Month: May 2019

Wizardry 1 : Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord

In 1982, I was a freshman at Rochester Institute of Technology. I had already been geeking out with Apple and TRS-80 computers through high school, and had enjoyed my share of games, but RIT was a whole new social crew, new computers, and new connections.

I wandered into one of the labs and met up with a group of gamers that would end up being my Crew for my time at RIT. One of the games they were most passionate about was Wizardry, from Sir-Tech Software, a Sword and Sorcery game that in many ways is the root of the “squad based” RPG games that became so popular. Instead of playing just one character, you controlled a group of 6 at a time, each with different skills and equipment.

The game was fantastic, and I became a huge fan, even writing a lame knock-off of my own called Explorer. (Interestingly, I got mail from a fellow named Rich Katz who apparently did some artwork on Explorer – I vaguely remember him from 1987. He has a great page up about it and the work he did. Thanks Rich!)

Anyway, a few weeks ago I was at the Vintage Computer Festival East down in Wall New Jersey. I have lots of good stories from it, but one particular exchange stands out.

The VCF has mounds of software, still in boxes, they were trying to sell / get out of the warehouse. They set up an awesome ‘computer store’ with boxed copies of old software right there on the shelves. It was pretty awesome going through all the old still-boxed software. I noticed a set of boxes on a high shelf, and… yes! They were original copies of Wizardry! But it was for a later version. I wanted the first one, the one I played the most in high school. I spoke with one of the organizers for a while, and he said he’d check in the warehouse to see if there were any of the original boxes. I said I’d be happy to pay for them the next day.

Sunday rolled around, and I stopped over at the store. Sure enough, they had found a boxed copy of Wizardry 1, Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord, and had put it aside for me. I was a proud owner of an original, still in box, copy of a game I played over 35 years ago.

No, I’m not going to try and use this disk, there are plenty of copies / versions on the internet. But having this box, with all the original documentation, and of course the master disk, and the cover artwork – it’s a great addition to my retro computing museum.

If you’re interested in playing Wizardry 1, there’s a working version on Archive.org.