I’ve reviewed a lot of games for this Retro-Active series - from the ones I remember with great fondness to the ones I wish I could delete from the organic hard drive in my skull.  Games you may have remembered from your own childhood, or games so obsure many so-called “historians” of the genre have forgotten they existed.

Today’s review is of the latter type.  It’s also quite possibly my favorite video game of all time.

It is a little-known platformer for the Commodore 64 from 1984, and while it may seem like a very simple, simplistic game by today’s standards, it had a profound influence on me personally as a kid — and to this day, I look to it as an example of everything a game should be.

Wizard (Commodore 64, 1984; also released as Ultimate Wizard by EA in 1986): Like so many games from the Golden Age, Wizard eschews plot (and, to some degree, logic) in favor of an imaginative setting and surprising gameplay.  As Wilfrid the Wizard, resplendent in purple robe and pointed hat, your goal is to navigate all the hazards on each single-screen level, grab whatever treasure you feel you can safely grab, collect a key, then touch the keyhole to advance to the next level.

Wizard bears a strong resemblence to Jumpman, the very first game I reviewed in the Retro-Active series all the way back in 2006.  As in that game, collecting certain items can have some interesting effects on a level - ladders and platforms can disappear or reappear, enemies can warp in unexpectedly, you can be teleported all over the level, and so on.  When your wizard dies (and he will — often), you’re even treated to almost the same animation (he tumbles down to the bottom of the screen, landing there with stars circling his head) as you saw in Jumpman.

Wizard goes its inspiration one better, however, with several new wrinkles that actually enhance gameplay, rather than feel needlessly tacked on.  Surely the biggest difference here is that, since you are a wizard after all, you can cast spells.  Collecting the key on each level gives you a certain predefined number of spells, which you can then use to your advantage.  There are eight different kinds of spells:  Invisibility renders you both unseeable and unhittable for a limited time; Levitate and Feather Fall cause you to magically ascend or descend, respectively, to other platforms; Magic Missile, Disintegrate, and Fireball can be used to kill your mobile foes, up to and including pistons and trap doors; Freeze stops an enemy in his tracks, letting you pass by unharmed; and Teleport randomly warps you to a different location.  You can cast only one type of spell per level; in each level the spell is different (there are also some levels that provide no spells at all).  To cast a spell, hold down the Fire button and move Down on the joystick; an arrow at the bottom of the screen indicates the direction the spell will be launched in, if applicable (usually the last direction you walked/climbed in).  Of particular note are the three spells Levitate, Magic Missile, and Teleport, as these can be cast even when Wilfrid is falling to his death, thus keeping him alive (for the time being).  This was a very unique feature for Wizard’s day; in virtually all other games of this ilk, you had to stand by and watch helplessly as the death animation played out.

The foes you face are, for the most part, standard-issue ’80s platformer baddies, patrolling each level in search of the main ingredient in their Wizard Fricasee.  Some, however, are worthy of special mention, such as the Thief; as he moves, he can and does collect treasure… and whatever effect that treasure has when you pick it up, so too will it have when he grabs it.  This makes the Thief especially dangerous, as he can (for instance) grab the urn that causes a ladder to vanish… while you’re actually climbing it to reach a key.  Not pretty.  Fortunately, not everything that moves on a level is necessarily your enemy; there is one creature, a cat (”Wizard’s Pet”), that will not only not harm you, but will actually “eat” any enemies it comes across.  Curiously, all enemies (including the cat) can be killed by falling off a platform, which is another unusual feature for this game compared to other “ropes and ladders” platformers of the era.

There is no music at all in this game, but the sound effects — in particular the ones heard when the level is being “built” before the start of play — are especially memorable.  There’s a brick-laying sound for plaftorms and walls, an indescribable “barrrrrrrrrrrrup” for ladders, whistling for ropes, and a crescendo-like “DUM-DOMMMM” for the key and keyhole.  It almost creates a symphony unto itself.  Graphics, as you can see, are nothing to really write home about, but they get the job done.

There are, in all, 40 levels in Wizard, and you choose whether to start on Levels 1 (Beginner), 11 (Intermediate), 21 (Advanced), or 31 (Expert).  There is also a “Randomizer” option that randomly picks which of the 40 levels you’ll experience.  (Trust me — some of these things are so bloody hard that this may be the only way you’ll see all the screens Wizard has to offer, as you might never get there “normally!”)

All of this combines to make Wizard a very playable, very fun early platformer.  However… it still might not explain why this game holds so much appeal to me, even today.  That’s probably because I haven’t yet mentioned its one “killer” feature:  The level editor.

At a time when we take add-on levels and modules, official ond otherwise, for granted in gaming, the notion that a game could proudly boast of “creating endless gameplay possibilities” with a full-featured level editor probably sounds a bit quaint.  But take my word for it, in 1984 this was indeed a revolutionary feature.  Wizard was not the first game to include an editor (in fact, in my next Retro-Active I’ll look at a very famous game from around this time that was built around its editor), but it was unusual for all but the simplest platformers to have one (Lode Runner, anyone?).  Although Wizard, with its “random” treasure and spell effects, seemed an unlikely candidate for editing, you could indeed create, load, save, and play your own unique levels, complete with editable enemy behavior and spells…. but with one restriction at first.  Earlier releases of the game featured only a basic editor that didn’t allow you to do treasure effects, as these were largely achived via programming tricks applied to the game engine.  Later on, especially with the EA Ultimate Wizard re-release, the editor was enhanced to include what were then termed “treasure matrices,” which actually doubled as a basic introduction to OOP (Object-Oriented Programming) for a lot of ’80s kids with a C64.

For my own part, I have many fond memories of creating new Wizard levels with my best friend (who didn’t even have a C64 but often came over to my place to play on mine), with the two of us arguing back and forth over design issues, or one of us building a “challenge” level for the other to try, or just having fun playing around with the pre-existing levels.  And that is a very large part of why Wizard is so special to me… it has such lovely memories attached to it, thanks to the ability to not only play it, but create with it as well.

If you enjoy good, solid platforming action with a unique twist or two, coupled with one of the most flexible game editors ever written for a game of this type, Wizard is definitely something you’ll want to check out.  I can’t recommend it enough, in fact.  Not only is the game itself available on many C64-centric emulation websites, but so are a wide variety of user-created levels and complete game replacements.  If nothing else, it should remind even the most jaded gamer that, in the end, the video game that is the most fun to play is the one you’ll come back to, not necessarily the one with the prettiest audiovisuals…

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