These titles were released from late 2009 to 2016; the latest activity is the port ofWizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls to the PC in January 2020.

The popularity ofWizardry in Japan also inspired variouslight novels,manga comics,Japanese pen-and-paper role-playing games, and anoriginal video animation, produced byTMS Entertainment.

• Barton, Matt (2008).Dungeons & Desktops: The History of Computer Role-Playing Games.A K Peters, Ltd.ISBN 978-1-56881-411-7.

• Official series website:https://wizardry.info/en/
• Wizardry series atMobyGames
• Wizardry Archives - info about theWizardry games

• Wizardry
• Video game franchises
• Fantasy video games
• Video game franchises introduced in 1981
• First-person party-based dungeon crawler video games
• Video games about magic (supernatural)
• Video games developed in Japan

• CS1 Japanese-language sources (ja)
• Use mdy dates from May 2022
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Short description matches Wikidata