Wizardry Long Live Wizardry! (And The All-New Games By Ex-Wizardry Developers)

[Dorarnae]

Coven and Labyrinth of Galleria release date was moved from december 31 to november 26. so maybe some news soon?

 

[matogl0396]

Really exciting news about Experience Inc's "Saviors of Sapphire Wings" coming west for the Switch. I believe this is a remake of Students of the Round, one of their more well received crawlers which has never before been localized. Coming bundled with SoSC:R no less, which finally brings the Revisited variant off the Vita.

Fantastic news in its own right. Glad to see this company continuing to find success. Gives me great hope for Yomiwosakuhana to make it over in due time as well!!!

https://nisamerica.com/saviors-sapphire-wings/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/...hire_Wings__Stranger_of_Sword_City_Revisited/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOMKWD6qhPQ&feature=youtu.be

 

[Grauken]

Really exciting news about Experience Inc's "Saviors of Sapphire Wings" coming west for the Switch. I believe this is a remake of Students of the Round, one of their more well received crawlers which has never before been localized. Coming bundled with SoSC:R no less, which finally brings the Revisited variant off the Vita.

Fantastic news in its own right. Glad to see this company continuing to find success. Gives me great hope for Yomiwosakuhana to make it over in due time as well!!!

https://nisamerica.com/saviors-sapphire-wings/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/...hire_Wings__Stranger_of_Sword_City_Revisited/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOMKWD6qhPQ&feature=youtu.be

The switch release is less interesting on this board than the Steam release, that's the real great news

 

[matogl0396]

The switch release is less interesting on this board than the Steam release, that's the real great news

Lol fair enough, I mean I did link the Steam version and will probably be picking it up there too (I've got almost 2,000 games on Steam). Love Steam for its forums, guides, reviews, achievements, play tracking, etc. Love the community aspect of it.

That said, sadly the PC market is completely dead for physical releases. I can't be the only collector on this thread, right? Go a few pages back and you can see pictures of my complete collection of Experience Inc games. Honestly with games like this I really care about, a lot of times I'll double-dip.... pick up the digital version to play, avoiding wear & tear on my nice physical Collector's Edition.

 

[Thac0]

https://www.neogaf.com/threads/psvi...announced-for-north-america-feb-28th.1340490/

Looking good, might get the bundle on switch. Crawlers work very well on DS style mobile consoles.

 

[Paper]

Lol fair enough, I mean I did link the Steam version and will probably be picking it up there too (I've got almost 2,000 games on Steam). Love Steam for its forums, guides, reviews, achievements, play tracking, etc. Love the community aspect of it.

That said, sadly the PC market is completely dead for physical releases. I can't be the only collector on this thread, right? Go a few pages back and you can see pictures of my complete collection of Experience Inc games. Honestly with games like this I really care about, a lot of times I'll double-dip.... pick up the digital version to play, avoiding wear & tear on my nice physical Collector's Edition.

I'm gonna get the switch version if they'll have a regular edition with just the box and cart, I won't spend a fortune on booklets and soundtracks. But yea, the state of PC physical releases isn't great. Even when there are physical releases they're basically just nice packaging for a steam code so you can't resell or lend them to anyone. I just torrent PC games and sometimes buy physical console games for my collection.

 

[Ataraxia]

Anybody here knows what happened to Starfish SD, developer of the wizardry empire and elminage series of games?
My googling skill is failing me.

 

[Viata]

So, I tried to search on japanese sites, first the obvious one, wikipedia. Found this:

同年後期からはスターフィッシュ・エスディのソフト販売がジョイフルテーブルとなっている。

Which tells that from 2006 the sales of Starfish SD now belongs to Joyful Table. Now, about Joyful Table, according to the same page, is owned by a board member.
The Starfish SD site is pretty much dead, as one can easily confirm: http://www.s-f.co.jp/ (last news is from 2016)
The Joyful Table site seems to have more recent games, but also dead: http://www.j-t.co.jp/ (latest game is from 2018)
Looking around, I found this link: https://g-media.work/archives/company-star-fish.html
Which seems to be a description of some game devs, the one on the link is from Starfish SD. The description is almost like the guy copied from Wikipedia or old sites, the interesting part is the commentary(one of the two commentaries), which has these importants info:

「スターフィッシュ・エスデイ」の本社住所としているグランビル荻窪３階には現在、「アルパカピクチャーズ」という別会社が入っているようです。また、こちらには不動産情報をみたところ一室しかないため、ほぼ確実にこの住所には「スターフィッシュ・エスデイ」は存在しないかと思われます。

It says that the address the site was giving to Starfish SD's Headquarters‎ is now owned by an animation studio called Alpaca Pictures. And since there is only one room in that address, it's possible there is no Starfish SD there anymore. (The address he is commenting above is the same one you can find on japanese wikipedia page).

これは杉並区高円寺南4丁目22番2号フジビル４階に移転したためのようです。2015年の法人番号登録時点ではこちらの住所でした。「アルパカピクチャーズ」グランビル荻窪３階に入ったのも2016年のため時期的にも合致します。ただ、こちらも2019年時点ですでに引き払っているようで、現在は空室となっております。

Here he says that the dev changed their address in 2015, which agrees with Alpaca Pictures having that address since 2016. However, since 2019 the new address's room is now vacant.

ゲームの発売自体も2017年を最後に止まっており、HPの更新も同時期に停止、Facebookも2018年の更新を最後に停止しております。

The release of games stopped in 2017, the same for the website, and their Facebook page has stopped updates since 2018.

現在会社そのものが存続しているかどうかに関しては私も情報を得られませんでしたが、住所が違う点（現在住所は発見できませんでした）や、代表者が違う点、家庭用ゲーム、スマートフォンゲームの開発は現在行っていないことに関しては明記した方が情報として正しいかと思われます。

He couldn't get any information about whether or not the company is still operating, the new address is different(he couldn't find it), company's representative is different(he commented who used to be, one of them is the owner of the Joyful Table mentioned above), and thinks that it's correct to affirm that the development of games(and smartphone games) are currently not being done(it's dead, jim!)

そもそも現在も会社として活動しているのか、存続しているかも個人的には見つけられず仕舞いでした。

And to end it, he said he couldn't find anything that says if the company is even operating.

So, in another words, assume it is dead until they release something.

 

[Ataraxia]

That is unfortunate


I was hoping that they would create more games like elminage gothic


Anyway, thanks for the informative write-up Viata.

 

[Thac0]

ウィザードリ

Lol do the Japanese really write Wizardry like this?
UIZA-DORI

ウィザードリィルネサンス

Anway this can be found under the wikipedia entry as a Wizardry Rennaissance Plan.

https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/ウィザードリィのシリーズ一覧#ウィザードリィルネサンス

Viata can you do some digging on how that ended? To me it seems like it lost its trail with a few mobile games in 2016ish, but my Japanese is shit. I am merely learning since a month.

 

[Viata]

There is this interview(there are two parts) that talks about this plan. The producer(this guy) says how Wizardry games are different, mostly so after Wiz 6, and the history is not uniform among the games.
The idea is to create a world for the series, since in the first wizardry games, where the game takes place, how many kingdoms are there, what is this or that is not really explained. And so he wanted to make one that would be basis for the series, that is where the Wizardry Renaissance Plan idea started. The first game to start it was Wizardry: Seimei no Kusabi(ウィザードリィ 〜生命の楔〜), the producer asked someone to create the world for the game, but then he scrapped that idea and started making it himself. He wanted to keep the original series as something that happened in the past, but in a different continent(so to say, he wanted to start anew, but without fucking the original games).
Interesting things: The idea is to keep medieval setting, so they followed only Wizardry 1 to 5, things from 6~8 were mostly ignored. They had to avoid using terms and names from original Wizardry(like Werdna, Llylgamyn and whatnot) because of copyright, so they went with things like "a legend from another continent" and so on. The guy wrote a big settings data and whatnot to be sent to other devs that wanted to make those Wizardry games that are part of the plan.
So, it didn't lost its trail, it's just that if you want to make a Wizardry game in Japan, you either make your own setting or you could use the Renaissance settings above, so those mobile games are just games that were using the Renaissance settings.

 

[Dorarnae]

looks like a trailer for the game but I think they're also hiring people...

 

[Dorarnae]

I thought the game was kinda lacking when it comes to trailer if you compare with stranger of sword city but this was nice, just a few more days

 

[Gamezor]

Whats the best first wizardry / wizardry like game? I did like the save only at inns aspect of mm1 so one like that would probably be preferred.

 

[Casual Hero]

Whats the best first wizardry / wizardry like game? I did like the save only at inns aspect of mm1 so one like that would probably be preferred.

Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord.

 

[newtmonkey]

Gamezor
Either Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord or Wizardry V: Heart of the Maelstrom.

Wizardry I is short but very tightly designed with a great dungeon to explore and excellent pacing.

Wizardry V is much longer and adds a lot of worthy stuff to the formula, such as adventure game style puzzles, NPC interaction, the concept of range in combat, and stuff for your thief to do other than disarm traps.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Or get the graphical upgraded ones ... possibly via ROM. Yarrrrr harrrr harrr.

 

[Gamezor]

Gamezor
Either Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord or Wizardry V: Heart of the Maelstrom.

Wizardry I is short but very tightly designed with a great dungeon to explore and excellent pacing.

Wizardry V is much longer and adds a lot of worthy stuff to the formula, such as adventure game style puzzles, NPC interaction, the concept of range in combat, and stuff for your thief to do other than disarm traps.

Ok do i want just regular old pc version for wiz 1? Should I use something like this? https://www.eskimo.com/~edv/lockscroll/WhereAreWe/

 

[newtmonkey]

Gamezor
I would recommend the PC version, as that's what I played (set DOSBOX video to CGA to get the correct color palette). Where Are We works fine with it if you want an automap. If you do play this version, you may want to backup your save files unless you want to play it "as intended" with permadeath.
You could also emulate the PSX version, which is a good port of the original game with nothing removed. It's a Japanese game but can be set to English, has an automap, and you can even switch between classic and modern graphics.

 

[Gamezor]

Gamezor
I would recommend the PC version, as that's what I played (set DOSBOX video to CGA to get the correct color palette). Where Are We works fine with it if you want an automap. If you do play this version, you may want to backup your save files unless you want to play it "as intended" with permadeath.
You could also emulate the PSX version, which is a good port of the original game with nothing removed. It's a Japanese game but can be set to English, has an automap, and you can even switch between classic and modern graphics.

It would be kind of nice to play on a handheld and I have already resigned myself to auto map. I just know I won’t finish without it. Is psx preferred over snes version?

 

[Grauken]

Snes version looks better than the PSX one

 

[newtmonkey]

It looks better for sure but is not a straight port of the original PC versions. I personally prefer the PSX version for being a very accurate port of the PC versions. If you are just playing Wizardry 1 maybe it won't matter so much, but the SNES games are also out of order for some reason.

 

[Grauken]

It looks better for sure but is not a straight port of the original PC versions. I personally prefer the PSX version for being a very accurate port of the PC versions. If you are just playing Wizardry 1 maybe it won't matter so much, but the SNES games are also out of order for some reason.

The PC versions have a major character progression bug, if you really want to go all in play the Apple 2 versions

As for the out of order, if you know it, then it's not a problem

 

[newtmonkey]

The PC versions do have that progression bug, but it didn't really seem to have much of an effect when I took the same party throughout the series. It's only really a nuisance in Wiz III since the game caps your stats at class maximums even after importing, which is below 18 and the PC version is coded with a 33% chance to drop any stat below 18 upon level up. Wiz 5 hardly ever drops stats, though, so as long as you can get through Wiz 3 you'll gain the stats you lost back and more quickly enough.

Do the SNES games allow you to import parties at all? How does that work with the games being out of order?

 

[maidsoft]

Gamezor
I would recommend the PC version, as that's what I played (set DOSBOX video to CGA to get the correct color palette). Where Are We works fine with it if you want an automap. If you do play this version, you may want to backup your save files unless you want to play it "as intended" with permadeath.
You could also emulate the PSX version, which is a good port of the original game with nothing removed. It's a Japanese game but can be set to English, has an automap, and you can even switch between classic and modern graphics.

It would be kind of nice to play on a handheld and I have already resigned myself to auto map. I just know I won’t finish without it. Is psx preferred over snes version?

I personally think the PSX versions are the best, but I don't think it actually matters that much.