Welcome to this week's, "Sequel, Spin Off, Start Over or Stay Dead?" Each week Diehard GameFAN is going to look at a dormant franchise that was once pretty popular, but for some reason has disappeared into the sands of time. Diehard GameFAN staffers will have four options for what they want to have happen to the series and you can see them in the title of this piece.
This week Diehard GameFAN is looking at a series that is not only the originator of the video game version of role-playing games, but whose gameplay conventions are still used in nearly every Turn-Based, Roguelike, Dungeon Crawl or other RPG subgenre to this day. Along with Ultima, and The Bard's Tale, the first game in this series brought tens of millions of people the world over into PC gaming. In fact for many years, these three games were considered the "Holy Trinity" of video game RPG's. This particular franchise had the most success of the three world wide and although it began as a North American game developed by a company called Sir-Tech, the Japanese would embrace this series like no other, using its core to become what we known define as "JRPG's." It is widely held this series is one of the most influential in all of gaming as everyone from Yuji Horii (Creator of Dragon Quest to Hironobu Sakaguchi (Creator of Final Fantasy) has listed this series as the most important in the history of gaming and especially for making them want to make games. Sadly this series has been primarily dormant since 2001 when Sir-Tech shut their doors after the release of the critically acclaimed Wizardry 8. This week four Diehard GameFAN staffers sit down to discuss what should happen to Wizardry.
Wizardry was huge in the 1980s, and helped define both Western and Japanese RPGs as we know them.
When I was young, I never understood why it seemed that all the old folks were miserable and/or bitter all the time. Now at 50, I get it. From about 45 on it seems, you watch person after person that meant something to you die. Family, friends, musicians, actors, artists, and yes, game creators.
RIP Andy.
The classic fantasy RPG series Wizardry is apparently getting a blockchain game, which is targeting a late 2022-early 2023 release in the West.
Legendary game designer Brenda Romero reflects on her 30 years of working as a game designer.
I'm shocked no one has picked up the license since Sir-Tech went out of business. The name value alone should have been enough for some company to show interest.