Have you ever wondered where the role-playing game genre came from? All these warlocks, assassins, Baldur’s Gate, Diablo, thieves and all that? If yes, then you are in the right place because we are going to show you in this review. first commercially successful role-playing game, which inspired the Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest series, as well as many other classic role-playing games. This title is the dungeon crawler Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord. Or rather, an updated version of it. And if you don’t know what a dungeon is, it’s a type of game in which your hero or the entire group does not move smoothly, but moves along individual squares of the map. In the Czech regions, these games were generally called dungeons, no matter how you moved through them. Now let’s see what’s happening in our…
You are standing in a cramped, damp room that smells of mold and forgotten times. The darkness is such that even the shadows here have shadows. Only the light of the torches illuminates the faces of the members of your group, and in the distance you hear some kind of squealing and whistling. Before you can react, a group of goblins rushes at you from the darkness, each of them eyes burning with thirst for your blood.
The magician raises his hands, whispers the words of an ancient spell, and lightning flies through the air, illuminating the hall with a light brighter than the slap of Carlos Vemola. A few goblins fall, but the rest don’t stop. The warrior, clutching his sword tightly, rushes forward with a cry that betrays a strong lack of ear for music. Steel meets skin and blood begins to run down the floor, which has clearly never been washed.
As the battle rages on, the thief sneaks back. He tries to get around his enemies and find their weak points, which he can use in the next round for a fair attack from behind. Every step must be thought out, because one wrong move can mean the end.
Once again, your group managed to stay alive by relying on their strength, skill, magic and, let’s face it, luck.
When I asked myself the key to this game some time ago in the editorial office, I had no idea how deep this rabbit hole would go. I just wanted to finally take a look at the game that started it all. And by all of this I mean the RPG genre as a whole. And in the end it was only ten floors deep.
But to take it from its peak… In our world where retro is the new cool and “vintage” is almost any mobile over five years old, it’s no surprise that the folks at Digital Eclipse dug up the legendary Wizardry 1 from an abandoned gaming history van subtitled “Proving Grounds” Mad Lord.” Yes, the first ever successful PC RPG, which saw hordes of players lock themselves in their rooms in 1981, armed only with paper, a pencil, a lot of patience and the determination to conquer a dungeon more sinister than a Monday morning before their first coffee. .
For those of you who just slyly told yourself that there were no “Pechkas” back then, I have information. You’re partially right, Wizardry 1 was released for the Apple II computer and only later for other platforms – C64, C128, FM-7, Game Boy Color, Macintosh, MSX2, NES, Sharp X1, Super Famicom, TurboGrafx-16. For PCs as we know them today – only later.
Staronové Wizardry 1 is indeed a remake of the original game, but with exceptions that we will talk about later, only a remake of its audiovisual part. The original game engine more or less runs under the new graphics. The authors expect an authentic gaming experience. While in the dungeon and during fights, you always see not only cool new graphics, but also the original ultra-woody representation of your current situation in the corner of the screen, exactly as it looked on the original Apple II. .
Source :Indian TV
