Wizardry I: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord (1981)

In the mood for an RPG after my brief play through Loom, I at first considered finishing up my game of Lands of Lore (I am pretty sure I am very near the end), but wanted something turn-based that I could play at my leisure.  Might & Magic was tempting, but I wanted to start a new game.

Well it just so happened that I recently managed to get my hands on The Ultimate Wizardry Archives, a collection of the first seven Wizardry games released in 1998.  This is a set I had back in the day, but I never got really far in this series of games.  I had zero patience for mapping dungeons on graph paper back in 1998—by the time I had access to Wizardry, I had already played much more advanced titles such as Ultima VI and Pool of Radiance, and Wizardry just seemed too basic and boring for me to put any time into it.

It doesn't help that my previous exposure to the series was through the NES port.  While that is a fine port indeed, considering, I don't think as a kid I even understood the fact that you were supposed to be drawing maps of these things.  I guess I figured you would just memorize the dungeons by going through them over and over.

So now, with graph paper and pencil in hand, I launched DOSBOX, started up Wizardry and—

*RECORD SCRATCH*
*STONER KID DROPS BEER*
*RODNEY DANGERFIELD LOOKS ON, CONTINUING TO POUR BEER INTO ALREADY FULL GLASS THAT IS COMICALLY OVERFLOWING*

What are these colors!?!?!
I can deal with old graphics, but this color scheme is horrible.  Surely there is a better way to play this game.

Actually, this is what happens when you play these games on a VGA video card.  Configuring DOSBOX to emulate a CGA card gives us the following:

 
Much better! This is how the game would have looked back in the day on period correct hardware (more or less).

One of the benefits of playing the games from The Ultimate Wizardry Archives is that the first five of the games can be installed to hard disk (the original IBM PC versions would boot straight from the floppy disk), meaning there is no need to M)AKE SCENARIO DISK.  (This also means that you can easily keep a backup of your game as you play, simply by copying the save file after you are done playing for the day).

One part of RPGs that I simultaneously dread and enjoy is character creation.  If there are too many choices I tend to freeze up (with good reason, as you could easily make worthless characters in a lot of these games, wasting tons of time), and it's even worse when character generation has random aspects.

Character generation in Wizardry doesn't overwhelm you with too many options, and although there is some randomness to it, it basically comes down to, "Do I just take the average characters that the game generates for me, or do I keep regenerating until I get super characters." I have little patience for this stuff, so I ended up with what the game handed me: five average characters and one super character.

After buying equipment, I was off to adventure!

Wizardry has two types of screens.  When you are in the Castle preparing for adventure, it's a bunch of text menus.  The Maze is presented in wireframe "3D" where you see things from the perspective of your characters.  It ain't much too look at, but moving about is fast and responsive.  I found myself really getting into the game very quickly, and the B&W wireframe dungeon walls actually became quite atmospheric.

Before long you get into combat, and this is what you see.  I do like that your HITS are visible at all times (a complaint I had with Might & Magic is that you need to access a status screen to view your characters in battle).  You get a nice little drawing of all the monsters in the current encounter. I have to admit, I really like this art.  Unlike the grim NES art, it's kinda whimsical and friendly without being goofy.  

 
That UNDEAD KOBOLD up there appears to be doing The Robot.

At this point the combat is not very challenging.  Rather than fighting powerful monsters that require you to heal up after every battle, you are fighting large groups of monsters that slowly chip away at your HITS.  This makes the combat game more about resource management than tactics (at least early on).

Over the course of a couple days of playing 15-30 minutes a day, I was able to map much of the first dungeon level and gain a few experience levels.  The first dungeon level is very interesting because there are a lot of things to find (the use of which is unclear at this point), and even some early mapping puzzles/challenges, such as dark rooms (where you have to "feel" your way around the room by bumping into walls you can't see), a section with a bunch of small rooms with one-way secret doors, and even some teleporters!

There is something very satisfying about the simplicity of a game like Wizardry.  It's something that you really can just spend 10-15 minutes on when you have some time, thanks to how fast combat is and the snappy response when exploring.

Loom (1990): Final Thoughts

Well that was quick.

I had a great time with Loom, but I am positive that I would have been extremely disappointed if I had spent my hard-earned money on a game of this length when I was a kid.

All in all, Loom took me maybe a couple of hours total to get through the whole game without using any walkthroughs or anything.  Although I've played plenty of adventure games, I can count the number that I have completed on a single hand (Leisure Suit Larry, Shadow of the Comet and... errrr... now Loom).  I don't think the game would go by any quicker or slower depending on your skill at these kinds of games, because the game is so linear and the solutions to a given puzzle so limited, that you almost have no choice but to finish this game.

In fact, the greatest innovations of Loom—the unconventional approach to inventory even this early on in the genre and the lack of fail states—also serve as very restrictive limitations on what players can actually do in the game.  For all the unfairness of a game like Space Quest—in which death lurks under every rock and in every hole, and the player can easily reach a "walking dead" state where it would be impossible for him or her to complete the game without starting over—one realizes that allowing the player to actually make mistakes and his or her character to die only makes it that much sweeter when you finally reach the end.  In contrast, completing Loom makes you feel like you were able to tie your own shoelaces.

I enjoyed taking notes on the various spells I found and then looking through the spellbook to consider what spells might be useful in a given situation.  Unfortunately, this ends up being quite limited in practice because the game is so linear and you can only cast a few spells for the majority of game—it seems like you go 25% of the game with but a handful of spells, learn a few more in the middle, and then the rest at the very end (and most of the spells are generally just used in a single situation).

Having said that, I enjoyed the brief time I spent with Loom, and I wish they had followed up and make a longer, more difficult sequel.

Loom (1990): Initial Impressions

Loom is a game I have always wanted to play, but have never gotten around to doing so.

What attracted me first to the game was a really intriguing ad I saw for it in Game Players magazine (a magazine that I subscribed to as a kid that covered console and computer games).  Like many ads back in the early 90s, it had a few screens from the game and a bunch of text.  Boy, how do I miss ads that didn't completely insult your intelligence.

What attracted the game to me was, of course, the beautiful graphics, but also the unique interface that featured what seemed to be a long branch with a musical staff under it, and then a box on the right with a zoomed-in view of whatever you were looking at/selecting.

I never got around to getting this game when I was young, but that doesn't mean I can't fire up good old DOSBOX and give it a go now!

 
The first thing that will likely strike a first time player of Loom is the music, which consists of parts of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. Loom also happens to support the amazing Roland MT-32 sound synthesizer, and while it certainly sounds wonderful on it, the MT-32 is used far, far better in many other games.  The problem, in my opinion, is that the MT-32—while amazing—is just not really suited to play classical music (especially strings, which are featured in the first real song you hear in the game).  It sounds better than the Adlib version of the soundtrack, but just a little.  I would not be surprised if someone told me that the game was composed for Adlib and converted to MT-32.

The second thing that will likely strike you is the gorgeous EGA graphics.  This game does more with 16 colors than most games do with 16 million.  When I first saw the screens in that ad I mentioned above, I just assumed the game was running in 256 color VGA.  However, seeing it in person is another thing altogether.  Dithering is done with restraint—and even more than that, the limitations of the EGA color palette are expertly used to suggest things and create mood.  It reminds me a lot of how an excellently shot B&W movie can look impossibly deep.  One example is that a lot of trees in the foreground are simply black against the sky; with a richer palette, I have no doubt that these trees would just be a darker shade of brown (for proof, see the VGA remake of Loom).

The only downside to the graphics is with the close-up portraits you get when you talk to people.  Now, they aren't bad at all.  The issue here is that, while EGA is very suited for drawing somewhat surreal backgrounds (in the right hands), it is not suited at all for depicting people due to a lack of skin tones.  Skin ends up having to be either pinkish-red or reddish-brown, and neither look good no matter what skin color you are trying to depict.  The art itself is quite nice, but it's just an unfortunate reality of the EGA palette.

Finally let's get to that interface that so intrigued me back in the day.  Basically, instead of an inventory, you have a book full of spells.  Only the book of spells is actually a physical booklet outside the game in your hands.  Objects and people throughout the world will play four-note songs to you, which you need to write down and then, through interacting with the world, figure out what spell the song represents.  The spell booklet that comes with the game lists all the spells, but leaves the notes blank for you to fill in as you find them (and the spell notes are randomized each time you play).

The genius part of this is two-fold.  First, the game doesn't tell you what song is what spell.  You need to figure it out by watching what happens or just through trial and error.  Second, some spells can be reversed (by playing the song in reverse).  Loom is not a very difficult game, but it forces you to observe, take notes, and think outside the box.  That really brings you into the game.

All in all, I am extremely impressed with the first hour or so spent with this game.  I'm sure I would have loved it as a kid, and it's a shame I never got around to getting it back then.  Definitely looking forward to finishing this one (and from what I understand that won't take very long at all).