Let's Play Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord

Today, Pete plays Digital Eclipse's new reboot/reskin of the first Apple II Wizardry game, now in early access. Midway through, he gets distracted by a question and we look at the original Pascal source code for the game to try to understand how a particular game mechanic works.

[@Evan-lr8nq]

This game was made in my little home town in Upstate NY. The folks that made it worked their butts off to make it.

[@TeaLeavesProgramming]

They also published some other amazing games, such as Jagged Alliance. It was a strange little game company, but I love them!

[@Evan-lr8nq]

@@TeaLeavesProgramming they came from a strange little town lol!

[@AAX1975]

That little moment with the elevator after 40 years made me grin from ear to ear. I got into Wizardy on the NES and then the C64 so I didn't play this, but I'm still blown away by what they've done here. Thanks for the awesome playthrough.

[@TeaLeavesProgramming]

And thank you for watching!

[@muckenhoupt]

To those of us who have played Wizardry IV: The Return of Werdna, it feels kind of appropriate that Hawkwind fell to the weakest monster in the game

[@TeaLeavesProgramming]

Hahahahaha exactly

[@Aristocles22]

The dink. Yes, I remember.

[@dontokoi30]

I'm like damn of course this guy can read Pascal.

[@TeaLeavesProgramming]

Not counting Applesoft BASIC, it was the first programming language I learned!

[@dontokoi30]

I banged out my first 10 PRINT in second grade, I'm definitely here from Apple 2 Wizardry.

[@orelas167]

Oh, that was good to know about the spell names.

[@TeaLeavesProgramming]

It's an amazing story.

[@jermc76]

Remember the door in lvl 3 had a programmed event of a party of fighter,wizard,cleric, and assassin. Had a cursed ring for loot

[@TeaLeavesProgramming]

I just got that ring last night!

[@anonimoalfin]

Fantastic vid, so glad to have found your awesome channel! Liked and Subscribed! p.s. [ 43:00 ] fascinating! Thank you for all the explanations, and the lore of the game and how it felt when it first came out!

[@TeaLeavesProgramming]

Welcome aboard!

[@anonimoalfin]

@@TeaLeavesProgramming your vids are great and your voice is FANTASTIC for reviewing Wizardry and RPGs!

[@seanjensen6759]

Does the Biship Identification exploit still work? You used to be able to creaet a full group of maxed out Bishops by identifying item 9 until you got all the exp.

[@TeaLeavesProgramming]

I haven't tried! By default the game sort of 'wraps' the apple II game so you're not actually entering keys straight to it.

[@kslick4048]

Here's me hoping for a Ultima 3 remake. Liked it better than most games ot the time because of the combat.

[@TeaLeavesProgramming]

I played the Ultima games a lot back in the day - in fact, Ultima II was the first boxed game I ever bought. Nowadays people mostly talk about Ultima IV as the best in the series, but I feel like there's a good argument that Ultima III struck the perfect balance of combat and adventuring.

[@kslick4048]

@@TeaLeavesProgramming never had Ultima 2 had 1 well my brother did I just played it. Liked the ssi games as well, miss those. Do you remember the " cheat " you could do in the one. I know it wasn't 1 2 or 3.

[@rtester40]

LOL IKR about RPG maps I still have the maps to "Shining in the Darkness" in my brain

[@TeaLeavesProgramming]

I’ve never played that one. What platform is it on?

[@AAX1975]

By the way, can't wait for the next playthrough!

[@TeaLeavesProgramming]

Maybe this weekend!

[@AAX1975]

@@TeaLeavesProgramming good luck! Will check it out if so!

[@oldgamehermit]

Makanito is a thing though!

[@TeaLeavesProgramming]

The random nature of it makes me use it less than I should.

[@oldgamehermit]

@@TeaLeavesProgramming I'm always fascinated at how differently people play. It's really cool. For me, makanito was a go-to spell (good old "mak-attack"). It's especially effective on giants and I would always use it to clear out the Monster Allocation Center.

[@almeidachannel7121]

Nice Video ! Sub & Like ! And Love Wizardry Games !

[@TeaLeavesProgramming]

Thank you!

[@almeidachannel7121]

@@TeaLeavesProgramming Thank you for your reply ! If you are interested in the nostalgic game culture of Japan, please subscribe to the my channel !

[@ASeventhSign]

Wait, why is race in rpgs a problematic concept?

[@TeaLeavesProgramming]

For all the obvious reasons.

[@ASeventhSign]

Hmm, every rpg I've ever played, including the original Wizardry on my Apple //e, allowed players to choose their race. Some have more choices than others, some have more of an effect on gameplay... Just realized what you're saying.

[@TeaLeavesProgramming]

@@ASeventhSign Right. Even if we factor out the political or quasi-racist aspects of them, in practice these usually have a negative effect on gameplay. When I'm playing an RPG what I usually *want* is to envision how my character looks and acts (which might include race as one of many attributes!) but what I usually *don't* want is "Oh, you're a halfling, that means you can't be a Paladin" (or whatever). Wizardry inherited its application of race straight from D&D (and thus from Tolkien) where race has direct implications on what styles of play are possible, and IMO that's bad.

[@User_Un_Friendly]

I can't remember which Wizardry game, but I had a complete party of Hobbit Ninjas. It was awesome. 🥷. I ended up spamming Tiltowatt (?) and just blast all the monsters in a room.