Game 505: The Wizard's Tower (1982)

 

       

The Wizard's Tower

United States

Aardvark Action Software (developer and publisher)

Released 1982 for TRS-80 Color Computer; 1983 for TI-99, Commodore VIC-20, and Commodore 64
Date Started: 6 March 2024

Date Ended: 6 March 2024

Total Hours: 2

Difficulty: Easy (2/5)

Final Rating: 18

Ranking at Time of Posting: 152/508 (30%)

     

Note: Please read all the way to the end. Most of the criticisms of the game are only valid for the C64 port. I discuss the original game at the end.

 

Wizard's Tower is not just bad; it's so epically bad that its faults deserve individual enumeration:

   

1. It's a ripoff of Robert Clardy's Wilderness Campaign (1979), a game that, despite being released three years earlier, had far greater complexity and interest.

2. It's the second Aardvark title to rip off Wilderness Campaign; the first was Quest from the previous year. Despite this similarity, the named author is different for the two titles: Robert Retelle for Quest and Steven C. Mitchell for Tower.

       

Mountains to the north and the castle to the northwest occur in both Wilderness Campaign and Quest.

         

3. Despite being the second of two ripoffs, it somehow manages to offer a less interesting, less complex gameplay than Quest. More importantly, the army that characterized Campaign and Quest is gone. In Tower, the player just controls a single character.

   

4. The game can't figure out its own title. The TRS-80 version has a The at the beginning of the title, but the Commodore versions do not.

      

The TRS-80 Color Computer version of the title screen. The Commodore version drops the "the," the subtitle, and the author's name.

     

5. It forgets its own backstory. The manual says that your goal is to recover the Sceptor [sic] of Speed, the Ring of Strength, and the Crown of Wisdom from the dungeon under the titular tower, then return them to town to be proclaimed king. Instead, you enter the tower and kill the wizard to be proclaimed king. It's possible, I grant you, that this is a simplification introduced in the Commodore version, but I looked at some TRS-80 gameplay on YouTube, and I don't think that's the case. [Ed. It was the case. The TRS-80 Color Computer version has all three artifacts and no wizard battle.]

6. There are two towns in the game that sell weapons, armor, spells, and rations. You start with a fixed amount of gold and you never earn any gold during the game. You use 1 ration per step, and when you run out, you die. Thus, you pretty much just have to put all your money into rations and never anything else.   

    

7. You're offered a choice between warrior, wizard, and elf classes at the beginning of the game, but since you just have to win with your starting equipment and spells no matter what, the choice is meaningless. Also, the warrior starts with the best weapon in the game (a magic axe).

      

Hmm . . . I can buy chain armor and die, or spend all my money on rations and live.

      

8. When the game starts, there are a bunch of goblins roaming the land, represented by the letters G, like in a roguelike. They move around randomly as you move, and you have to wait for the screen to redraw their positions. But there are also trolls lurking on nearly every square in the mountains and snakes lurking in nearly every square in the swamp. Why show some enemies and not others? You get nothing from killing all the goblins.

 

9. Combat is resolved through one or more rounds in which your experience, attributes, and (I guess) equipment are pitted against the foe. The game makes a big show of rolling random numbers at the bottom of the screen, and you have to hit ENTER to "freeze" the numbers. The problem is, those numbers seem to have no bearing on the round's results. Sometimes, "your" number is higher but the enemy hits anyway, and sometimes the enemy's number is higher and you end up scoring the hit.

     

My wizard character fights a goblin.

           

You gain a couple of hit points and experience for successful combats, and you want to fight a reasonable number before hitting the tower. Speaking of which:

10. The tower has three levels. The first takes up the entire screen, but the second and third are very small. The levels are presented as mazes with numerous monsters present, except that a) you can't possibly explore the entire thing, or you'll run out of food, and b) the stairs are clearly shown, so there's no reason to explore anyway.

    

The first level of the dungeon. I (*) have just entered in the lower left. The stairs down are in the upper right.

     

11. The game ends when you encounter the wizard Maggdar on the third level of his dungeon. For no reason at all, he takes all your gold and then offers a grammatically-incorrect threat:

      

Did they outsource the writing overseas?

      

12. Maggdar has 85 hit points and 21 experience, so as long as you've built your own stats to slightly more than those, you'll probably win. The victory message has you earning 56 hit points for no particular reason (since you can't keep playing) and then dumps you out of the program:

     

I may be the new ruler of Wizard's Tower, but I'm just going to brood about how my score was only 26.

     

13. Let's make fun of the Michigan-based publisher while we're at it. "Aardvark" was clearly chosen to appear at the top of alphabetical lists, but the owners decided to call themselves "Aardvark Technical Services" despite offering products rather than services. For this game and a couple of others from the same year, they decided to bill themselves "Aardvark Action Software." Oh, and in their ads, they call themselves "Aardvark L.T.D.," as if "Ltd." was an initialism rather than an abbreviation for "limited." (And we typically use "LLC" in the U.S. anyway, but some states allow "Ltd." as an alternative.)

     

I tried to find a reason to make fun of the box, but it has promise.

     

Author Steven C. Mitchell would go on to form his own developer/publisher called Mitchell Software and release Conquering Armies, Rescue on Alpha II (1984), and The Dragon's Castle (1986), all for the TRS-80 Color Computer. None of them are RPGs. Aardvark existed until 1984, and between Quest, The Wizard's Tower, and Dungeons of Death (1983), which I called "the worst RPG I've ever played," they have one of the least impressive RPG catalogs. Unless more games come to light, I think we've seen the last of them.

   

Dungeons of Death, incidentally, was re-released in 1984 as Dungeons of Magdarr, an alternate spelling of "Maggdar," so that's . . . something.

****

Addendum:

 

A couple of commenters emailed me links to other sites that contradicted things I said about the game. I had trouble finding a Color Computer version, but I redoubled my efforts, found one, and gave it a try. It's clearly a better game than the C64 version, and much of my ridicule evaporates in light of it. 

     

The original version does indeed have the three artifacts--and no evil wizard.

    

The TRS-80 version is a bit harder than the C64 version. The character starts with no equipment and only 5 rations (though rations deplete less frequently). Enemies do drop gold, but only a tiny amount, maybe 1-3 per battle. The combat screen is very different; combat just occurs at the bottom of the main screen. You don't see enemy hit points or attributes, and it's possible for both the character and the enemy to score a hit (or miss) in a given round. 

There's also no "experience" statistic, but your other attributes (strength, dexterity, IQ, and I think maximum hit points) increase with your victories. 

     

My statistics late in the game.

     

There are only three enemies in the outdoor area: snakes in the swamp, trolls in the hills, and goblins that roam around (but mostly stick to the west side). You cannot clear out all the goblins like you can in the C64 version. Once you've fought a dozen or so battles outside, you become mostly impervious to death against any of the outdoor foes, and the goal becomes grinding for the best equipment, which you need to survive in the castle. Since snakes never have gold, the best strategy is to go north into the mountains and fight trolls until you have enough money. This takes a long time at the game's original speed and almost no time at all if you kick the emulator into "turbo."

     

Grinding against hill trolls.

      

The castle is a lot harder. In addition to goblins, there are balrogs, wizards, and dragons all of which have attacks that permanently sap your statistics. Balrogs and dragons can break your weapons, so it's a good idea for even warrior characters to invest in "Lightning" to fight them. The financial rewards are greater, but by the time you're strong enough to take on the castle at all, you don't need them as much.

   

The castle's second level requires you to deal with dragons.

     

The TRS-80 version has only two levels to the castle. Treasure chests are annotated in blue or purple, and you need to open them all to find the three artifacts. The game ends when you take them all back to the town.

     

I like the idea that I just walked into town waving the artifacts and the people proclaimed me king.

      

Thus, must of the ridicule I levied at the game is valid only for the Commodore 64 port. The original still isn't a great game, but it's a much more competent one, and author Steven Mitchell shouldn't be tarred by association with whoever did the port. I was going to give a GIMLET of about 10 to the port, but the original deserves an 18, doing best in "Economy" and "Graphics/Sound/Interface" for a very easy keyboard interface and graphics that are functional enough for what they depict.

    

Judging a game only by a single port was an amateur mistake, and I apologize. I was trying to get this entry done by a self-imposed deadline. My re-evaluation does not clear up one mystery: the author of the Retro Games Trove played the C64 version and still says he got gold for his victories, but I swear that statistic never budged for me. 

   

Thanks to Busca, BronzeBob, and Callandor for alerting me to the differences and prompting this addendum.