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Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord

Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord is an influential first person, grid-based dungeon crawler released for the Apple II in 1981.

Gameplay screenshot of Wizardry, fighting some kobolds.
Gameplay screenshot of Wizardry, fighting some kobolds.

It was developed by Andrew Greenberg and Robert Woodhead, both students at Cornell University where they played PLATO games including Oubliette. Inspired by these games they each independently tried to write a game like Oubliette but targetting the Apple II, eventually pooling their efforts to write Wizardry.

“I [Woodhead] started working on a game called Paladin, inspired by PLATO dungeon games. I was interested to see how much you could pack into 1MHz. I wanted to know how close I could come to the PLATO experience on limited hardware. The Apple II was a tiny and crippled machine by today’s standards.”

Wizardry was an extremely popular and influential game. It’s the first entry in a long series of similar CRPGs that share it’s name. Like Oubliette you play with a party of characters but unlike Oubliette the characters are all controlled by a single player.

Gameplay Video

THe above shows a gameplay video of the 2.1 version of Wizardry on the Apple II. You may want to skip to the middle to see the gameplay part, as the start has lengthy party creation section.

Setting

The game screens are mostly text, displaying stats, statuses and similar information. The upper-left corner of the screen is used to draw the dungeon that your party is exploring in a pseudo 3D-style. The corridors and doors of the dungeon are represented by simple lines. Things like stair cases are not shown in this 3D level view, you only discover a staircase exists by walking on it’s location. When a event like combat occurs the level view is replaced with pictures of the monsters you’re fighting.

An illustration from Wizardry's manual
An illustration from Wizardry's manual

The manual has illustrations by Will McLean who also was an artist for Dragon magazine.

Wizardry’s world-building doesn’t take itself very seriously, with incongruous elements like elevators in the dungeon and weapons named after kitchen appliances. The gameplay focuses on delving into dungeons, fighting monsters, and finding loot - surviving to resurface, heal up, gain levels, and restock equipment before venturing back down.

Source Code

Thomas William Ewers reverse-engineered the Wizardry code and with Data Driven Gamer’s analysis it’s possible to make some quite precise statements about how Wizardry worked. The function names referenced come Thomas’s reverse engineering as the original names were removed when the original source code was compiled long ago. Search around a bit on Google and you should able to find it.

Narrative / Goal

The goal of Wizardry is to retrieve an amulet stolen by a wizard called Werdna and return to the surface. There’s no official “Game Over” screen - instead, the game continues after achieving the goal. This overall goal is reminiscent of the PLATO game dnd where the player must descend to the bottom of the dungeon to retrieve an orb.

the fact that only one person was playing the game allowed us to put in a story (and lots of cute ornaments) that raised Wizardry beyond the “hack-hack-kill-kill-loot-loot-run home” style of game.

You lose when all characters in your party are killed in the maze. However, this isn’t truly the end, you can roll new characters and can find the bodies of the previous party in the maze and recover them to be resurrected.

New Game Flow

Wizardry’s new game flow is a bit of a maze in itself. The game starts with a title screen as shown below.

The first screen of Wizardry
The first screen of Wizardry

Following this screen is a loading animation of a person in a turban with a flute or wand near a cauldron. From the cauldron rises smoke that spells out “Wizardry” at the top of the screen.

The loading screen.
The loading screen.

Pressing any key will advance past this screen to a screen giving a choice of options: Start, Utilities and Title.

The first options screen.
The first options screen.

The S key starts the game, at this point you’ll be prompted to insert the second disk. The U key takes you to a screen where you can do operations on characters - renaming them, recovering them, transferring them to different disks etc. Finally if you want to seen the title and loading screen again you can press T.

The market screen.
The market screen.

Character Creation

The new game flow lands you at a Market Screen and shows you a party roster that will be empty right now. The first task is to figure out how to generate characters to add to your party so you can start the adventure. The training ground is the place where this can be done.

The training grounds.
The training grounds.

To create a character you type a name and then you’re taken to a screen where you can choose a race, alignment, spend stat points and finally choose a character class to complete the creation process.

Stats

Wizardry provides the following base character stats:

  • Strength
  • I.Q.
  • Piety
  • Vitality
  • Agility
  • Luck

During character creation Wizardry gives you a set of base values for these stats based on the race you chose and then you can assign a number of bonus points to any of them to increase them as you’d like. As you assign the points the classes you’re eligible for will appear on the right of the screen. These bonus points are semi-random with a low, medium and high bucket of points but the highest possible amount on the Apple II is 29.

Spending stat points during character creation.
Spending stat points during character creation.

There’s a number of other stats such as HP, MaxHP, Level, Status and Age, to name a few.

Race / Classes

For each party member you can choose one of the following five options for race:

  • Human
  • Elf
  • Dwarf
  • Gnome
  • Hobbit

The races determine the starting stats for the character and each race also has a specific saving throw bonus. After choosing the race there are a number of classes you might eligible for:

  • Fighter - Require strength of 11. Can use all weapons and armor. No alignment restriction. Gains an extra attack every 4 levels.
  • Mage - Require intelligence of 11. May only use daggers or staffs. Can only wear robes. Can cast spells. No alignment restriction.
  • Priest - Require piety of 11. May not use helmets, may only use staffs or cudgels but may wear any armor or shield. Can cast priest spells and dispel undead. May not have a neutral alignment.
  • Thief — Require agility of 11. May use daggers or short swords as weapons. Can wear leather armor and use a shield. May not have a good alignment.
  • Bishop — May wear leather armor and use priest weapons. They can cast mage spells. From level 4 they can dispel undead and cast priest spells. They can identify magic weapons. Bishops may not be neutral.
  • Samurai — Can use all weapons and armor. At the fourth level of ability they slowly begin to acquire magical spells. May not have an evil alignment.
  • Lord — Can use all weapons and armor. From 4th level they can cast priest spells, and gain the ability to dispel undead. Must have a good alignment.
  • Ninja - Can use all weapons and armor. Must have an evil alignment.

Note how classes have various restriction regarding stats, equipment use and alignment. The later classes are practically only available by change to that class later once the character’s stats have increased. Many of these classes were also present in Oubilette which also included the Thief, Samurai, Ninja and Mage classes.

Like Dungeons and Dragons, Wizardry features an alignment system. Characters can be Good, Neutral, or Evil, and this alignment determines whether they can form a party together - good and evil characters cannot exist in the same party. For example, Lords are exclusively good characters, while Ninjas are exclusively evil. Characters also have a chance to shift alignment depending on the alignment of monsters they kill. Depending on the party’s overall alignment, it may be possible to bypass combat encounters with similarly aligned monster groups.

Enter the Tavern and decide who's in the party.
Enter the Tavern and decide who's in the party.

Once you’ve created your characters you need to go to the tavern screen to pick who is in the party. From there you should go to the “Trading Post” to buy some starting equipment and then, finally, you can start your adventure by entering the “Maze” from the edge of town.

Input

In the early 1980s the only input method was the keyboard. The controls for wandering around the maze, which what Wizardry called it’s dungeon, are listed in the Exploration section but they’re standard grid-based movement controls of the era.

All other controls are menu based. For instance when you start in the castle there are a list of locations to visit. Travel within the castle is done by pressing a key according to menu shown on screen, see the screenshot below.

The castle hub where you can choose various locations to visit with a keypress.
The castle hub where you can choose various locations to visit with a keypress.

This means that each place needed to start with a unique first letter. The dungeon to is littered with menus, when a chest is encountered there’s a menu of interactions, when a stair case is encountered there’s a prompt to press Y to go down it and N to back-off.

A yes / no menu when encountering a staircase in a dungeon.
A yes / no menu when encountering a staircase in a dungeon.

Exploration

The game begins in a castle. From the castle you can choose to visit several locations before venturing into the dungeon.

In the castle with a full party, ready to start.
In the castle with a full party, ready to start.
  • Gilgamesh’s Tavern - where you can modify your party
  • Adventurer’s Inn - recover spell points, health and level-up
  • Boltac’s Trading Post - buy and sell items here
  • Temple of Cant - restore party from various status effects including death
  • Edge of Town - visit the training grounds to recruit new characters, enter the dungeon or recover a lost party.

Like so many of Wizardry’s features, this system comes straight from Oubliette which also had a castle hub and a dungeon. Oubliette in-turn was inspired by earlier RPGs such as Moria which had a similar structure.

The training grounds at the edge of town.
The training grounds at the edge of town.

Once you have a party and go to the edge of town you can visit the maze by pressing M. Then inside the maze the controls change and the Apple II controls where as follows:

  • F — moves you forward a step in the direction you are facing
  • L — turns you left
  • R — turns you right
  • K — lets you kick through a door if it is right in front of you.
  • S — updates the Status area
  • C — enters the Camp
  • I — lets you inspect the current area you are in for dead bodies.

The Apple II had a QWERTY layout but no arrow keys. Kicking through doors as the main method of interacting with them is a motif that is encountered again and again in these early D&D-inspired games.

Here's what happens if you try to move through a door in Wizardry without kicking it.
Here's what happens if you try to move through a door in Wizardry without kicking it.

As you wander around the dungeon you’ll encounter monsters, treasure chests, signs and find key items to let you pass through previously restricted areas.

The dungeon in Wizardry is preauthored, so the layout is the same each playthrough. Dungeons are twenty by twenty tiles and there are ten floors in total. As you explore the dungeon you’re expected to map it out on graph paper, and then use this map to plan subsequent trips to the dungeon.

The are several tile types including pits, chutes, stairs, spinners, darkness, teleporters, falling rocks, spikes “button”, predefined encounters and messages etc. Then walls also have types including if there’s a door or hidden door.

The game only saves data on exiting the maze. This meant once you had begun an adventure you had to survive and return to the surface if any of your progress was to be saved.

Inventory

Each character can hold up to eight items as well as any gold they find. Objects in the game have a type is one of:

  1. Weapon
  2. Armor
  3. Shield
  4. Helmet
  5. Gauntlet
  6. Special
  7. Misc

Each character can equip an item in their weapon, armor, shield, helm and gauntlet slot. A character may be prevented from equipping an item based on stats and class.

On top of the equippable items there are items like amulets, rings, scrolls, potions that are useable items the trigger an action when used. These usable items have a chance of breaking after a single use, with a probability ranging from 0% to 100%. Items can be used in combat or from the camp screen.

Then there are quest or key items such as literal keys, statues and a blue ribbon.

The blue ribbon gives access to an elevator in the middle of the dungeon. Final Fantasy 1 features a ribbon item but as a piece of headwear, that goes on to recur throughout the Final Fantasy series. This is potentially the inspiration for that item.

Special items generally allow the player to pass through certain tiles, for instance at some point you encounter the following message and are pushed back from the tile:

AS YOU ENTER THIS ROOM, A SILVERY FOG ENVELOPS YOU. TERRIBLE DEMONS FORM ALL AROUND YOU. IN TERROR, YOU FLEE FROM THE ROOM!

You need the silver key to be able to pass through this location on floor 2.

Combat

Combat only occurs in the maze it’s handled in separate combat state. When you first enter a level, some areas of the map are marked as combat locations and there’s also a 1% chance combat will occur each time party moves. Kicking down a door increase the chance of combat occurring, as does triggering an alarm trap when opening a chest.

Here’s the code that determines if combat is encountered:

IF (((RANDOM MOD 99) = 35) OR     // 1% chance 
    (CHSTALRM = 1) OR             // "Chest alarm" is active
    (FIGHTMAP[MAZEX][MAZEY])) OR  // Fight marked at current position
   

   (INITTURN AND                  // Ensures only one event per turn
    (INCHAR = CHR(75)) AND        // the input character is 'K' 
    (MAZE.FIGHTS[MAZEX][MAZEY] = 1)) AND  // is a fight is allowed here?
    ((RANDOM MOD 8) = 3)          // AND a 12.5% chance succeeds
THEN
    ENCOUNTR;   

When combat occurs a number from 1 to 3 is picked that’s used to look up a enemy encounter for that level. The chances are not uniform 1 (75% chance), 2 (18.75% chance) or 3 (6.25%) and the tougher encounters are usually the rarer ones. Once this is decided combat begins. Here’s how combat appears in game:

A combat encounter.
A combat encounter.

You have a chance of surprising the monster, the monster surprising the party or no one surprising anyone. The surprise status influences who gets to attack first.

Aside: Thoughts about Encounters

Designing a random encounter system is something I’ve written about previously and looking at this code starting with a simple 1% is probably a good jumping off point. Wizardry’s levels are 20x20 tiles, so 400 possible walkable tiles but far fewer in practice means encounter won’t be annoyingly common.

Melee

When combat commences you’re asked to choose what each of your party plans to do from a menu of options, as shown below.

Wizardry melee combat options.
Wizardry melee combat options.

Note how similar these actions are to later Japanese roleplaying games such as Final Fantasy. Only characters in the first three slots may perform a melee attack. The backrow are expected to deal ranged damage via spells or provide support.

Combat Action Order

Once you confirm your plan then the combat order is determined. Each party member is given a score from 0 to 10 where a lower score means they’ll attack earlier. This uses the character agility stat but there’s also a random fuzzing. Here’s how it works:

  1. Choose a random number from 0 - 9 AGIL1TEN (possibly meaning agility 1 to 10).
  2. Modify this random number according to the party members agility stat. See the table below.
  3. Clamp the result from 1 to 10.
Agility Attribute Modifier to AGIL1TEN
3+ +3
4-5 +2
6-7 +1
8-14 0 (no change)
15 -1
16 -2
17 -3
18+ -4

The action order is determined by AGIL1TEN score with lowest going first.

Damage Calculations

Combat begins once the attack order is decided and combat actions are executed - such as attacking, casting spells etc.

Wizardry executing a combat action.
Wizardry executing a combat action.

Attack damage is calculated separately for the player attacking monsters in DAN2ENMY and for monsters attacking players DAM2ME. Please note all these function names were not original they’re from the decompiled source.

The attack function begins by calculating the hit chance.

HPCALCPC := 21
  - BATTLERC[VICTIM].B.AC // Target's natural armor class
  - CHARACTR[BATI].HPCALCMD // Attack bonuses to hit
  + BATTLERC[VICTIM].A.TEMP04[SINGLEX].ARMORCL // Target's armor penalties 
  - 3 * VICTIM; // Subtract 3 * the victim index

There’s actually a bug in the original code here. The 3 * VICTIM is supposed to make monsters in the front line easier to hit, but it actually makes the ones in the backline easier to hit.

The HPCALCPC is then clamped between 1 and 19. A lower the value the better chance of landing a hit.

FOR TEMPX := 1 TO CHARACTR[BATI].SWINGCNT DO // For the number of attacks the character has
  IF (RANDOM MOD 20) >= HPCALCPC THEN // roll a D20 and if it's > HPCALCPC then hit lands
  BEGIN
    (* Increase damage counter *)
    HPDAMAGE := HPDAMAGE + CALCHP(CHARACTR[BATI].HPDAMRC);
    // Handle the hit

BATI might stand for “battler index”, it’s an index into the list of characters that make up the party. CALCHP is a dice rolling type function that takes a record with the number of dice, the number of faces and the bonus, like 3d6+1. Damage to the target is stored in HPDAMAGE based on a dice roll stored in the character’s HPDAMRC record. Character may have multiple attacks in a single session so this damage code is all in a for-loop and it’s repeated for the number of attacks the character has.

Once the base damage is determined there’s a check to see if the target is asleep and if so the damage is doubled. Then there’s a check to see if the weapon is effective against the enemy type and if so the damage is doubled again. Hit or miss messages are printed to the screen with the damage values and then the damage is subtracted from the targets remaining health points.

Next you’d think there’d be a check to see if the target is dead - but no, it’s critical hit time. If a hit has inflicted some damage and the attacker can critical hit, then the chance of critical is character_level * 2% clamped to a maximum of 50%. Even if this check is passed there’s chance for the target to resist IF (RANDOM MOD 35) > BATTLERC[ VICTIM].B.HPREC.LEVEL + 10, which in pseudo code can simplified to

if(random(1, 35) - 10 > target.level)
{ 
    DoCrit()
}

In Wizardry monster levels range from 1 to 25. Maelific is the only enemy with level 25 but most “high level” enemies are around 10 and therefore will resist critical hits 40% of the time. Maelific, at level 25, cannot be critically hit.

If the critical lands the target’s health is set to zero; instant death and a message flashes up saying “A CRITICAL HIT!”. There’s a final check to see if the enemy is dead. If so a message is printed and the target’s status is set to DEAD and the HP to 0.

A melee attack landing and killing a kobold.
A melee attack landing and killing a kobold.

If at end of the attack, all enemies are dead, you win and get loot and experience as shown below. If all your party members die then it’s game over.

Gold and experience rewarded after defeating enemies.
Gold and experience rewarded after defeating enemies.

Magic

Wizardry isn’t just about melee combat, there’s also a magic system. Like Oubliette the magic has combat and non-combat uses such as casting light or teleport. And like Oubliette the spell names are self-describing but using constructed language.

FIEMINAT is from Oubliette, the other two Wizardry, both share a similar spell naming scheme.
FIEMINAT is from Oubliette, the other two Wizardry, both share a similar spell naming scheme.

This kind of spell grammar also makes it into the Final Fantasy series too with the Fira and Firaga spells.

If the player can use magic, then when it’s their turn they can choose the magic action and choose a spell to cast by typing it’s name out. Characters have limited spells to use and when they run out the player needs to return the party to the surface so they can rest, regaining their spells.

Attacking with spells.
Attacking with spells.

Mage and Clerics have access to different sets of spells. The spells themselves are split int seven “levels”. For instance here are the level 1 mage spells

  • HALITO - 1-8 damage to one enemy.
  • KATINO - Put 1 group of enemies to sleep.
  • MOGREF - Improves the armor of the caster by 2 during combat.
  • DUMAPIC - Shows the map of the current floor.

and here are the level 1 cleric spells:

  • BADIOS - 1-8 points damage to one monster
  • DIOS - Heals 1-8 points to one character
  • KALKI - Improves the armor of entire party by 1 for a combat encounter
  • MILWA - Extends field of vision and reveals secret doors. Lasts for around ~40 moves are made or until you enter a dark area.
  • PORFIC - Improves the armor of the caster by 4 during combat

The more powerful the spell the higher spell level it will be in. Magic users spend one spell points to cast one spell. Each level has its own reserve of spell points and characters have fewer higher level spell points compared to the lower levels.

Advancement

Wizardry has a level and experience system but there are some novelties you don’t see in many modern games.

You don’t level-up as soon as you get enough experience. You can can only level up by resting at the tavern outside of the dungeon.

Experience points are awarded for killing monsters. Each time a party kills a group of monsters, each survivor gets some experience points. When the total reaches a certain value, you attain the next level of ability when you rest in the castle.

- Wizardry Manual 📖

The experience curve levels off at level 13, once you reach that level it’s the same experience amount to attain each future level. On levelling up you may gain spells, spell slots and increase attributes. One novelty is that attributes may also decline! If a character’s Age stat is greater than 50 than you may occasionally see the decline of an attribute. Characters may also die of old age but the age has to get extremely high, multiple hundreds of years.

To level-up one must return to the castle and rest at the Adventurer’s Inn. On levelling up each stat has a 75% chance to increase stats, though if you’re very old you may see it decline! SEE HERE: https://datadrivengamer.blogspot.com/2019/08/the-not-so-basic-mechanics-of-wizardry.html

Characters with the relevant class learn spells automatically as they gain levels.

Systems

Wizardry’s system are mostly focused around combat and dungeon delving but there are a few worth calling out.

Chest System

Occasionally after defeating an enemy you’ll be presented with a chest. These are often trapped and can be quite deadly. A thief can help disarm, and clerics can identify the type of trap using the CALFO spell.

Encountering a chest in Wizardry's dungeon.
Encountering a chest in Wizardry's dungeon.

Chests contain money and loot. There are many powerful pieces of equipment that cannot bought from the shop on the surface but must be found as loot.

Status Effects

The status stat records if one of the character’s is suffering from some status effect, the possible values are:

  • OK - default status.
  • AFRAID - Seems to not be implemented. Cleared after battle.
  • ASLEEP - Asleep, unable to attack or defend themselves but will wake on taking damage. Cleared after battle.
  • PLYZE - Paralyzed, the character cannot take any action until cured.
  • STONED - Stoned, the character cannot take any action until cured. It is more expensive to cure than paralysis.
  • DEAD - Dead but can be resurrected, if resurrection fails they become ashes.
  • ASHES - Dead can be resurrected for a large sum at the temple but if the resurrection fails they’re lost and gone forever.
  • LOST - Dead and unrecoverable.

A character can only suffer from one status effect at a time.

When a character is not ok, he can be cured either by application of a spell or by hauling him back to the castle and paying for the service at the temple.

- Wizardry Manual 📖

Magical Item Identification

Bishops have the ability to identify the nature of magical items, thus avoid the fee to have it done in the castle. However, there are some disadvantages to having a bishop inspect an item. If the bishop is not very careful, he may touch the item by accident. This will cause an equip action to be performed, and if the item is cursed, the bishop will be forced to wield it.

Development

Andrew Greenberg and Robert Woodhead met as students at Cornell University in the late 70s. Werdna the evil Wizard in Wizardry is Andrew spelt backwards and Trebor the owner of the game’s amulet and castle is Robert backwards.

During their university years, they played a lot of PLATO games and independently tried to recreate the experience on their home computers. Eventually, they decided to combine their efforts, resulting in the first Wizardry game made using Pascal on the Apple II. The game was developed over two years and then released in 1981.

The publisher was Sir-tech. The backstory is a little complicated but briefly Frederick Sirotek owned a spoon company and knew Robert Woodhead’s mother. He wanted some computer software to help with the sourcing of materials to make his spoons. Robert created this software and became friends with his son Norman Sirotek who was impressed with Wizardry and suggested they go into business together and Sir-tech was created as a publisher. There’s a in-depth write up on The Digital Antiquarian’s website over here.

The game was originally called Dungeons of Despair but due to TSR threatening legal action the name was changed to Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord. Wizardry was built with an eye to easily creating more content including writing tools such as a scenario editor that could author the dungeon layout.

Sir-tech spent the rest of that summer of 1981 making final preparations to release Wizardry at last. Here Frederick Sirotek made a vital contribution. Realizing from his own business experience how important an appearance of professionalism was and all too aware of the inadequate Info-Tree documentation, he insisted that Sir-tech put together a solid, attractive package for the game and make sure the manual “was readable by people without computer backgrounds.”

From the embossed cover to the unusually lengthy, professionally-edited-and-typeset manual found within, Wizardry looked a class act, standing out dramatically from the Ziploc bags and amateurish artwork of the competition. Wizardry looked like something major.

The image below is from Denis Strelow’s website showing how the boxed game look and it’s contents.

Wizardry boxed product.
Wizardry boxed product.

However the first boxed CRPG was probably Dunjonquest: Temple of Apshsai.

Legacy

Wizardry is very influential and spawned many imitators but few of it’s features are novel, most come directly from PLATO RPGs such as Avatar, Oubliette, Moria and dnd.

However PLATO was hard to access, Wizardry on the other hand was one of the best selling pieces of software on the Apple II and became the definition of CRPG for a generation of creators.

Single Player Multiple Characters

PLATO was a networked platform and that lent itself to multiplayer games. Wizardry takes Oubliette to the Apple II and that’s not an online-first system. Wizardry kept the party of characters but had them all controlled by a single player. The earlier Dungeon Campaign had a single player game with multiple characters but they weren’t as distinct and unique as the characters in Wizardry and instead acted a little like different pools of hitpoints. In Dungeon Campaign the party was large and predefined, whereas in Wizardry you can build-up you own party with whatever class/species combinations you want.

Single player with distinct party members is something that the CRPG genre latches on to and echoes down to Baldur’s Gate and many other games.

Monster Identification

In Wizardry monsters have two names, an unidentified name and an identified name. When you start an battle you’ll only see the unidentified names until you fight for a while or cast a spell. For instance, any number of mage type monsters may first be identified as “Man in Robes” until you discover exactly what they are which could be a Level 1 Mage or a Master Ninja.

It’s a shame this knowledge doesn’t persist from fight to fight but it’s still interesting and this type of feature goes on to become bestiary books in later games where you unlock information about the creatures you fight, their strengths, weakness, loot drops and so on.

Big in Japan

Wizardry was particularly popular in Japan and Wizardry-like games continue to be made there. It’s not just games, Wizardry launched a whole line of products including manga, novelizations and a tabletop roleplaying game. Wizardry was a culture phenomenon enough that even has influences in a lot anime such Patlabor 2.

In the anime “Patlabor 2: The Movie” directed by Mamoru Oshii, the call signs of the Self-Defense Forces’ interceptors are named after Wizardry, “Wyvern,” “Wizard,” “Priest,” and “Trebor” (Robert spelled backwards, the king who appears in Wizardry).”

The Japanese Wizardry game box.
The Japanese Wizardry game box.

Both Wizardry and Ultima have huge followings in Japan. The computer magazines cover Lord British (Ultima) like our National Inquirer would cover a television star. When Robert Woodhead, of Wizardry fame, was recently in Japan he was practically mobbed by autograph seekers. Just introducing himself in a computer store would start a near stampede as people would run outside [to] shout that he was inside!

ASCII became the Japanese publisher for the Wizardry games. ASCII Corporation was a video game and hardware publishing company founded in 1977 and based in Tokyo, Japan. The porting to Japanese PCs was handled by ForeTune, a company led by Shigeya Suzuki, a 22-year-old student. The first localisation and port for Japan was release on the 15th November 1985 for the PC-9801. However the English version was known to some developers prior to the localisation being released, such as game designer Yuji Horii who discovered Wizardry at the 1983 Apple Fest in San Francisco.

Robert Woodhead himself ended up living in Japan in the late 80s for six years and helping import and localise anime for the American market under his company AnimEigo.

Influences

The major influence on Wizardry was Oubliette as it mentioned several times in the article. You can read the thoughts of Jim Schwaiger, one of Oubliette’s creators, on Wizardry here. That said, the big change was switching from multiplayer to single player. In Oubliette you play a single character, in Wizardry you play an unnamed force that can wander around a town, form a party and control all an entire party of characters. It’s a perspective shift that matters and influences all party-based games that follow.

Oubliette
There was a game on the PLATO network (circa '79 or '80) called "Oubliette" that nearly caused me to flunk out of law school. [...] Wizardry was in many ways our attempt to see if we could write a single-player game as cool as the PLATO dungeon games and cram it into a tiny machine like the Apple II.
❖ Shōgun, James Clavell, 1975
Ah, no, this is the influence of James Clavell's Shogun (1975). The Murasama Blade and Shuriken came from that novel too.
❖ Dungeons and Dragons
I didn't know about that anime. I read Tolkien's novels, obviously, but the principal influence is clearly D&D.