Wizardry co-creator Andrew Greenberg dead at 67

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Originally published at: Wizardry co-creator Andrew Greenberg dead at 67 - Boing Boing

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I spent many, many, many hours playing those games. RIP.

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There’s been a lot of interesting work done in recent years restoring the original game. I wonder if he followed much of it?

The fancy new remake just came out a few months ago.

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Agreed, so many hours.

I remember when they changed into (static) images too…I wish so hard I could find the game I used to play on the single computer at my elementary school between programming an algebra tutor, but despite sending Reddit after it, no hits.

Wizardry, Zork, and all the rest were foundational for me.

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Yeah, I have it. It’s a lot harder than I remember.

ETA: Or I have gotten older. So much older.

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Wizardry was my introduction to the grinding gameplay of D&D character development. I still have muscle memory of hitting A A A P P P in those early voyages into the dungeon. Cross training a thief to a ninja seemed like it took years. I regret not having the patience to grind away at Bard’s Tale, which seemed to have raised the bar for this genre.

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Bards tale was… an exercise in frustration for me, because exploring the city also required you to develop cartography skills outside the game. I didn’t exactly have the patience for it either.

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There’s a remake, and it has automapping.

I fondly remember my monk in BT2 that could kill just about anything with one hit. If I needed a character of a different class, I’d roll a level one, bring it into a high level dungeon and they’d be level 25 after one or two battles.

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Wizardry was a foundational game of my pre-teens.

At first I hated the no mapping aspect, but then my mom brought in
some graph paper and the game became a key bonding element between us.

I remember racing home from school to find out what mom had uncovered that day.
Joyfully exclaiming I finally had enough points to distribute to make a samurai!
Huddling together with her as we took our first team down to face Wernda!
Reading about the Bishop hack in some software/gaming magazine.

Thanks for being the bad guy Werdna! My life is so much better because of you.

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Wizardry was the first computer game that I would play for hours on end even forgoing saturday morning cartoons to play for hours. Rest In Power Werdna.

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Bards Tale was fun. Not sure I finished it but it was an upgrade of sorts. There was another one Might and Magic maybe? that was a bit more open world ish but similar.

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There’s also this thing called “Where Are We”. Works with Might and Magic 1-5, Wizardry 1-5, and Bard’s Tale 1-3.

https://www.eskimo.com/~edv/lockscroll/WhereAreWe/

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… in the text adventure days drawing our own maps seemed to be the main game activity :thinking:

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I played a few of the Might and Magic series and those were like a stroll through the park compared to the darkness of Wizardry and by then better graphics and sound. I was excited about trying Bard’s Tale but was unable to build a strong enough party to get into it.

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A friend back in the day built up an unbeatable Proving Grounds team through a combination of monster whomping and savedisk hacking. On rainy days he would take the team underground and beat the snot out of Werdna.

“Hey, good to see ya again Werdna!” (Bam!) (Ooof!) (Crunch!)

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Identify 9!
TILTOWAIT!

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I’m not sure how much harder it can be than I remember. Then again, I had a cursed party for RNG… those backfiring Halito (and later Mahalito and Lahalito) spells really ate a lot of my mages. At least in D&D, I had to choose to be a wild mage to get that kind of effect.

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