Observations on Early Versions of Wizardry

Wizardry is the first role playing game to make a substantial, widespread impact on video gaming. First released for the Apple II in 1981, it spawned many, many ports, sequels and spinoffs. Its origins tend to be obscured by later releases and re-releases, so in this blog article I will discuss what made the features of Wizardry as it was first released to the public so interesting.

Apple II Versions

There are five known versions of Wizardry - Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord (Wizardry I) for the Apple II. Luckily Sir-Tech dated all of them and shows the versions after the animated title screen:

VER:05-SEP-81
VER:01-DEC-81
VERSION 2.0 OF 01-JAN-82
VERSION 2.1 OF 22-JAN-82
VERSION -6- OF 06-JAN-84

VER:01-DEC-81 allowed the owner to make another scenario disk and upgrade the previous version to the current version. Prior to this the owner could only backup characters, not the scenario. VERSION -6- OF 06-JAN-84 and eliminated the ability to upgrade a previous version.

There is only one known Apple II version for Wizardry - The Knight of Diamonds - The Second Scenario:

VERSION PV3S2V1 OF 10-MAR-82

Similarly Wizardry - Legacy of Llylgamyn - The Third Scenario only has one known version as well:

VERSION -4- OF 04-MAY-83

The Second and Third Scenarios

Wizardry - The Knight of Diamonds: The Second Scenario is commonly known as Wizardry II but in reality it was more like an expansion pack than a true sequel. As stated on the box, the game required characters created in Wizardry I of at least the 13th level or higher. Wizardry II began with much more difficult monsters than Wizardry I pitted you against when you first entered the Maze. In the Apple II version, Wizardy II's Castle screens and Maze screens looked the same as they did in Wizardry I. There is no title screen animation.

Wizardry - Legacy of Llylgamyn: The Third Scenario (Wizardry III) offered in its Apple II version an introduction with eight screens of text and pictures. It forced the player to make a new scenario disk. & II let the players write characters to the original scenario disk. This requirement would be enforced for the final version of Wizardry I for the Apple II and all disk-based versions of Wizardry I-III thereafter. Apple II Wizardry I & II will have notches in their disks (with the exception of the final version of Wizardry I), Wizardry III does not.

Wizardry III's interface has seen significant upgrades from its predecessors, which will also carry over into later versions after the first IBM PC release of Wizardry I. All ports of Wizardry II will also use the updated interface. The "Pool Gold" command has been added. Viewing the Roster can be done by just typing "*" instead of "*ROSTER". The Maze takes up far more of the screen and the Castle screens now use graphics mode. Windows can now overlap.

Legacy of Llylgamyn might be considered a bit lame because it requires characters developed in Wizardry I or transferred from Wizardry II. Similarly it should be considered an expansion pack because it cannot be played standalone. These characters become "reincarnated", losing all their levels and equipment. They retain their classes and ability scores. The game is significantly more difficult than Wizardry I, so the player will need all the help they can get.

Transferring characters was done one at a time. This required swapping disks for every character you wished to transfer. The process could be tedious.

The pricing for these games when sold separately reflects their abilities. Wizardry I was priced at $49.95, Wizardry II at $34.95 and Wizardry III at $39.95.

Wiziprint

Sir-Tech released this utility for Wizardry only for the Apple II computers. What it did was allow you to print your characters' statistics, including their equipment and known spells, to an 80-column printer. It worked with any version of Wizardry I-III, but the characters could not be "out". (An "out" party is one which did not return to the Traning Grounds prior to quitting the game.) A character sheet should only take up one page of standard letter-sized paper. You can also print the character roster on the disk.

In order to use the product, one would first boot the Wiziprint disk and then insert a scenario disk for Wizardry I-III. The program would load the characters off the disk and list them. Each disk could hold twenty characters.

This product sold for $24.95, which may seem a bit expensive for a single feature, but a computer printout had a certain permanency that the CRT screen lacked. But one situation where it could come in handy is when there were many characters on a disk. The print out allowed you to keep track of characters' progress, which was important when developing more than six characters.

Wizardry was designed to permit several people to play the game, even if not at once, through allowing characters to be password protected. You might not appreciate building up a character after much effort and time only to see that character dead and lost on the 10th level of the maze by your more reckless roommate.

What is in the Box

Wizardry was known for its physical presentation. When other companies were releasing their software in zip-lock bags and thin cardboard folders, Wizardry came in a box. The box was pretty fancy for its time, with a textured black surface and red and green embossing. In the initial box was 

Instructions and Briefing Materials (1 page)

Player's Guide (46 pages)

Soon after the first release, a packet of tear-off sheets called the "Map Plotting Aid", consisting of grids on which the player could map the levels, was added. 

Eventually the following sheets were added:

Letter re: Cheat Programs (do not use these, Sir-Tech will not restore characters destroyed by a cheat program)

Important Notice (use backups instead of master scenario)

Tips on Keeping your Computer Healthy (clean your drive heads, align your drives yearly)

Spell Quick Reference Chart

Playing Wizardry on your Apple II Series/IBM PC Computer

The Player's Guide went through four Editions, with the Fourth being included in the original IBM PC release and acknowledging that computer for the first time. The Second through the Fourth Editions have 48 pages.

Wizardry II originally came as a disk in a shrinkwrapped cardboard folder, something of a throwback to how software had been distributed in the past. However, as an "expansion", it was deemed not to warrant the full box treatment. The "briefing materials" giving the background to the quest were printed on the folder. Later the game was released in a similar box to Wizardry I but it did not contain a full manual.

Wizardry III always came in the fancy box but also did not include a full manual. It had a sheet outlining the interface improvements and changes from the first two games. It also contained a 10 page manual with the scenario story and some instructions for transferring characters to the new scenario.

The 80-Column Bug

Wizardry was developed in 1978-81 during the primacy of the Apple II+ as the most advanced home computer (at least until the Atari 400/800 were released). The Apple II and II+ only supported 40 column text modes. Wizardry was designed to use 40-column text, but in many videos and modern players' experiences it appears in 80-column mode but with just a space between each letter.

This is due to a bug which accidentally triggers 80-column mode on Apple IIe computers with extra memory in their auxillary memory slot. The extra memory enables Apple IIe to display 80-column text. Removing the card disables 80-column text. The extra memory is built into the Apple IIc and IIgs and cannot be disabled in those computers. 

Wizardy I's Version -6- of January 6, 1984 fixed this bug but as far as I can tell there were no later versions of Wizardry II or III which do. Wizardry III stops using text mode when the scenario disk is loaded, so it is much less of an issue with that game.

Localization - French

Most early video games did not use a lot of text because text required a lot of memory to store characters. Video games run on computers could utilize the computer's extra RAM to result in much more heavy text-based games, but for computer users whose English was lacking, these games could be inaccessible.

Wizardry I was one of the first English-language computer games to receive a complete translation, in this case to French. (Mystery House from Sierra Online also received an early French translation.) The Apple II was not popular in Europe generally due to its high price but in France it had a following. The company Ediciel Matra et Hachette sold translated versions of Wizardry I-III as:

Sorcellerie: Le Donjon du Suzerain Heretique: 
VERSION # 4.2/F OF 8/27/84
VERSION 3.1/F DU 03/08/83

Sorcellerie: Le Chevalier de Diamant:
VERSION 10.0/F DU 27/04/84

Sorcellerie: L'Heritage de Llylgamyn: 
VERSION 10.0/F DU 24/04/84

Each translation has only one known version, but as you can see above, Sorcellerie I has two version lines. Why might that be? Sir-Tech advertised that French and German versions of Wizardry I-III were available in a 1984 catalog. Wiziprint also had a German version available. These have not surfaced but a German manual has been observed.

It is possible that Ediciel took the Sir-Tech French translation (Version 3.1) and touched it up for release for the French market. Ediciel may have had more to do with Wizardry II-III because they only have one version designation. 

Sorcellerie II has an animated title screen while Wizardry II's is static. Sorcellerie III does not appear to have a title card screen, unlike Wizardry III, but the provenance of the existing disk image is questionable.

Sorcellerie I has the 80-column bug, Sorcellerie I-II do not.

Localization - Japan

Wizardry proved popular in Japan. The Japanese home computer industry developed a little later than the U.S. market, so for a few years around 1980s cheap imported PCs were a thing in Japan. The Apple II was among the imports, Apple even released a special model of the Apple II+, the J-plus, with switchable support for katakana characters. Wizardry (and Ultima) would have been imported into Japan before ports of the games to Japanese home computers were made. 

In 1985-87 Wizardry I was released by ASCII Corp. for many of the major Japanese home computers of the time, PC-88, PC-98, X1, FM7 and MSX2. These versions all used the interface which had been designed for Wizardry III's Apple II version. Some of these machines supported higher resolutions and more colors than any 8-bit U.S home computer.  The MSX2 version of Wizardry I was released on both disk and cartridge (with battery backup) but the later games were disk only.

Wizardry gained a new level of popularity when it was ported to the Famicom on December 22, 1987, opening a huge new market of players who could not afford a home computer but could afford a video games console. For the Famicom a significant overhaul of the interface was required to make the game work with a gamepad. A new graphics option included texture support for textured dungeon walls in addition to wireframes. Music played throughout the game. The game came with battery-backed save memory and a sample set of characters to help a new player get started.

Wizardry III (February 21, 1989) and II (March 9, 1990) were released out of order for the Famicom. As Wizardry II originally required advanced characters and the Famicom version started players at level 1, it would have required significant rebalancing of the gameplay, perhaps explaining its delay. All later console releases of Wizardry were based on these Famicom ports. 

Wizardry I & II were ported from the Famicom to the NES but lost a very interesting feature in the form of Turbo File support. The Turbo File was a device sold by ASCII with battery-backed memory which plugged into the Famicom Expansion Port. The Famicom Wizardrys supported transferring characters to and from this device. You could transfer characters from one game to another, similar to how the system worked on the home computer versions. As the Turbo File was not released outside of Japan, this feature was removed for the US ports.

Wizardry I for NES/Famicom had a nasty bug, armor does not work as intended. The armor class had no effect on the enemy's ability to hit your characters, making armor useless in the cartridges. There is a one-byte patch to fix the NES version, and if you wish to play with an original cartridge you can use the Game Genie code SNKYVEON to implement the fix.

IBM PC Versions

Wizardry - Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord was released for the IBM PC Platform twice with significant differences. The first version was a straight port of the Apple II game, using 40-column text mode for the Castle screens and a maze shown in a corner of the screen. There is one known version of this release, Version of 27-Feb-84. It requires 64KiB and runs on the PC or PCjr. My disk reports it was created on 04-COT-84 but another disk image states it was created on 23-JAN-87.

This version has two unique features. First, the player can cycle through all sixteen of the available background colors with pressing F3 and through the two main CGA palettes with F4. The game defaults to a black background and the cyan/magenta/white palette. 

The second feature is much more interesting, it supports the IBM MDA as well as CGA (and PCjr.) If you have both CGA and MDA in the same system it will allow you to choose the adapter to play on. The title screen does not have the fancy animation or sound effects but it shows the title with ASCII-style graphics. When you enter the maze the walls are shown with text characters, _ | / \ + and so on. Monster portraits and similar graphics are not shown at all.

The "New & Improved" PC version was released in 1987. The 5.25" version has a version date of March 14, 1987 and the 3.5" version has a version date of September 10, 1987. These versions require 128KiB of RAM. This version uses the interface first developed in Wizardry III for the Apple II. Wizardry I-III for the PC all have the same title screen-style, shared with the Japanese PC and C64 versions.

For this version the interface had been redone to use graphics modes, even in the Castle. The monster portraits were redrawn to provide higher detail and make them less Apple-II like. No longer do you need to type *ROSTER to see the characters who are on a disk and you can access the Utilities from the Training Grounds instead of at the title screen.

CGA was supported in three ways, the default option gave the 320x200 resolution with the light cyan/light red/bright white palette. Holding down Ctrl while the game boots will show the 320x200 resolution with light cyan/light magenta/bright white. Holding down Alt gives 640x200 monochrome graphics with bright white. The 3.5" version added support for Hercules Graphics at 720x348. Wizardry II also has this same limitation, only the 3.5" version supported Hercules Graphics.

This version may be deemed flawed, however. When you level up a character you have a chance of receiving bonuses or reductions to your ability scores. Ability score increases are necessary to change to the Lord or a Ninja class, you cannot start as those classes in Wizardry I. In the Apple II version, the chances of raising a score are much higher than reducing a score. In the newer PC version, stats are far more likely to go down.

Commodore 64 Versions

Commodore received ports of Wizardry I-III rather late. There are two known versions of Wizardry - Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord for the Commodore 64/128. The first one has a disk directory listing for C64WIZMASTER. The second one has a directory listing for WIZARDRY.PGMO. The earlier one just displays "WIZARDRY" when loading, the second one displays either WIZARDRY FOR THE C64 or WIZARDRY FOR THE C128 depending on what system it is being run on. 

Wizardry I-III for the C64/128 supports the extra RAM in the Commodore 128 for loading assets. Also these games are among the rare instances where the Commodore RAM Expansion Unit (REU) 1764 for the C64 was explicitly supported to the same effect. Both the C128 and the C64 with the REU made 128KiB available to programs, but that extra RAM was useless if the game did not support it. Wizardry should load faster on the Commodore 1571 drives, usually used with the C128, than the 1541 drives.

The graphics are similar to those used in the New and Improved PC version with CGA graphics but show more colors.

Wizardry IV did not see a release for the C64 (or the MSX) but Wizardry V did.

You Cannot Play Without Making a New Scenario Disk!

Each of the first three Wizardry games came on a single disk, and for the Apple II and Commodore 64 they used both disk sides. In the early Apple II versions of Wizardry I and the known version of Wizardry II you could use the original scenario disk to play the game and save your characters. It was assumed that you could simply delete the character roster and "start fresh" because the Maze always reset itself when you went back to the Castle.

This was not always the case. In Wizardry I there was a special encounter that occurred only once in Level 4, a fight with 2 x Lvl 7 Fighters, 1 x Lvl 7 Mage & 2 x High Priests and 1x Ninja. This was a difficult fight but when won it could give your party a valuable treasure in the form of the Deadly Ring, a.k.a. the Ring of Death. Once the monsters were defeated the game would delete that encounter from the disk. Any parties starting thereafter could not achieve the benefit of this encounter. The Ring of Death sells for an enormous amount of gold, so if you see it in Boltac's Trading Shop you know that the encounter has been triggered. Complaints about the missing encounter in later playthroughs may have induced Sir-Tech to release a new version of Wizardry which prohibited users from saving to their original scenario disk.

In the Apple II versions which insist on a scenario disk copy, you can use the image of the original scenario disk side image by removing any write protection. This also works the Commodore 64 ports. As all the PC ports of Wizardry I-IV use one disk image whether that disk is a 5.25" or a 3.5" disk, make a copy of the original disk image and remove any write protection and use it as the scenario copy. 

Abusing the System or Necessary Evils?

Wizardry is a very challenging game and can often result in outcomes which seem unfair. A new party has limited gold to spend on items, especially armor. One trick that people did was to roll characters just to transfer their starting gold to new characters, then delete them. Then they could buy the most expensive armor the game made available at Boltac's.

When making a new character, the amount of points which one could add to one's ability scores was generally modest. Scores started around 6-10 and the player usually got 7-8 points on average to distribute. The bonus points were determined randomly. Sometimes a character would receive a lot more points to randomly distribute, such as 15-17 points. Those characters were what people sought and some players doubtless spent hours trying to get six or more characters like these.

Healing the party could be costly by staying at the Adventurer's Inn, but the Stables are free. That will permit the Priest to regain healing spells at no cost. There is no risk of combat to going into the Maze, casting the healing spell (without moving from the stairs) and returning to the Castle. Each trip to the stables ages characters by one week, and advanced aged characters lose ability scores. The original Apple II version (VER:05-SEP-81) was particularly harsh when recovering an OUT party, it would age recovered characters by ten years! Many later RPGs do not keep track of characters' ages and permit totally free healing through rest, but not Wizardry.

In the Apple II versions, if your Bishop tried to Identify an item and you pressed the 9 key instead of the 8 key, and he was successful, he would receive 100,000,000 experience points. Each character only has eight inventory slots, so trying to identify the "ninth item" sent the program down a buggy path. If you pressed the S key, the character below the Bishop in order received the experience points, and if you pressed the J key, the same character received 100,000,000 gold pieces. Again the Bishop had to succeed, which is far from guaranteed for 1st level Bishops. Bishops only require 12 Piety and Strength, so they can be made from scratch without too much difficulty. No port has this bug, despite what MobyGames says, I tried both PC versions and neither will respond to any key pressed for the Identify function other than 0-8.

Similarities to D&D & AD&D

Wizardry was being developed in 1978-81 when fantasy RPGs were still rather new. Dungeons and Dragons had only been released in 1974 and Advanced Dungeons and Dragons was only complete in 1979. Wizardry borrowed from both the D&D and AD&D rulesets as well as mainframe games like dnd, Dungeon and Moria.

D&D had four basic character classes, the Fighter, Cleric, Magic-User & Thief. Wizardry also has four basic character classes, the Fighter, Priest, Mage & Thief. There are classes which require higher ability scores to become, the Lord, Bishop, Samurai and Ninja. Some of these have requirements unachievable by 1st level characters.

Wizardry has separate races and classes, similar to AD&D. The Wizardry races available are Human, Elf, Dwarf, Gnome, Hobbit (Halfling). The only additional player races in AD&D are Half-Elf and Half-Orc. Each race in Wizardry is particularly good for one class, Elf-Mage, Dwarf-Fighter, Gnome-Priest, Haflling-Thief. This squares similarly to AD&D except that there are no PC Gnome Clerics.

In AD&D only Humans had the ability to change their class, which could be done once per character and required that certain ability score prerequisites be met. Wizardry allowed for all races to change their class, but the four advanced classes were generally hybrids of the basic four classes. This was similar to the multi-classing abilities of the demi-human races in AD&D.

Ability scores in D&D are Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution and Charisma. In Wizardry they are Strength, I.Q., Piety, Vitality, Agility & Luck. Hit Points are randomly determined.

Spells for new Priests and Magic-Users are assigned by the computer and new spells may be learned automatically on level up. Each spell level has a number of spells the caster can cast without resting. Unlike D&D or AD&D, a caster can cast any spell he knows without needing to memorize the spell beforehand as long as he has a free spell to cast. The spells are pretty typical, healing spells, attack spells, defensive spells and the like.

Like D&D/AD&D, gold is randomly given on new character creation to permit the character to buy weapons and armor. Weapons include swords, daggers, maces and staves. There are no bows or crossbows or other ranged weapons, which means only the first three characters in the party can enter melee combat. Armor options include leather/chain/plate armor, shields and also helmets. Descending armor class is used. There are potions with spell-like effects and enchanted weapons and armor (+1, +2 etc,) 

There were three alignments in D&D was Law, Neutrality & Chaos, which generally corresponded to Good, Neutral & Evil, which is what Wizardry used. (The version of Basic D&D, (Holmes) that was available for most of the time when Wizardry I was in development had Lawful Good/Evil and Chaotic Good/Evil but not Neutral Good/Evil.) Good Wizardry characters simply would not adventure with Evil Wizardry characters and vice versa. Thieves could not be Good, Ninjas had to be Evil. Priests could not be Neutral. AD&D did not allow Thieves to be Lawful or Chaotic Good and limited Assassins to Evil Alignments.

Some items could not be used by characters of the wrong alignment, like "Evil Chain +1". There were also cursed items which could not be removed except at the Temple of Cant. Encounters in the Maze could occasionally be friendly. Good parties should let them go without fighting, Evil parties should attack them. If you acted contrary to the party alignment, your characters may turn from Good to Evil or vice versa.