Slashdot Mirror
Sir-tech Canada Releases Wizardry 8
NichG writes "Sir-tech Canada has finally released
Wizardry 8. This has been long awaited by fans of Wizardry 7 (1992) and the series of games which precluded it. It should be available at Electronic Boutique. For those not familiar with the Wizardry series, they are first person, turn-based (more precisely, phased) RPGs, which grew from pure dungeon crawl to RPGs with plot and characters with whom to interact." This, the Bard's Tale series, and the first four Ultimas together were where most of the late 1980s went for me.
i alwayst felt that 6 and beyond were dreadfull. there are lots of fans of wiz gold, etc but post maelstrom + werdna, etc, they totally lost the plot.
4+5 imo are the best of the trilogy and i especially liked playing Werdna and starting at the bottom of the tower.
the wiz series was also the first to my knowledge to award your characters for winning the game, and taking that into the next game, so when you won you got a chevron. quite cool.
the best bit was that from 1 to 3 required you to have played and passed characters along, so you could only play wiz3 by playing wiz2 and wiz1!! (although it limited market share i guess)..
nice to see an old school title come back. pity it has no old school charm.
no sig for you
Don't hammer the server too much, though. There're limited login spaces, so it shouldn't be too much of an issue.
Gameplay movies:
MPEG file
Zipped File
The demo is available from here..
3dgamers [download link]
or here
FilePlanet [download link]
No accusations re: Karma, please. I'm at the cap. And Wizardry 6 and 7 were the best RPGs I've ever played.
Alex T-B
St Andrews
Here you can download the original Apple II disk images and an emulator for windows/dos. There are also links to the SNES ports.
In wizardry I, don't forget the really good Bishop cheat. Create a Bishop (need right mix of stats), and then identify item 9 until you succeed.
*Excelsior!*
it's not going to stop until you wise up, no it's not going to stop. so just give up.
17 hours 53 minutes.... That was my first all night graphic RPG. My friend and I waited weeks to pick up our copies.. We then "signed-out" a couple schools Apple II+'s for a weekend of gaming. Halfway through the session we had to crack the covers and have cooling fans blowing across the mobos to cool em off.
:)
It's been YEARS since I've played them, but it's kinda neat to remember lahalito, dilto, Montino, Mahalito, and the all mighty Tiltowait.
Also just a bit of trivia....
Wernda and Trebor are the names of the programmers who wrote it backwards..
yeah yeah everyone should know it, but I thought I'd repeat that for people new to the old school game thing
-- Life: Hate the Game... Love the cereal
As long as you're not wanting GameCube-like graphics (the 3D world compares to EQ), this is a good game. The sophisticated plot and character development is a welcome change from the likes of Diablo.
But don't take my word for it, there's a free demo available from the official site. I also run one of the larger Wizardry fan sites - check it out for more information on the series (maps, walkthroughs, etc.).
Wizardry 8 isn't widely distributed (part of the game's delay in release was finding a distributor), but it's available at your local mall's Electronics Boutique (full retail is 50 bucks) and there's also a few cheaper prices online.
Someone better mod this post based on my user name alone.
Do you know that in Japan not only movie-filled FF-like RPG games are popular, but also Wizardry series are as popular as them and have cult fans? Why Wizardry got so many fans in Japan is I think because those versions released in Japan for PC and NES are with beautiful monster graphics... though old fans prefer wireframes. There are even Japanese-original Wiz scenarios. For GameBoy there were 5 or 6 Wiz titles, and some others were released for SuperNES, Sega Saturn, PlayStation, and Windows PC. They are based on old-style, no spaceships involved, swords/sorcery background as original scenario 1-5. Only new classes and races are introduced, without losing balance. And now, original Wizardry world ceased at 8, while Japanese studio Atlus released new Wizardry title "Busin" for PS2 in Japan, called "Wizardry: Tale of the Forsaken Land" http://www.atlus.com/Wizardry.htm outside Japan.
I can't remember whether it was Trebor or Werdna (or both) who wrote it, but there was a game on the PLATO network (circa '79 or '80) called "Oubliette" that nearly caused me to flunk out of law school. For homeboys of that time and place, I owned a Level 63 boxer (Samurai) name "Sarge" and a Level 63 Valk named "Pandora". It all came down over a 300bps link to one of those funky orange plasma PLATO terminals and, man, did it kick some serious ass. With parties of individual players from all over the country, that exprience turned me on to the power of networking. A typical night lasted from midnight to 4 or 5, when the system went down for maintenance. A couple of hours of serious dungeon-diving, followed by a couple of hours of "Empire". Man, those were the days... Out!
The trouble with practical jokes is that very often they get elected. -- Will Rogers
I have seen mentions of the Ultima and Bard's Tale series, but what about the Might and Magic series from the 80's (I am of course deliberately neglecting the ones released in the past couple of years). Anybody have fond memories of trying to crack the inner sanctum?
"I hate quotations. Tell me what you know." -Ralph Waldo Emerson