A big thank you to everyone who helped me make this video: *Apple II footage* - Tony Toon (no link as per their request) *Reference and Knowledge check* - Hengki Kusuma Adi: www.youtube.com/@Gamerhenky *SNES and Wonderswan footage* - Alma Elma: twitter.com/Static_and_Fire *Ultima 5 Footage* - Grugtar: www.youtube.com/@grugtar How Wizardry Influenced Your Favorite Game: th-cam.com/video/zAuqTHGYIng/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=TheCrawl
It’s so weird. The Wizardry and the Ultima Series just disappeared. It will be like call of duty and the battlefield disappearing after being around close to 30 years. Then again, not like I want to see EA games reboot Ultima.
They didn't disappear, Wizardry was sold to a Japenese company that continues to iterate on the formula. In Sirtech's hands it stagnated and was essentially just expansion packs for the original.
Things evolve let alone nowadays everyone borrows from underused properties, which is probably why super mario rpg was made lol they wanted that sea of stars money
I guess I'm my own grandpa because Wizardry was one of the first dungeon crawling RPGs I ever played. One of the notches in my gamer belt as a kid was beating the original Wizardry. Hand drew maps on graph paper of every level of the dungeon. It was great times.
Sounds like me and my dad; the first actual PC we got in the home was a C-64, and it had Zork. We spent a lot of time making graph paper maps by hand, figuring out those “twisty little passages, all alike.” I played Ultima III and IV for an ungodly number of hours.
Thanks you brought back good memories in the early 90s I played Ultima the Black gate. My dad had to show me how to use the computer cause I was like seven or eight and he would take his old graph paper and help me draw room is an explained that’s how you made DND maps and that’s all I ever remember about that old paper is we used to make mapson our tabletop campaigns with it
I wish I had been alive to see that time first hand I find the history of technology so fascinating it was my favorite thing I learned in I.T. trade school (and really kinda the only thing lmao) I love older games like baldurs gate and og dragon quest its just so fresh compared to the garbage shoved out onto then Internet to try and make a quick buck fuck I hate money grubbers
just as futuristic as VR today. I didn't know the series eventually gone even open-world FP. that would be so cool to play in VR, just like it's possible with Doom...
I watched a lot of videos about the Wizardry franchise, but that is the first one who does a more in-depht look in how the games played and how their influence both west and japanese developers in different ways. For example, that is the first time I've learned that due to translation issues, the series was seem as more mature and nihilistic in Japan. Great video and I can't wait for a part 2
@@st1kaOh no! As an old-timer, who played the Ultima games as they came out on my Atari computer, and wistfully viewed ads and read reviews about Wizardry, I was impressed by this video (I also didn't know about the west/east split on tone due to translation issues, although I already knew most, but definitely not all of the other facts). I was just going to go watch the second part, assuming it was already made by now.
megami tensei was based on the book "digital devil story" which was about using computers to summon demons, so it's kind of expected that the gameplay would involve that.
Hahaha, it's kind of funny, isn't it? Persona is a spin-off of Shin Megami Tensei, Shin Megami Tensei is a spinoff of Megami Tensei, and Megami Tensei (might as well be) a spinoff of Digital Devil Story.
Except the way it's shown/done in the books isn't like in the game. The main character has like one demon familiar, but not like a small group of demons he switches out that follow him around doing fights for/with him. It's much more like a typical demon-summoning horror story except the ritual is done by a computer and there is some pulpy action, rather than what is presented in the game. The demon summoning is basically just the set up after the beginning bits, it's not really something the main character keeps doing. Reflecting this the first Megami Tensei game was a Gauntlet-clone that didn't involve doing any demon summoning in-game at all.
Yeah, little of the mechanics of Atlus's MegaTen games are evidenced in the original light novels. It wouldn't surprise me if the demon recruitment system was inspired by Wizardry 4, but they're not *so* similar that I would necessarily be surprised if it was all a coincidence, either.
Actually it was the Wizardry-like game developed first by Atlus team of Namco, then Ai Nishitani asked Namco to make a game based on his book, and they decided that the Book's setting fits well to the Wizardry-like game they've been making. You know, kind of like Metroid Prime originally developed as a game about bounty hunter girls, then Miyamoto asked them to fit it within Metroid setting. And... how Dinosaur Planet became Star Fax.
The person who did the cover art for the PSX and such versions is Jun Suemi. He did the monster designs for almost every Japanese release up to that point and also did the colour illustrations and covers for the Wizardry table-top RPG. His style is inseparable from classic Wizardry in Japan. There are even artbooks dedicated to the work he did for Wizardry.
I'm sorry, but the idea of playing a game where the enemies are made up of parties of players of the last game is an INCREDIBLE idea. Seriously, its so lovely how Wizardry was made before the cement on RPG's had set and they were just trying everything. I'd love to see a RPG experiment with the idea of fighting your old party who died in the dungeon or something
There are mechanics like this in some roguelike games ... for instance, in crawl (or DCSS, which I'm more familiar with), characters you took into the dungeon previously and lost come back as ghosts sometimes on future runs and you can fight them. It would be cool to see a whole party rather than just a single character though, I agree
@Dr.Quarex The player's party comes back as copies, and they run into their originals. If the player was even half paying attention, this is an existential threat. Because not only the stronger your party gets, the stronger the enemy party gets. The more optimized you are for success, the harder things are. Or the fact that you're the clones and have to "dispose of" yourself to take the place of your original. Gamers would too easily come to terms with that last part. But making your "previous lives" a massive mechanical threat, on top of the monsters you have to climb a power ladder to beat, would make for one hell of a game. Guildwars 1 had a mandatory story mission where you had 1v1 a copy of yourself, who mirrored your build. Literally the easier your build is to use effectively, the easier it is for the AI trounce you with it. And while the AI has a hard time conceptualizing builds as skills in an order of operations, it is a lot faster at responding to triggers. So if you ran CCs in your build, it could unilaterally interrupt you faster than you could ever hope to interrupt it. So the strategy was to pad your build with useless skills to cox the AI to use them (and waste resources), while you focus on the 2-3 skills you planned to fight it with. And even then, it was a hard fight. Or you could go the opposite route, and craft to a build so self destructive, the AI would effectively kill itself if it used certain skills in order. The lesson designers need to take home from this is that if you craft a system that doesn't have to differentiate between PvP and PvE, then you have a stable combat system. Most games fail at this, because they rely on too hard on upscaling numbers in place of difficulty, and the damage escalation causes the whole thing to implode the longer it goes on. Where as convergent PvP/PvE combat designs means you can make a boss fight difficult just by changing up what types of strategies are involved. And the big reason you rarely see this, is because it requires better encounter design... requiring creativity and expertise to design, and money/time to implement and refine. Just look at how fast the idea of the Nemesis system from the Mordor games fell off the face of the industry. A systemic, but highly personalized mini-boss, that can ramp up the difficulty as it gains traits to counter past strategies that have defeated it. An enemy that demands you know how to play the game, and not let a build carry you through fights.
The nemesis system from the mordor games fell off the face of the earth because it was trademarked so broadly that no other company could really make anything similar without breaking said trademark. They basically created one of the coolest systems for emergent storytelling, used it for two games, then prevented anyone else from iterating on the idea. That's why it died off.
Small addition: You can actually transfer your characters from the original game to the sequels in the Famicom versions as well, using the Turbo File accessory. Of course this feature was removed from the NES versions.
I wish my crew had 2k + hp all spells front line 2 samurai 1 ninja and 2 lords and a wiz in back feel bad for those "new" games if I could bring my killers with me
Western Wizardry Players : "LMAO Murphy's Ghost. Nice reference. Oh no, my elf mage died. Guess I'll make a new one. Her name will be THICCA" ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ Japanese Wizardry Players : "...must defeat Werdna... Temple failed to revive... ...carry the corpse until more gold... ...must defeat Werdna.... Landlord knocking on my door.... rent due... i'm hungry.... so cold.... must defeat Werdna..."
my little bro and i grinded knight of diamonds on the nes back in the day.... we had a character that was way past 99, like in the hundreds i think and he had thousands of hp. usually our "scout parties" went something like this: level mage till they got teleport skill in party with elite characters. go back to town, send the mage out solo and cast teleport to random area. hope he doesnt die in an accident . once you get the locations of the magic armor and such, you can teleport to where its at, drop it, and fight it again infinitely for way more exp than murphy;s ghost also, you can create a character with 55 or even 60 bonus points, but its rediculously rare. Some strategies we used a -the inn was only for levelling, we had fodder clerics who healed people and went to the inn to restore mp b -class changing ages you, but there are weapons like the murasame that can be used to change a person instantly to a lord, samurai or ninja, c - Always have a pack mule character who you give all of your gold to every time who never enters the maze, use them to buy stuff and transfer. d -Sell even your most valuable weapons armor or items you arent using, boltac's never gets rid of what you sell them, it had a buyback feature. d -Never use a non start elite character as anything but fodder and experimentation. usually a lord or samurai will begin at 14 or 15 years of age when you create them.
I am WICKED grateful to you for making this. I never knew the impact of this series or how many things I always vibed about RPGs, but never knew where they originated. Thank you so much for this.
Experience Inc used to have the license for Wizardry and they make really fun dungeon crawler games to this day (Demon Gaze, Operation Abyss: New Tokyo Legacy, Saviors of Sapphire Wings, Stranger of Sword City, Undernauts). I wish they were more popular, they make very old-school dungeon crawlers but they're extremely niche games.
It’s kind of staggering to think of the influence this game had, especially because this game was popular in pretty much every gaming market at the time.
In many versions of Wizardry, you can have good and evil characters in the same party. Form a party of good characters then go into the maze and take one step away from the exit ladder. Then exit the game. Then restart and form your evil party. Go into the maze and go to the same spot that you left your good party, then search for party members. The good party that was left at that spot will join the current evil party! 😯
It also works on 2 amd 3 though i really wouldn't recommended for Wizardry 3. As only certain alignments can access certain floors. Even for good and neutral and odd number floors for evil and neutral. The final floor can only be reached by a all good or all evil party and you have to explore all floors to access the final one.
This must have taken forever to put together! Wizardry was always one of those RPGs I had heard about but never actually played. Deep dives like this are always useful in that they help me to decide if I want to try a series out. Extremely good job with this one.
An absolutely amazing retrospective. As someone that lost years of their life to the NES version of Wizardry 1, I can't wait to see the rest of your content. I appreciate that TH-cam recommended your channel to me.
Yeah, Kouji Okada and Kazunari Suzuki were both huge fans of Wizardry and have openly admitted it was a huge part of the inspiration for the original Megami Tensei gameplay (the Namco title anyway, less so the Telenet game). The Demon Negotiation System that's considered iconic of the MegaTen franchise was from Suzuki believing they needed at least one original mechanic to make their game stand out from Wizardry. Which is kinda funny since like you said, Return of Werdna ended up coming out only a few months before the first Megami Tensei.
Yeah Wizardry and Ultima really took the two ways people played early D&D and ran with it. Wizardry using the here's your base town and it's dungeon you explore, and that's it for example Keep on the borderlands and part 1 of Temple of elemental evil. while Ultima took the more sandbox style early D&D adventure style like the original Ravenloft adventure.
Wizardry 4 is such a cool idea. I was actually playing a game that i think is actually inspired by it. The name's is Demon Lord Reincarnation and it really follows the classic wizardry formula(tho a lot more forgiving) on the first part. According to the steam page the second part of the game is you playing as said Demon Lord, recruiting monsters as you ascend. Haven't reached it yet. But it's good to see the idea picked up.
Great video! I played this game on my Apple II around 1984 when I was 7. It crushed me over and over but I enjoyed going back and creating new characters. Big nostalgia for me on this one.
You singlehandedly sold Wizardry to me LOL. I used to draw maps when playing King's Field (or any dungeon crawler for that matter) so that, paired with the fact that the manual is the only way to know what the spells and items do gets me so turnt. Awesome Video 😎 Also the comic strips in the Manuel is 100% a reference to the AD&D Manuals who had so many joke pictures of wizards getting toasted or adventurers getting bonked. i cant believe I've never played Wizardry smh.
The Macintosh also had a version, which was VERY different-looking, with the roster being an icon field and drag-and-drop party management, and each character sheet being a window, so could open more than one and compare. It also had some mechanical features not seen in the other versions I've played, like the highest-level character in a given class (of at least level 7?) being given Guild Master rank (slight mechanical improvement, and custom editable icon), the Swag Bag, automatic chest guesses, showing whether monsters have a chest before the fight is over, poison not activating on every single step, etc. It also didn't have the 'breath weapon damage reduced by 1' bug that made creeping coins utterly harmless in some other versions. It ALSO had some annoying things like not showing XP to level except when in the inn, not showing character age except when celebrating the character's birthday, and not showing current HP, AC, or status when wandering the maze (need to open the character's sheet to see it). And apparently ninjas are busted, as in, they don't have good combat capability when unequipped like they're supposed to. Also, it seems like the stat reduction bug was in effect on this one, as I was barely ever able to rank up a character past Bishop except by character-scumming for samurai. The only ninja I ever got was via a knife of thievery. Also, @25:40 - don't cast halito on a Murphy's ghost - it's a waste. Dilto on turn 1 will be far, far more effective over the course of an extended battle. @34:00 Age also goes up a LOT when retraining into a different class. Several years in one go. @35:00 spells were slightly different, with Dial and Bamatu being bumped down to L3, and Tzalik and Melito added.
I love this type of videos that are more a documentary in videogame history. Barely knew of the existence of the wizardy and Ultima series by name before , remember seeing something on some game magazine back in my childhood but since i didn't get a computer way later in 2000 this series never was on my radar. It all feels it's like a time capsule of a very specific time and set of circumstances, like it's fascinating that due to the translation differences the game series perception in Japan is completely different, and you can really see it in the artwork for the Japanese ports.
It's so interesting to hear about the start of this series! My introduction to Wizardry was incredibly late. My mom and I had just been tremendously disappointed by Might and Magic 9, and she happened to ask the guy at the store if there was anything like Might and Magic to play. He recommended Wizardry 8, a game that we both periodically play again to this very day, because it's SO good.
When I was a little kid, my uncle had Wizardry on the NES. I was really intrigued by it, but I didn't understand why he wouldn't let me play it. As an adult, I get it: I would have taken his party into the dungeon and gotten them perma-killed in minutes. But even without my sabotage, he never did make it to the end of the proving ground. I beat the NES Wizardry games, but like you said, I didn't play fairly either. I played them in an emulator and used save states. The series is so punishing, I don't feel bad about cheating. But the cool thing is, like twenty-five years later, I was able to blow the mind of my uncle by showing him the endings! Very nice review. I appreciate the good chapter markers, and how you actually wrote manual captions. This is high-quality work.
@@st1ka I didn't know anything about Wizardry IV (it seems flawed but conceptually really cool), and I don't know anything about any other Wizardry games, so I'm looking forward to your next video on this series!
@@Dracalis Thank you! Sadly that might take a while, not only are the games super long, the editing was a pain and the video itself is kinda underperforming :\
This is an amazing series. I really loved Wizardry VIII and spent hundreds of hours in it. I know, it's far from the original games, but I still had tons of fun.
I bought Wizardy 8 some time in the mid 2000s having no idea what it was. It was so arcane and facinating to me. I don't think I ever made it past the first town, but it's a game that has always stuck with me. I think I'll return to it soon. Great video!
Oh hell yeah been looking forward to this. Been playing Wizardry 1 on PSX to see how far I can get before throwing in the towel. Thank you for all the work you put in for this video! Such a rare resource.
Is the game too difficult on the PS1? I've thinking about playing this but I don't like games that are way too hard. I know the PC version is a no but I was expecting the PS1 to be forgiving
@@elpirataretro8734 I would encourage you to play the ps1 version through an emulator and use safe states. The game is brutal, but part of its difficulty is the tedium of playing optimally and how punishing mistakes/rng can be. If you’re liberal with your usage of save states you can cut down a lot of the brutality while maintaining the fun of exploration, combat, and character building!!
Your documentaries are such fortifying comfort food - I instinctively watched one of 'em a few hours after a car wreck. Keep up the good work, PatmanQC!
As always, your content is fantastic! The title theme for Wizardry is such a beautiful piece of music and the PC Engine battle theme has a lot of energy! Gensou Suikoden being mentioned in an RPG video is always a delight to see even though it was about Kentaro Haneda rather than Gensou Suikoden itself. Rest in peace Kentaro Haneda and thank you for your wonderful music.
Someone probably said this a long time ago but I'm going to share this anyway. Record of Lodos War is the novelization of a Japanese D&D campaign. It's the 80s/90s version of an actual play podcast.
I remember being _aware_ of the Wizardry series in the late 80's and early 90's, but my first RPG dungeon crawler was Eye of the Beholder, which was obviously inspired by D&D as well as Dungeon Master. My first actual attempt at a Wizardry game was W6: Bane Of The Cosmic Forge and man do I still remember how difficult that game was. I never finished it due to a combination of that difficulty, I think getting lost/trapped in an area I wasn't fully ready for, and other, newer games catching my interest. I did also play Wizardry 8 around the time it came out, but it never really kept my attention either in the face of other games that were inspired by the series.
I played it on NES as a kid. I didn't even know what an RPG was. I just thought..."Where are the graphics!? Put Karnov the Fire Breathing Russian back in!"
The bit about Megami Tensei towards the end ignores the fact that the original Atlus game was based on the MT novels, which features the protagonist summoning demons. These novels began releasing in 1986, a whole year before Wizardry 4.
I have to admit I know nothing about the original novels. I do know that I find it unlikely that Wizardry IV was the inspiration behind MT's creature mechanic (though it did influence the other base mechancs)
This is actually vaguely a false premise, because Wizardry 4 started development in 1984 and the monster summoning/party was a feature well known in magazines for years.
Awesome video! Looking forward to more Wizardry knowledge on your channel! I've recently been playing the Wizardry 2023 remake. I highly recommend it. =)
You should have put up the floor maps for W4. Every floor is a gimmick and one of them is spin traps in an empty space. You take a step and turn in a random direction in a void, which places you in another spin trap.
I was browsing archives of one of those pc gaming magazines and saw the ad for this game. Just the simple way it was written about looking for adventurers really pulled me in.
It's literally a one-byte change needed in the code; there is a rom hack available that fixes it (Wizardry I NES), I think it's called the AC fix or patch (Armor Class)
I love how his voice sounds exactly like an American trying to do a "foreign accent". I guess that's just what a native Portuguese speaker sounds like speaking English.
I have finished Wizardry 8 once. It was not a path, but a journey. It was pretty difficult, but once your party starts to roll you are golden. And Ninja was oneshotting some enemies from time to time but anyway had to reload once in a while. Ambushes or whatever.
I've never played Wizardry, but I cannot deny it was super influential, and not only for the Western world but the Japanese one as well. Great video, as usual ❤
Try playing it. Dos. No save state shenanigans. I was really into it until like the third level of the maze when ninjas appeared and DECAPITATED my whole fucking party. Instakill. Permadeath. (not literally permadeath but it's really really damn close). No save to load. You make a new party that has to get strong enough to go recover your original party, who will almost definitely not revive properly, but absolutely will waste all your gold. ARGH. I didn't have the heart to continue after that. You're hardcore if you make it through without cheating.
@@anonamatron Once that's happened, you know to use half of your main party to powerlevel a second party in advance. It's way, way quicker than training up a second team with no higher-level-character support,
That was absolutely early D&D in every form. More wargaming than roleplaying. Your L1 character is cannon fodder, trivially killed by a housecat. Better get used to rolling characters
Labyrinth of Lost Souls was my first Wizardry game. I played it back when I was a young teen and boy did I sink countless hours into it. That game will always hold a special place in my heart!
Absolutely. I think it's a great introduction to Wizardry, and it's really zen to explore the dungeons in that one. Plus, it always felt great to find a new weapon or armor to get a character up to speed. I was in bliss when I obtained a Boomerang for my Thief, heheh.
The only minor complaint I have here is the title of the video. The coverage is excellent, but I find it rather painful to have something like this referred to as "Your Grandpa's RPG". One thing to remember is that actual "Boomers" who are the "grandpa generation" right now did not actually play video games much. A major problem with that generation is they tried to pretend the world stopped in 1979 as much as possible. This would be something primarily played by the older Gen Xers, most of whom are not quite at retirement age (65) yet. I myself played this and games like Rogue as "older" games as being born in 1975 (currently 49) I wasn't getting into computers until a few years after they came out, but most of my generation did in fact start early. It should be noted my first CRPG was "Ultima 4" at the age of 10, and I mostly compared it to "Might and Magic" as I began with the C-64 and I didn't have an MS-DOS machine until later. Wizardry not having a proper Commodore version to my knowledge at that time. It's sort of like when people use the term "Boomer Shooter". They tend to be oblivious to the fact that those games started as Shareware on BBS systems, and most Boomers refused to have anything to do with modems, BBS systems, or any of that stuff. The first one "Wolf 3d" was highly experimental and actually based on a successful C-64 game called "Escape From Castle Wolfenstein" which itself was mostly famous because of a pirate knock off of it called "Castle Smurfenstein: Assault On Smurf Village" which amused children of my generation who had this weird love/hate relationship with a certain cartoon. This was how they got permission to use the IP and why it got attention, the entire game being based around a certain turret sequence they hacked in from another game called "The Train" where you could machine gun smurfs who were trying to stop you with planted explosives in a first person version of the sequence from the "Beachhead games" and of course these only happened because of the famous "evil smurfs" text files (before there were Creepypastas) that alleged smurfs were killing people all through the US in secret, and well.... if you weren't there this is already confusing and makes no sense. At any rate the FPS is pretty much as Gen X as you can get, see if you were there the actual boomers, and the greatest generation (their parents) were freaked out by those, and that is why they had a "murder simulator" rep right from the beginning. Most of the actual boomers who cared were trying to get them banned.... I know, I lived it. I guess the point of this lengthy rant is just that while I am indeed older now, it would be nice if younger pople could try and get the sequence of events right, and would at least TRY and remember that Generation X was actually a thing. As a hint, if it has something to do with sci-fi, fantasy, or technology it was probably Gen X.... NOT the boomers. It should be especially obvious if it involves dark humor, nihlism, or Whedonesque sorts of inappropriate sarcasm that annoys people today as it tends to only make sense from a specific generational perspective.... it's not cool when you do it, and it's not cool for us anymore as we're old now. :)
I think St1ka unfortunately has to choose video titles based on the mysterious algorithm. And as a fellow Gen-Xer, I always assumed “boomer shooter” was a joking way of calling them old people shooters. Which I’ve wholeheartedly embraced as someone who replays Quake 1 every year or so.
Sadly, I gotta play the youtube algorithim rules. The video had a more traditional title and nobody was clicking on it. This title is improving the video's visibility
Eyyyy, that Wizardry avatar is relevant now. ;) I've got a love-hate relationship with Wizardry, and games inspired by it. On the one hand, I love the dungeon crawling and its history on RPG video games. Something about it all that grabs your focus, but feels oddly zen after a while? All about the flow of gameplay where you're just expected to delve, draw maps, fight monsters, figure out puzzles and keep tabs on your resources. On the other hand, the gameplay can also feel kinda repetitive and yeah, the classic gameplay is vicious. It's a lot like old school D&D in that regard -- the story doesn't matter and you're gonna lose more than a few characters, but where small victory upon small victory starts to add up. Regardless, there's always that thrill of getting deeper than you had before, let alone an excellent item drop. Wizardry 8 was my gateway to getting into the series, let alone clones like most beloved, The Dark Spire. Looking forward to the Heart of the Maelstrom review someday, but I love what I see for the first four games! And yeah, that OVA is metal as hell. \m/ By the way! Have you ever played Murkon's Refuge? It's an old, HTML-based Wizardry clone that one can still play to this day.
My absolute favorite Wizardry game is arguably one of the most accessible games in the entire series: Wizardry Gaiden IV: Throb of the Demon's Heart for the Super Famicom. It's also the most singularly Japanese of the Japanese Wizardry games, taking place in a far eastern medieval setting. The game does everything it can to get you started (including giving each new character the chance to "train for three years" and gain a few levels before heading to the first dungeon of four), and death doesn't come quickly for beginners starting out. I would absolutely recommend this game for anyone looking to dip their toes into the series. There is a fan translation available that is seamless and complete. It's also one of the most beautiful of the series, with colorful 16-bit graphics and gorgeous period-inspired music.
One of my favorite series is Etrian Odyssey. It’s pretty neat to see where it pulls so much inspiration from. The map drawing is of course a lot more simple since you draw it in game instead of on paper.
I've had this on my watch later list for ages and finally had time today and am kicking myself for not getting on this sooner. Amazing content, brilliant and engaging presenter, immediate sub.
I remember playing Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord on the Macintosh (512k E). One of the lesser known things is that if your character hits age 50, the character would "Retire to the sunny land of Flahryda". I actually had this happen once to one of my characters. In order to save money, what I would do is only send the casters to the inn to recover spell slots. Everyone else would just get healed up by stepping just down the stairs and get healed by the priest/bishop. Which meant my casters would rapidly age, but not the rest of my party. Imagine my surprise when my high end wizard suddenly retired!
I played Wiz 6, 7 and 8 in the time. I want a remake of Wiz 8! Again two mages as magical glass cannons in my party. And a choose between fine tuned enemy strength progression and the original brutal enemy strength on the street from monastry to the first city. Labyrinth of Lost Souls looks like Wiz 6 at most.
I knew almost nothing about Wizardry going into this video and I'm SHOCKED at how influential it was! Wizardry 4 sounds incredible interesting and I may even give that a try sometime
W4 is reportedly so insanely difficult they needed to print out an instruction on how to leave the very first room and put it in the original box because even players familiar with the previous installments had zero clue. I love myself some old-school RPG challenge as well, but I think late '90s Interplay will probably be my threshold for the time being. Hard to believe people see the first Baldur's Gate as inaccessible to today's gamers-the likes of Wizardry make it look like Mass Effect level of user friendly.
I see this franchise influencing the Megami Tensei series as a whole being influenced by Wizardry, not just Persona as mentioned in the video. Nihilism is especially present in some way shape or form in pretty much all of the games of the franchise... sometimes as an antagonistic philosophy that the heroes need to defeat at some point in the story (like in Persona) or as a core component of the overall themes of the game and, depending on the route you're choosing, an actually valid concept (like in Shin Megami Tensei games). Still though those really old pc games from the late 70's and early 80's have a really deep influence in a lot of japanese games in general, so it's really cool whenever someone talks about any of them in extensive fashion like you did here. Wizardry is very fascinating!
The full Latin phrase is "tempis fugit, memento mori," which means "time flies, remember death." It was very common to see on sundials and other time pieces.
The AC illustration is so much funnier when viewed on modern AC and how video games handle high level, especially female armor. They unintentionally made a meme decades before it made sense.
i played wizardy 1 to 7 and all i can say it's a once in a lifetime experience. mapping everything, getting surprised by every trick the developers put in the games was great. every rpg fan should try them at least once. i would recommend starting with 6 and 7 as they are a little more eye appealing than 1-5 that are good games but pretty simple on their presentation. if you want a middle point the might and magic series it's perfect but that's a whole other beast on it's own
That NES soundtrack is FIRE, wow wow wow, no wonder they had a concert! Japanese culture has always appreciated real music so much and on a deeper level than in the US.
Japan invented modern electronic synthesis chip. The USA really had no idea what to do with FM synthesis until long after that ship had flown. Its their own fault. Nobody in the USA was interested in FM synthesis, so the American inventor sold it to Japan.
So, fun fact, I decided to do what I called a Twitter Let's Play where I played the MS-DOS version of Wizardry and tweet about everything that happens. This was back before they doubled the characters you could have in a tweet. After they did, I used that to my advantage. Named every character after the mane six from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and chose the handle @WizardryPony. Actually beat the game a few years ago too. Unfortunately when I tried to play the second game after carrying over the characters the first animated part of the armor you need to fight didn't show up. Never figured out what was wrong. Could be my party never changed character classes and so was deemed unfit to face it. Oh well.
@3:03 I was just wondering aloud if Spoony's video has held up over time. Thanks for mentioning him, it's probably the greatest piece of work from his catalog, sad guy.
A big thank you to everyone who helped me make this video:
*Apple II footage* - Tony Toon (no link as per their request)
*Reference and Knowledge check* - Hengki Kusuma Adi: www.youtube.com/@Gamerhenky
*SNES and Wonderswan footage* - Alma Elma: twitter.com/Static_and_Fire
*Ultima 5 Footage* - Grugtar: www.youtube.com/@grugtar
How Wizardry Influenced Your Favorite Game: th-cam.com/video/zAuqTHGYIng/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=TheCrawl
❤⚔🐉
Should probs pin this comment mate 👍
🔥🛡️🧙♂️🗡️🐉
@@ryballs4569 it's not? Weird O.o
Grande video !!
Concidencia o hijiQuish também fez video about Wizardry:
th-cam.com/video/1LOt8TTtmMs/w-d-xo.html Great Video !!!
It’s so weird. The Wizardry and the Ultima Series just disappeared. It will be like call of duty and the battlefield disappearing after being around close to 30 years. Then again, not like I want to see EA games reboot Ultima.
Ironically, Wizardry games are still being made today and I kind of delve into that too lol
They didn't disappear, Wizardry was sold to a Japenese company that continues to iterate on the formula. In Sirtech's hands it stagnated and was essentially just expansion packs for the original.
@@matt55242 To be fair, Wizadry 7 and 8 were massive leap forwards to the formula, but they also alienated some fans.
Things evolve let alone nowadays everyone borrows from underused properties, which is probably why super mario rpg was made lol they wanted that sea of stars money
@@MrVariantwhat?
I guess I'm my own grandpa because Wizardry was one of the first dungeon crawling RPGs I ever played. One of the notches in my gamer belt as a kid was beating the original Wizardry. Hand drew maps on graph paper of every level of the dungeon. It was great times.
oooh you're one of the OGs! :D
Sounds like me and my dad; the first actual PC we got in the home was a C-64, and it had Zork. We spent a lot of time making graph paper maps by hand, figuring out those “twisty little passages, all alike.” I played Ultima III and IV for an ungodly number of hours.
Thanks you brought back good memories in the early 90s I played Ultima the Black gate. My dad had to show me how to use the computer cause I was like seven or eight and he would take his old graph paper and help me draw room is an explained that’s how you made DND maps and that’s all I ever remember about that old paper is we used to make mapson our tabletop campaigns with it
I wish I had been alive to see that time first hand I find the history of technology so fascinating it was my favorite thing I learned in I.T. trade school (and really kinda the only thing lmao) I love older games like baldurs gate and og dragon quest its just so fresh compared to the garbage shoved out onto then Internet to try and make a quick buck fuck I hate money grubbers
watch the movie "predestination" :)
Yes, I clicked because of the thumbnail.
Man of culture as well
Same here.
Erm
Just realized how futuristic the first Wizardry must have felt, coming from physical table top games.
oh yeah definitely
just as futuristic as VR today. I didn't know the series eventually gone even open-world FP. that would be so cool to play in VR, just like it's possible with Doom...
@@VRnamek Not really because VR is a meme and a totally underwhelming gimmick
i think that is false, the times ive used AI ive had a blast@@j.2512
It was cool for sure but coming from tabletop, it still felt limited.
I watched a lot of videos about the Wizardry franchise, but that is the first one who does a more in-depht look in how the games played and how their influence both west and japanese developers in different ways. For example, that is the first time I've learned that due to translation issues, the series was seem as more mature and nihilistic in Japan.
Great video and I can't wait for a part 2
Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it. Sadly the video is performing rather poorly, so it may be a while before I do a part 2 if I do it at all :\
@@st1kaOh no! As an old-timer, who played the Ultima games as they came out on my Atari computer, and wistfully viewed ads and read reviews about Wizardry, I was impressed by this video (I also didn't know about the west/east split on tone due to translation issues, although I already knew most, but definitely not all of the other facts). I was just going to go watch the second part, assuming it was already made by now.
@RetroDawn hah sorry. Maybe if the video performs better I'll make part 2 >.>
@@st1ka Wishing for part 2 too! Great work
@@chiisanamurasaki Thank you! ^^
megami tensei was based on the book "digital devil story" which was about using computers to summon demons, so it's kind of expected that the gameplay would involve that.
That makes sense. The idea that Wizardry IV is the reason that Megami Tensei has its monster mechanics always seemed a bit off for me
Hahaha, it's kind of funny, isn't it?
Persona is a spin-off of Shin Megami Tensei, Shin Megami Tensei is a spinoff of Megami Tensei, and Megami Tensei (might as well be) a spinoff of Digital Devil Story.
Except the way it's shown/done in the books isn't like in the game. The main character has like one demon familiar, but not like a small group of demons he switches out that follow him around doing fights for/with him. It's much more like a typical demon-summoning horror story except the ritual is done by a computer and there is some pulpy action, rather than what is presented in the game. The demon summoning is basically just the set up after the beginning bits, it's not really something the main character keeps doing. Reflecting this the first Megami Tensei game was a Gauntlet-clone that didn't involve doing any demon summoning in-game at all.
Yeah, little of the mechanics of Atlus's MegaTen games are evidenced in the original light novels. It wouldn't surprise me if the demon recruitment system was inspired by Wizardry 4, but they're not *so* similar that I would necessarily be surprised if it was all a coincidence, either.
Actually it was the Wizardry-like game developed first by Atlus team of Namco, then Ai Nishitani asked Namco to make a game based on his book, and they decided that the Book's setting fits well to the Wizardry-like game they've been making.
You know, kind of like Metroid Prime originally developed as a game about bounty hunter girls, then Miyamoto asked them to fit it within Metroid setting. And... how Dinosaur Planet became Star Fax.
The person who did the cover art for the PSX and such versions is Jun Suemi. He did the monster designs for almost every Japanese release up to that point and also did the colour illustrations and covers for the Wizardry table-top RPG. His style is inseparable from classic Wizardry in Japan. There are even artbooks dedicated to the work he did for Wizardry.
Honestly makes sense, the his art is phenomenal
Fantasy art really is in the right hands when it gets you motivated to play, feel and imagine.
Exquisite artstyle
I'm sorry, but the idea of playing a game where the enemies are made up of parties of players of the last game is an INCREDIBLE idea.
Seriously, its so lovely how Wizardry was made before the cement on RPG's had set and they were just trying everything.
I'd love to see a RPG experiment with the idea of fighting your old party who died in the dungeon or something
Right?! It's such a cool idea!
nothing is never set fads replace fads
There are mechanics like this in some roguelike games ... for instance, in crawl (or DCSS, which I'm more familiar with), characters you took into the dungeon previously and lost come back as ghosts sometimes on future runs and you can fight them. It would be cool to see a whole party rather than just a single character though, I agree
@Dr.Quarex The player's party comes back as copies, and they run into their originals. If the player was even half paying attention, this is an existential threat. Because not only the stronger your party gets, the stronger the enemy party gets. The more optimized you are for success, the harder things are. Or the fact that you're the clones and have to "dispose of" yourself to take the place of your original. Gamers would too easily come to terms with that last part. But making your "previous lives" a massive mechanical threat, on top of the monsters you have to climb a power ladder to beat, would make for one hell of a game.
Guildwars 1 had a mandatory story mission where you had 1v1 a copy of yourself, who mirrored your build. Literally the easier your build is to use effectively, the easier it is for the AI trounce you with it. And while the AI has a hard time conceptualizing builds as skills in an order of operations, it is a lot faster at responding to triggers. So if you ran CCs in your build, it could unilaterally interrupt you faster than you could ever hope to interrupt it. So the strategy was to pad your build with useless skills to cox the AI to use them (and waste resources), while you focus on the 2-3 skills you planned to fight it with. And even then, it was a hard fight. Or you could go the opposite route, and craft to a build so self destructive, the AI would effectively kill itself if it used certain skills in order.
The lesson designers need to take home from this is that if you craft a system that doesn't have to differentiate between PvP and PvE, then you have a stable combat system. Most games fail at this, because they rely on too hard on upscaling numbers in place of difficulty, and the damage escalation causes the whole thing to implode the longer it goes on. Where as convergent PvP/PvE combat designs means you can make a boss fight difficult just by changing up what types of strategies are involved. And the big reason you rarely see this, is because it requires better encounter design... requiring creativity and expertise to design, and money/time to implement and refine.
Just look at how fast the idea of the Nemesis system from the Mordor games fell off the face of the industry. A systemic, but highly personalized mini-boss, that can ramp up the difficulty as it gains traits to counter past strategies that have defeated it. An enemy that demands you know how to play the game, and not let a build carry you through fights.
The nemesis system from the mordor games fell off the face of the earth because it was trademarked so broadly that no other company could really make anything similar without breaking said trademark. They basically created one of the coolest systems for emergent storytelling, used it for two games, then prevented anyone else from iterating on the idea. That's why it died off.
Small addition: You can actually transfer your characters from the original game to the sequels in the Famicom versions as well, using the Turbo File accessory. Of course this feature was removed from the NES versions.
aaah thank you
I wish my crew had 2k + hp all spells front line 2 samurai 1 ninja and 2 lords and a wiz in back feel bad for those "new" games if I could bring my killers with me
The Wizardry OVA is on TH-cam right now, for anyone who wants to watch it
yes! :D
Easily one of the better videos yet, great job St1ka. You've got me wanting to look into these
thank you! ^^
This is gonna be a blast to lay back and watch.
Thank you ^^
Western Wizardry Players : "LMAO Murphy's Ghost. Nice reference. Oh no, my elf mage died. Guess I'll make a new one. Her name will be THICCA" ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ
Japanese Wizardry Players : "...must defeat Werdna... Temple failed to revive... ...carry the corpse until more gold... ...must defeat Werdna.... Landlord knocking on my door.... rent due... i'm hungry.... so cold.... must defeat Werdna..."
haha, if I didn't have to credit other people for their help on the video, I'd pin this comment
Kind of sounds like they took Wizardry as if it were Fear and Hunger.
my little bro and i grinded knight of diamonds on the nes back in the day.... we had a character that was way past 99, like in the hundreds i think and he had thousands of hp. usually our "scout parties" went something like this: level mage till they got teleport skill in party with elite characters. go back to town, send the mage out solo and cast teleport to random area. hope he doesnt die in an accident . once you get the locations of the magic armor and such, you can teleport to where its at, drop it, and fight it again infinitely for way more exp than murphy;s ghost also, you can create a character with 55 or even 60 bonus points, but its rediculously rare.
Some strategies we used a -the inn was only for levelling, we had fodder clerics who healed people and went to the inn to restore mp
b -class changing ages you, but there are weapons like the murasame that can be used to change a person instantly to a lord, samurai or ninja,
c - Always have a pack mule character who you give all of your gold to every time who never enters the maze, use them to buy stuff and transfer.
d -Sell even your most valuable weapons armor or items you arent using, boltac's never gets rid of what you sell them, it had a buyback feature.
d -Never use a non start elite character as anything but fodder and experimentation. usually a lord or samurai will begin at 14 or 15 years of age when you create them.
Thank you for talking about how america just skipped this series and japan was like "MINE NOW"
haha
I am WICKED grateful to you for making this. I never knew the impact of this series or how many things I always vibed about RPGs, but never knew where they originated. Thank you so much for this.
glad I could help! ^^
Experience Inc used to have the license for Wizardry and they make really fun dungeon crawler games to this day (Demon Gaze, Operation Abyss: New Tokyo Legacy, Saviors of Sapphire Wings, Stranger of Sword City, Undernauts). I wish they were more popular, they make very old-school dungeon crawlers but they're extremely niche games.
It’s kind of staggering to think of the influence this game had, especially because this game was popular in pretty much every gaming market at the time.
In many versions of Wizardry, you can have good and evil characters in the same party. Form a party of good characters then go into the maze and take one step away from the exit ladder. Then exit the game. Then restart and form your evil party. Go into the maze and go to the same spot that you left your good party, then search for party members. The good party that was left at that spot will join the current evil party! 😯
oooh interesting, I hadn't thought of that
It also works on 2 amd 3 though i really wouldn't recommended for Wizardry 3. As only certain alignments can access certain floors. Even for good and neutral and odd number floors for evil and neutral. The final floor can only be reached by a all good or all evil party and you have to explore all floors to access the final one.
I saw that on Underdoggaming channel.
@@The_Real_DCT Wizardry 3 what the hell were you on, RIP to neutral only classes
I've spent about a year commenting on your tweets about Wizardry. It's nice to finally see it in action! I hope this gets the attention it deserves.
Sadly the video is performing poorly :\
@@st1kaIf it helps, it appeared in my recommendations.
This must have taken forever to put together! Wizardry was always one of those RPGs I had heard about but never actually played. Deep dives like this are always useful in that they help me to decide if I want to try a series out. Extremely good job with this one.
Yep this one took way longer than my usual content, sadly the video also performed really poorly
@@st1ka Well then I'll just watch it again! This video is too good to let it go down in flames.
@@sneakyskunk1 haha I appreciate it
@@st1ka It was never a problem my guy. You really deserve so much more recognition than you get.
An absolutely amazing retrospective. As someone that lost years of their life to the NES version of Wizardry 1, I can't wait to see the rest of your content. I appreciate that TH-cam recommended your channel to me.
another great video. can't wait for part 2!
thank you! ^^
I checked this video because i played Wiz Daphne which it's Part of Wizardy series. 🎉
The whole graph paper thing made me realize that’s what inspired the map system in the Etrian Odyssey series
Oh yeah, Etrian Odyssey owes a lot to Wizardry
What are they teaching young gamers these days>?!?!?!?!
Great games right there
Yeah, Kouji Okada and Kazunari Suzuki were both huge fans of Wizardry and have openly admitted it was a huge part of the inspiration for the original Megami Tensei gameplay (the Namco title anyway, less so the Telenet game). The Demon Negotiation System that's considered iconic of the MegaTen franchise was from Suzuki believing they needed at least one original mechanic to make their game stand out from Wizardry. Which is kinda funny since like you said, Return of Werdna ended up coming out only a few months before the first Megami Tensei.
That makes sense xD
Yeah Wizardry and Ultima really took the two ways people played early D&D and ran with it. Wizardry using the here's your base town and it's dungeon you explore, and that's it for example Keep on the borderlands and part 1 of Temple of elemental evil. while Ultima took the more sandbox style early D&D adventure style like the original Ravenloft adventure.
yep exactly! :D
Wizardry 4 is such a cool idea. I was actually playing a game that i think is actually inspired by it. The name's is Demon Lord Reincarnation and it really follows the classic wizardry formula(tho a lot more forgiving) on the first part. According to the steam page the second part of the game is you playing as said Demon Lord, recruiting monsters as you ascend. Haven't reached it yet. But it's good to see the idea picked up.
oh interesting, I'll have to check it out
Play Shin Megami Tensei
Great video! I played this game on my Apple II around 1984 when I was 7. It crushed me over and over but I enjoyed going back and creating new characters. Big nostalgia for me on this one.
glad you enjoyed it ^^
You singlehandedly sold Wizardry to me LOL. I used to draw maps when playing King's Field (or any dungeon crawler for that matter) so that, paired with the fact that the manual is the only way to know what the spells and items do gets me so turnt. Awesome Video 😎
Also the comic strips in the Manuel is 100% a reference to the AD&D Manuals who had so many joke pictures of wizards getting toasted or adventurers getting bonked. i cant believe I've never played Wizardry smh.
haha good luck! These games are sadistically hard
Rest In Peace Andrew C. Greenberg. 🖤
The Macintosh also had a version, which was VERY different-looking, with the roster being an icon field and drag-and-drop party management, and each character sheet being a window, so could open more than one and compare. It also had some mechanical features not seen in the other versions I've played, like the highest-level character in a given class (of at least level 7?) being given Guild Master rank (slight mechanical improvement, and custom editable icon), the Swag Bag, automatic chest guesses, showing whether monsters have a chest before the fight is over, poison not activating on every single step, etc. It also didn't have the 'breath weapon damage reduced by 1' bug that made creeping coins utterly harmless in some other versions. It ALSO had some annoying things like not showing XP to level except when in the inn, not showing character age except when celebrating the character's birthday, and not showing current HP, AC, or status when wandering the maze (need to open the character's sheet to see it). And apparently ninjas are busted, as in, they don't have good combat capability when unequipped like they're supposed to. Also, it seems like the stat reduction bug was in effect on this one, as I was barely ever able to rank up a character past Bishop except by character-scumming for samurai. The only ninja I ever got was via a knife of thievery.
Also,
@25:40 - don't cast halito on a Murphy's ghost - it's a waste. Dilto on turn 1 will be far, far more effective over the course of an extended battle.
@34:00 Age also goes up a LOT when retraining into a different class. Several years in one go.
@35:00 spells were slightly different, with Dial and Bamatu being bumped down to L3, and Tzalik and Melito added.
oooh I did not know that. Now I wish I had included it
I love this type of videos that are more a documentary in videogame history. Barely knew of the existence of the wizardy and Ultima series by name before , remember seeing something on some game magazine back in my childhood but since i didn't get a computer way later in 2000 this series never was on my radar. It all feels it's like a time capsule of a very specific time and set of circumstances, like it's fascinating that due to the translation differences the game series perception in Japan is completely different, and you can really see it in the artwork for the Japanese ports.
Yeah, I feel it's major oversight on retrogaming youtube that we've yet to have a proper documentary series on Wizardry
It's so interesting to hear about the start of this series!
My introduction to Wizardry was incredibly late. My mom and I had just been tremendously disappointed by Might and Magic 9, and she happened to ask the guy at the store if there was anything like Might and Magic to play.
He recommended Wizardry 8, a game that we both periodically play again to this very day, because it's SO good.
When I was a little kid, my uncle had Wizardry on the NES. I was really intrigued by it, but I didn't understand why he wouldn't let me play it. As an adult, I get it: I would have taken his party into the dungeon and gotten them perma-killed in minutes. But even without my sabotage, he never did make it to the end of the proving ground.
I beat the NES Wizardry games, but like you said, I didn't play fairly either. I played them in an emulator and used save states. The series is so punishing, I don't feel bad about cheating. But the cool thing is, like twenty-five years later, I was able to blow the mind of my uncle by showing him the endings!
Very nice review. I appreciate the good chapter markers, and how you actually wrote manual captions. This is high-quality work.
That's a really cool memory you have there and glad you enjoyed the video ^^
@@st1ka I didn't know anything about Wizardry IV (it seems flawed but conceptually really cool), and I don't know anything about any other Wizardry games, so I'm looking forward to your next video on this series!
@@Dracalis Thank you! Sadly that might take a while, not only are the games super long, the editing was a pain and the video itself is kinda underperforming :\
This is an amazing series. I really loved Wizardry VIII and spent hundreds of hours in it. I know, it's far from the original games, but I still had tons of fun.
I bought Wizardy 8 some time in the mid 2000s having no idea what it was. It was so arcane and facinating to me. I don't think I ever made it past the first town, but it's a game that has always stuck with me. I think I'll return to it soon.
Great video!
It's a great game due to the amount of freedom it gives you.
Wizardry 8 is actually a part of a trilogy which starts with Wizardry 6, and the story continues in Wizardry 7 and ends in 8.
As a diehard Etrian Odyssey fan I love learning more about Wizardry's history and influence on gaming as a whole. Great work on the video!
Thank you! :D
My dad was a big Wizardry fan, especially when Wizardry 8 came out. I think he spent the most time on that game out of all of them.
Wizardry 8 is a masterpiece
Incredible work on this, St1ka.
I honestly had no idea the kind of weight this series had or how insanely hard and unfair it is.
Oh hell yeah been looking forward to this. Been playing Wizardry 1 on PSX to see how far I can get before throwing in the towel. Thank you for all the work you put in for this video! Such a rare resource.
How far have you gotten?
Glad I could help! ^^
Is the game too difficult on the PS1? I've thinking about playing this but I don't like games that are way too hard. I know the PC version is a no but I was expecting the PS1 to be forgiving
@@elpirataretro8734 I would encourage you to play the ps1 version through an emulator and use safe states. The game is brutal, but part of its difficulty is the tedium of playing optimally and how punishing mistakes/rng can be. If you’re liberal with your usage of save states you can cut down a lot of the brutality while maintaining the fun of exploration, combat, and character building!!
Your documentaries are such fortifying comfort food - I instinctively watched one of 'em a few hours after a car wreck.
Keep up the good work, PatmanQC!
Whoa! I hope everything okay! D:
@@st1ka Thanks - I commented on the wrong video, but I also dig your work, so here's a subscribe. Have a good day.
Glad the algorithm delivered this to me. Super good video, man!
Happy to hear you enjoyed it! :D
Wizardry will never die.
Except it has and it feels like I’m the only one for miles playing the darn game
This was a phenomenal episode and will be rewatched a ton by me! Thanks for this st1ka :)
thank you! ^^
As always, your content is fantastic! The title theme for Wizardry is such a beautiful piece of music and the PC Engine battle theme has a lot of energy! Gensou Suikoden being mentioned in an RPG video is always a delight to see even though it was about Kentaro Haneda rather than Gensou Suikoden itself. Rest in peace Kentaro Haneda and thank you for your wonderful music.
I'm glad you enjoyed the video ^^
RIP Andrew Greenberg.
Someone probably said this a long time ago but I'm going to share this anyway. Record of Lodos War is the novelization of a Japanese D&D campaign. It's the 80s/90s version of an actual play podcast.
Recently played in the closed beta of Wizardry Varients Daphne. Not only an absolute great rpg, but a great new Wizardry. Worth looking out for.
oooh interesting
I remember being _aware_ of the Wizardry series in the late 80's and early 90's, but my first RPG dungeon crawler was Eye of the Beholder, which was obviously inspired by D&D as well as Dungeon Master. My first actual attempt at a Wizardry game was W6: Bane Of The Cosmic Forge and man do I still remember how difficult that game was. I never finished it due to a combination of that difficulty, I think getting lost/trapped in an area I wasn't fully ready for, and other, newer games catching my interest.
I did also play Wizardry 8 around the time it came out, but it never really kept my attention either in the face of other games that were inspired by the series.
I played it on NES as a kid. I didn't even know what an RPG was. I just thought..."Where are the graphics!? Put Karnov the Fire Breathing Russian back in!"
haha
This was so informative, thank you! I really hope to see next part of the video about other Wizardry games 🤝
Thank you for this video! I've always been interested in wizardry but I dont have the patience to actually play it
understandable haha
16:16 This is another thing they took from D&D! The 1e DMG has little comics spread throughout the every so often.
Being Attacked by Coins is the best monster you want attacking you in this game.
The bit about Megami Tensei towards the end ignores the fact that the original Atlus game was based on the MT novels, which features the protagonist summoning demons. These novels began releasing in 1986, a whole year before Wizardry 4.
I have to admit I know nothing about the original novels.
I do know that I find it unlikely that Wizardry IV was the inspiration behind MT's creature mechanic (though it did influence the other base mechancs)
This is actually vaguely a false premise, because Wizardry 4 started development in 1984 and the monster summoning/party was a feature well known in magazines for years.
I was there, St1ka.
When the Wizards killed my family.
And made me drag their bodies back.
To buy a new family.
haha
Does anyone know which anime that is at 14:48 where the large party is walking in a cave by a waterfall?
'Danmachi - Is it wrong to try pick up girls in a dungeon?'
Haven't seen the whole series though, so I couldn't tell you when this part happens.
Ah ok ty. I watched that years ago, but couldn't recognize it.@@ronn201
Awesome video! Looking forward to more Wizardry knowledge on your channel!
I've recently been playing the Wizardry 2023 remake. I highly recommend it. =)
Thank you! Sadly the video is performing poorly so huh... we'll see
You should have put up the floor maps for W4. Every floor is a gimmick and one of them is spin traps in an empty space. You take a step and turn in a random direction in a void, which places you in another spin trap.
Oh Wizardry 1 had that too
My grandpa was almost 60 when this came up. His RPG was whatever they were playing in WW2.
Pointless comment. I think you were trying to be funny?
@@sinisterthoughts2896It probably means I am not the target audience of this videos title.
@@happygoat6 He doesn't get to play with the Civil War vets at the retirement home playground yet.
I was browsing archives of one of those pc gaming magazines and saw the ad for this game. Just the simple way it was written about looking for adventurers really pulled me in.
hehe understandable xD
I played Wizardry on Mac and NES a lot back in the day and I always thought the NES version seemed oddly harder. Now I finally know why.
yeah, it's definitely a bug that should have been caught
It's literally a one-byte change needed in the code; there is a rom hack available that fixes it (Wizardry I NES), I think it's called the AC fix or patch (Armor Class)
Thank you for giving this great series the love and attention it deserves!
I love how his voice sounds exactly like an American trying to do a "foreign accent". I guess that's just what a native Portuguese speaker sounds like speaking English.
He kinda sound like Mike Matei doing the inspector gadget voice
I have finished Wizardry 8 once. It was not a path, but a journey. It was pretty difficult, but once your party starts to roll you are golden. And Ninja was oneshotting some enemies from time to time but anyway had to reload once in a while. Ambushes or whatever.
I've never played Wizardry, but I cannot deny it was super influential, and not only for the Western world but the Japanese one as well. Great video, as usual ❤
Indeed, a shame it's so forgotten
Try playing it. Dos. No save state shenanigans. I was really into it until like the third level of the maze when ninjas appeared and DECAPITATED my whole fucking party. Instakill. Permadeath. (not literally permadeath but it's really really damn close). No save to load. You make a new party that has to get strong enough to go recover your original party, who will almost definitely not revive properly, but absolutely will waste all your gold. ARGH.
I didn't have the heart to continue after that. You're hardcore if you make it through without cheating.
@@anonamatron Once that's happened, you know to use half of your main party to powerlevel a second party in advance. It's way, way quicker than training up a second team with no higher-level-character support,
Ultima, Wizardry, Might and Magic, and The Bard's Tale. This was the Big 4 of RPG games for me back in the day. Such memories!
You sir have fine taste and I respect you for it
It's amazing that this series caight on with its absolutely disgusting, abusive design, but i guess people didn't know any better
That was absolutely early D&D in every form. More wargaming than roleplaying. Your L1 character is cannon fodder, trivially killed by a housecat. Better get used to rolling characters
Labyrinth of Lost Souls was my first Wizardry game. I played it back when I was a young teen and boy did I sink countless hours into it. That game will always hold a special place in my heart!
Absolutely. I think it's a great introduction to Wizardry, and it's really zen to explore the dungeons in that one. Plus, it always felt great to find a new weapon or armor to get a character up to speed. I was in bliss when I obtained a Boomerang for my Thief, heheh.
The only minor complaint I have here is the title of the video. The coverage is excellent, but I find it rather painful to have something like this referred to as "Your Grandpa's RPG". One thing to remember is that actual "Boomers" who are the "grandpa generation" right now did not actually play video games much. A major problem with that generation is they tried to pretend the world stopped in 1979 as much as possible. This would be something primarily played by the older Gen Xers, most of whom are not quite at retirement age (65) yet. I myself played this and games like Rogue as "older" games as being born in 1975 (currently 49) I wasn't getting into computers until a few years after they came out, but most of my generation did in fact start early. It should be noted my first CRPG was "Ultima 4" at the age of 10, and I mostly compared it to "Might and Magic" as I began with the C-64 and I didn't have an MS-DOS machine until later. Wizardry not having a proper Commodore version to my knowledge at that time.
It's sort of like when people use the term "Boomer Shooter". They tend to be oblivious to the fact that those games started as Shareware on BBS systems, and most Boomers refused to have anything to do with modems, BBS systems, or any of that stuff. The first one "Wolf 3d" was highly experimental and actually based on a successful C-64 game called "Escape From Castle Wolfenstein" which itself was mostly famous because of a pirate knock off of it called "Castle Smurfenstein: Assault On Smurf Village" which amused children of my generation who had this weird love/hate relationship with a certain cartoon. This was how they got permission to use the IP and why it got attention, the entire game being based around a certain turret sequence they hacked in from another game called "The Train" where you could machine gun smurfs who were trying to stop you with planted explosives in a first person version of the sequence from the "Beachhead games" and of course these only happened because of the famous "evil smurfs" text files (before there were Creepypastas) that alleged smurfs were killing people all through the US in secret, and well.... if you weren't there this is already confusing and makes no sense.
At any rate the FPS is pretty much as Gen X as you can get, see if you were there the actual boomers, and the greatest generation (their parents) were freaked out by those, and that is why they had a "murder simulator" rep right from the beginning. Most of the actual boomers who cared were trying to get them banned.... I know, I lived it.
I guess the point of this lengthy rant is just that while I am indeed older now, it would be nice if younger pople could try and get the sequence of events right, and would at least TRY and remember that Generation X was actually a thing. As a hint, if it has something to do with sci-fi, fantasy, or technology it was probably Gen X.... NOT the boomers. It should be especially obvious if it involves dark humor, nihlism, or Whedonesque sorts of inappropriate sarcasm that annoys people today as it tends to only make sense from a specific generational perspective.... it's not cool when you do it, and it's not cool for us anymore as we're old now. :)
I think St1ka unfortunately has to choose video titles based on the mysterious algorithm. And as a fellow Gen-Xer, I always assumed “boomer shooter” was a joking way of calling them old people shooters. Which I’ve wholeheartedly embraced as someone who replays Quake 1 every year or so.
My grandpa who died at 87 years old back in 2009 showed me how to play it when I was 5. So it really is my Grandpa’s RPG
Sadly, I gotta play the youtube algorithim rules. The video had a more traditional title and nobody was clicking on it. This title is improving the video's visibility
All thanks to Wzardry for basically creating modern JRPG formula and standarts. Big Bless.
"Weeatherdry"
Eyyyy, that Wizardry avatar is relevant now. ;)
I've got a love-hate relationship with Wizardry, and games inspired by it. On the one hand, I love the dungeon crawling and its history on RPG video games. Something about it all that grabs your focus, but feels oddly zen after a while? All about the flow of gameplay where you're just expected to delve, draw maps, fight monsters, figure out puzzles and keep tabs on your resources. On the other hand, the gameplay can also feel kinda repetitive and yeah, the classic gameplay is vicious. It's a lot like old school D&D in that regard -- the story doesn't matter and you're gonna lose more than a few characters, but where small victory upon small victory starts to add up.
Regardless, there's always that thrill of getting deeper than you had before, let alone an excellent item drop. Wizardry 8 was my gateway to getting into the series, let alone clones like most beloved, The Dark Spire. Looking forward to the Heart of the Maelstrom review someday, but I love what I see for the first four games! And yeah, that OVA is metal as hell. \m/
By the way! Have you ever played Murkon's Refuge? It's an old, HTML-based Wizardry clone that one can still play to this day.
The thumbnail picture is from wizardry knight of diamond succubus (Succubus (W2 SFC))
We need a part two of this. Was expecting you'd talk about "newer" Wizardry games like the one in the Ps2
I hope to part 2 at the end of this year
@st1ka Funny, *another* new wizardry came just came out of japan. Called "Wizardy variants Daphne" you should check it out! It seems cool.
Dragon Quest was Ultima's overworld with Wizardry's combat. You just blew my mind. It's plain as day too but I never put two and two together before.
hehe, glad I could help! :D
Back in those days you really PLAYED rpg's. Still have a whole folder full of handdrawn maps and notes for the old C64 RPG games i used to grind.
Bro, you just became my game therapist. Wizardry is why I've lost so many friends/allies and why my backlog is huge to this day.
haha I shall the best game therapist I can
After hearing you talk about your love for Wizardry on Twitter it's great to finally see your video for it!
haha thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it! ^^
I owned an Apple II C, so many hours of Wizardy, Bard’s Tale, Might and Magic (I and II), Ultima (I through V), and Wasteland.
My absolute favorite Wizardry game is arguably one of the most accessible games in the entire series: Wizardry Gaiden IV: Throb of the Demon's Heart for the Super Famicom.
It's also the most singularly Japanese of the Japanese Wizardry games, taking place in a far eastern medieval setting. The game does everything it can to get you started (including giving each new character the chance to "train for three years" and gain a few levels before heading to the first dungeon of four), and death doesn't come quickly for beginners starting out. I would absolutely recommend this game for anyone looking to dip their toes into the series. There is a fan translation available that is seamless and complete.
It's also one of the most beautiful of the series, with colorful 16-bit graphics and gorgeous period-inspired music.
oooh I'll check it out. I'll admit I only played a handfull of the Japanese spin-offs
One of my favorite series is Etrian Odyssey. It’s pretty neat to see where it pulls so much inspiration from. The map drawing is of course a lot more simple since you draw it in game instead of on paper.
Oh yeah, the DS and 3DS work super well for those types of games
0:16 wasn't Beneath Apple Manor the first rogue
I've had this on my watch later list for ages and finally had time today and am kicking myself for not getting on this sooner. Amazing content, brilliant and engaging presenter, immediate sub.
Thank you so much :D
D&D: It’s the first fantasy game you can play with your friends
Japan: What friends?
I remember playing Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord on the Macintosh (512k E). One of the lesser known things is that if your character hits age 50, the character would "Retire to the sunny land of Flahryda". I actually had this happen once to one of my characters. In order to save money, what I would do is only send the casters to the inn to recover spell slots. Everyone else would just get healed up by stepping just down the stairs and get healed by the priest/bishop. Which meant my casters would rapidly age, but not the rest of my party. Imagine my surprise when my high end wizard suddenly retired!
I played Wiz 6, 7 and 8 in the time. I want a remake of Wiz 8! Again two mages as magical glass cannons in my party. And a choose between fine tuned enemy strength progression and the original brutal enemy strength on the street from monastry to the first city. Labyrinth of Lost Souls looks like Wiz 6 at most.
I knew almost nothing about Wizardry going into this video and I'm SHOCKED at how influential it was! Wizardry 4 sounds incredible interesting and I may even give that a try sometime
W4 is reportedly so insanely difficult they needed to print out an instruction on how to leave the very first room and put it in the original box because even players familiar with the previous installments had zero clue.
I love myself some old-school RPG challenge as well, but I think late '90s Interplay will probably be my threshold for the time being. Hard to believe people see the first Baldur's Gate as inaccessible to today's gamers-the likes of Wizardry make it look like Mass Effect level of user friendly.
I see this franchise influencing the Megami Tensei series as a whole being influenced by Wizardry, not just Persona as mentioned in the video. Nihilism is especially present in some way shape or form in pretty much all of the games of the franchise... sometimes as an antagonistic philosophy that the heroes need to defeat at some point in the story (like in Persona) or as a core component of the overall themes of the game and, depending on the route you're choosing, an actually valid concept (like in Shin Megami Tensei games).
Still though those really old pc games from the late 70's and early 80's have a really deep influence in a lot of japanese games in general, so it's really cool whenever someone talks about any of them in extensive fashion like you did here. Wizardry is very fascinating!
I can hear the inspirations for Dragon Quest's soundtrack so clearly
The full Latin phrase is "tempis fugit, memento mori," which means "time flies, remember death." It was very common to see on sundials and other time pieces.
Yep, you are correct! :D
The AC illustration is so much funnier when viewed on modern AC and how video games handle high level, especially female armor. They unintentionally made a meme decades before it made sense.
i played wizardy 1 to 7 and all i can say it's a once in a lifetime experience. mapping everything, getting surprised by every trick the developers put in the games was great. every rpg fan should try them at least once. i would recommend starting with 6 and 7 as they are a little more eye appealing than 1-5 that are good games but pretty simple on their presentation. if you want a middle point the might and magic series it's perfect but that's a whole other beast on it's own
It's such a cool series, a shame it's mostly forgotten
That NES soundtrack is FIRE, wow wow wow, no wonder they had a concert! Japanese culture has always appreciated real music so much and on a deeper level than in the US.
Japan invented modern electronic synthesis chip. The USA really had no idea what to do with FM synthesis until long after that ship had flown. Its their own fault. Nobody in the USA was interested in FM synthesis, so the American inventor sold it to Japan.
I don't know why, but after watching this video, I have a strong feeling I must like and subscribe....
So, fun fact, I decided to do what I called a Twitter Let's Play where I played the MS-DOS version of Wizardry and tweet about everything that happens. This was back before they doubled the characters you could have in a tweet. After they did, I used that to my advantage. Named every character after the mane six from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and chose the handle @WizardryPony. Actually beat the game a few years ago too. Unfortunately when I tried to play the second game after carrying over the characters the first animated part of the armor you need to fight didn't show up. Never figured out what was wrong. Could be my party never changed character classes and so was deemed unfit to face it. Oh well.
hah! That is so cool
Fascinating video. Your passion for these foundational games shines through in your videos.
Thank you! ^^
Tales of Forsaken Land for PS2 was pretty good, I wish they had translated the other PS2 era ones.
7 and 8 are my absolute favs though.
@3:03 I was just wondering aloud if Spoony's video has held up over time. Thanks for mentioning him, it's probably the greatest piece of work from his catalog, sad guy.