Guest Post: The Long Life of the Original "Wizardry" in Japan

The Long Life of the Original Wizardry in Japan
by Alex

Edited by the CRPG Addict

      

Buckle up; there's some explaining to do.

          

When you think about Japanese role-playing games, you probably have a few varieties in mind. The biggest names are Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. The tactics-based Fire Emblem is surging in popularity, after a few decades of being shoved under the rug by Nintendo of America. Hydlide is generally the butt of jokes. However, there is a whole generation of Japanese role-playing games that have never seen Western shelves.
       
Its name is Wizardry.
     
The story is full of gaps, but it goes something like this: Before Sir-Tech USA shut its doors in 1998, Japanese publishing of the Wizardry series was handled by ASCII Corporation; among other things, they published The Black Onyx, which Chet has played. They also co-developed and published the NES and SNES ports of the first five games in the Western Wizardry series.
        
Unbeknownst to American fans, ASCII entertainment began creating their own Wizardry games for consoles and handhelds. Wizardry Gaiden: Suffering of the Queen, a Wizardry adventure for Game Boy, was released in 1991. [Ed.: Of course, we recently covered that.]  This was followed up by Curse of the Ancient Emperor and Scripture of the Dark in 1992 and 1993, respectively. Of these, I've only played the first one; rough translations are available for all three.
    
As they were contemporaneous with Bane of the Cosmic Forge and Crusaders of the Dark Savant, these games include some elements from their Western-developed counterparts: Mooks, Felpurrs, and Faeries are all playable in some of the games of the Gaiden series. But beyond that, they play very similarly to the classic Wizardry titles. You roll characters and explore a first-person dungeon with a party of six, chests are trapped, poison is a nightmare, and the temple might screw up and ash your Level 10 ninja. Nothing we haven't seen before, and I'm sure Chet has had enough classic Wizardry to last a lifetime.
    

1991 also saw an anime adaptation of the first Wizardry, Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord (1981). Information is scant, but it's been translated and can be watched online. [Ed: I (Chet) watched it before posting this, and it's a weirdly faithful adaptation, including Werdna, Trebor, the Amulet, the original purpose of the "proving grounds," Gilgamesh's tavern, classes and races faithful to the game, spells named in the game, the elevator, and the idea of rescuing parties slain in the corridors.]

         
Notably absent from the Japanese Wizardry lineage, however, is D.W. Bradley's trademark sense of humor. Gone are Phoonzang, Phelonious T. Loon, and the Duck of Sparks; there is no Blade of Cuisinart or La-La Moo-Moo. The popular theory, at least according to sites like Wikipedia, is that such jokes didn't translate well; this led unsuspecting Japanese gamers to view the Wizardry series as a grim, serious story. I choose to believe that the average Japanese person is smarter than that, but unless a Japanese Wizardry fan chimes in, we may never know.

This is where Wizardry Gaiden IV: Throb of the Demon's Heart comes in.
    

As always, Wizardry Gaiden IV drops you in the menu town with no ceremony

        
Throb of the Demon's Heart was released for the Super Famicom in 1996; that's a full four years after Crusaders of the Dark Savant. However, it feels like a step backwards: there is no outdoor area, intro cinematic, or obvious backstory in the game itself. The setting has moved from European fantasy stereotypes to medieval Japanese stereotypes, but you still have the tavern, the inn, the shop, the temple, the training grounds (where you create characters) and an icon leading to a separate menu where you access the dungeons. They didn't even change the order, although Gilgamesh and Boltac apparently haven't broken into the feudal Japanese market yet.
          

The default characters have been named after the unofficial translation crew. The bottom two are mine.

         
However, fans of the American Wizardry series will note some changes that stick out like a sore thumb. Each facility now offers a "talk" option, which walks you through the functions available at that building. There are four dungeons instead of just one. Holding "Y" shows a 4x4 area map; not enough to easily navigate from opposite ends of the dungeon, but it helps to get your bearings. Intriguingly, the "Reincarnate" option in the Training Grounds indicates that you can import a character from the Game Boy's Scripture of the Dark via a complicated passcode.

            

Some rich Japanese kid with all the peripherals probably got a kick out of this in 1996.

         
Perhaps the most interesting is the Labyrinth. This area builds as you complete more of the game, filling with monsters that you've defeated in past expeditions. Talking to the gatekeeper reveals that monsters within will never drop money, but will give experience rewards; he'll even bring you to the Temple "free of charge," although I'm not clear if he'll actually pay for resurrections. This is reminiscent of the Veldt in Final Fantasy VI, released 1994; the Veldt was also populated solely by monster types defeated elsewhere in the game. The inclusion of the Labyrinth allows one to grind new characters in relative safety.
     

The Labyrinth's gatekeeper explains how it works.

        
Although not the flashiest or most impressive SNES game, Throb is a pleasing audiovisual experience. It takes a page from Super Metroid's book, using the sound hardware to create a spooky, ambient soundtrack for tense exploration. Footsteps are accompanied by clacking reminiscent of wooden sandals; paper sliding doors open with an appropriate whoosh. Battles are announced with a tense musical sting, followed by satisfying clangs, cracks and thumps as rounds go by. Character death is announced with a sampled scream; resurrections at the temple are set to deep, ominous throat singing.
     

Unidentified monsters appear, after a short animation, as spooky silhouettes.

       
The animations and small touches slow things down a small amount, but not much; battles are still lightning fast, and restocking in town is short and painless. It emphasizes the impact of events without detracting from the gameplay in a way that very few games of the era could pull off.

I explored most of the first floor of the "Tower of Stillness," the first of three dungeons besides the Labyrinth. So far it isn't very difficult; compared to the first floor of Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord, it was a breeze. The area map made it hard to get lost, and monsters weren't really a threat once I reached level two. In what must be a reference to Murphy's Ghost, a spirit in a storage room gave over 1,000 XP; this was enough to shoot my characters from level four straight to six.
         
As I explored, occasionally I found some descriptive text; there was a short description of the tower when I first entered, which I unfortunately didn't capture. A painting of an old woman gave a puzzle hint, and the storage room was described in enough detail to paint an interesting picture.
          

This seems like a trap, but actually leads to a massive amount of experience.

This encounter was set to a pleasantly creepy tune.

           
To me, all of this points to a certain design philosophy among the Japanese Wizardry games; they wanted more classic Wizardry gameplay, but also a more mature and more accessible game. You still have to "start scum" for decent characters, but higher rolls are more frequent and most classes have been given new abilities. Death is still possible if you're not paying attention, but (at least in the short part that I played) you won't be screwed for walking on the wrong square. Special encounters are signaled by a dark brown tile on the floor. The automap greatly simplifies mapping, making it less of a chore to enter a new area and shifting the focus onto combat, and possibly puzzle solving later. The plot is as bare-bones as ever, but the overall tone is serious and straight-faced. (I couldn't find the manual online, so I only know what the game tells me--which is very little.)

Since this entry is just a side note, after all, I leave my account of gameplay off here. The last thing I'll say is that it's a lot of fun and I see myself playing it for quite some time.
           

I only suffered one death exploring the first floor, and resurrection only cost 250 gold.

          
As the screenshots throughout this entry show, despite improvements in graphics and sound, Japanese developers never gave up a certain fidelity to the original 1981 game. The shots above are all recognizably Wizardry, containing all the screen elements of the Apple II original. This remains true into the modern age; 2009's Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls for the PlayStation 3 (just ported to the PC this year) uses the same character creation system, attributes, and classes of Proving Grounds. Amidst much nicer graphics and modern touches like NPC dialogue and continuous movement, it still has the same menu town with the same options in each location, the same approach to combat ranks (for both the party and monsters) and the same mechanics for things like unidentified items and unidentified monsters. In America, the post-Greenberg/Woodhead titles (starting with Wizardry VI in 1990) still paid a certain homage to their predecessors while going in their own direction, but Japanese developers have persisted in recreating the original games with remarkable consistency.
   

A shot from Labyrinth of Souls (2009) shows that the series is still recognizable as Wizardry.

      
The persistence of the Wizardry series leaves us with a number of mysteries concerning development and copyright. The first is whether either Robert Woodhead or Andrew Greenberg (or, for that matter, David W. Bradley) had any hand in the Gaidens. What we know is that around 1988, both Greenberg and Woodhead parted ways with Sir-Tech, Greenberg to go on to Masterplay and then law school, but Woodhead to go to Japan, alongside fellow Wizardry developer Roe Adams III. While David W. Bradley took over development of Wizardry games in the United States, Woodhead and Adams in Japan founded AnimEigo, a company that subtitles and exports Japanese animation for American audiences. According to the Wikipedia article, they were pioneers in the anime export trade, known for high-quality releases. If MobyGames' biography is correct in saying that Woodhead lived in Japan for six years, then he would have been there for the first three Wizardry Gaiden releases and a large number of console conversions developed by ASCII.
 
Greenberg and Woodhead sued Sir-Tech for nonpayment of royalties in 1991, the same year that the first Wizardry Gaiden was released. Suffering of the Queen assigns the Wizardry trademark to Sir-Tech, indicating that ASCII developed the game under license from the U.S. copyright holder. But is it possible that Woodhead, keeping a low profile to avoid further legal conflicts with the company that he was suing, materially participated in the game's creation? The only evidence we have for such speculation is circumstantial: First, Woodhead, Greenberg, and Bradley are credited as the "original authors" by ASCII. Since you can't find Woodhead or Greenberg's names on the credits of any U.S. Wizardry of the period, it seems unlikely that it was something that Sir-Tech demanded. Second, most of the Japanese development staff has no credits beyond the Wizardry ports and adaptations. Third, as we've seen, the Gaiden series could easily be additional "scenarios" of the original Wizardry; the game design is that close.
                
After Sir-Tech USA closed its doors in 1998 is where things get really murky (and here we are indebted to original research from Reggie Carollpio in a 2013 article on VentureBeat). Sir-Tech's founders, Robert and Norman Sirotek, had already transferred the Wizardry copyright to Sir-Tech Canada in an ultimately futile (though it took decades of litigation) attempt to deprive Greenberg and Woodhead of royalties. Sir-Tech Canada continued to develop Wizardry 8 but at some point sold the copyright to a mysterious "paper" company called 1259190 Ontario Inc., which turned out to be wholly owned by Robert and Norman Sirotek, the rights transfer apparently being another attempt to complicate the Greenberg/Woodhead suit. While Sir-Tech Canada shut down in 2003, the paper company persisted.

          

A Japan-exclusive PC game from 2001 mentions 1259190 Ontario Inc. in the fine print on its title screen.

        

In 2006, 1259190 Ontario Inc. sold the rights to the franchise to a Japanese company called Aeria IPM, which has an uncertain relationship with Aeria Games and Entertainment. In 2008, Aeria IPM became a subsidiary of Gamepot (which merged with Aeria Games and Entertainment in 2012), which is a subsidiary of So-Net Entertainment Corporation, which is a subsidiary of Sony. Somewhere in that morass the current rights lie.

     

None of these legal dealings stopped the march of Wizardry titles in Japan throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s. Many are PlayStation and PlayStation 2 exclusives, but at least one (Wizardry: Chronicle from 2001) was an original PC release and has been translated by enterprising fans. A number of them move the setting from fantasy to modern times, including Wizardry Xth (2005) for the PlayStation. After the sale to Aeira, Japanese developers geared up for a "Wizardry Renaissance," but the movement seems to have stalled a bit with the failure of the MMO Wizardry Online (2013-2014). The last Wizardry to officially reach western shores is Wizrogue: Labyrinth of Wizardry (2014); an iOS game called Wizardry Schema released the same year seems to be no longer available.

          

The title screen of Wizrogue shows the license coming from Gamepot Inc.

          
Clearly Wizardry was successful to some large degree in order to spawn so many spinoffs; however, it seems to be a shadow in the background. You don't see Wizardry cosplayers at conventions or doujin creators professing their love for Wizardry. I've never seen a direct reference to Wizardry in anime or manga, even in comedies that reference other games nonstop. No game designer put themselves on the map with an awesome Wizardry spinoff. Being an American who has never left the country and knows about five words of Japanese, I can only guess and wonder what kind of impact Wizardry made in 1990s Japan. Is it a household name? Would you call it a cult classic? Who knows? Certainly not me.

I doubt that we'll see Wizardry 9 from a Japanese developer. Even as Bane and Crusaders brought new gameplay and a continuing story to the series, Japanese players were apparently perfectly content to play the same old game with shinier graphics and minor tweaks. The PC release of Labyrinth fell prey to unspecified licensing issues in late 2019, but proceeded anyway. There seems to be no reason why there couldn't be a Wizardry 9, except that nobody wants to make a numbered sequel. Only time will tell if this supposed "Wizardry renaissance" will gain momentum in the US, remain in Japan for another few decades, or die out entirely.
       

*******

      

A complete list of Wizardry Titles with some commentary from the CRPG Addict
   

1. Oubliette for PLATO (1977, USA), a fascinating early MMO by Jim Schwaiger, John Gaby, Bancherd DeLong, and Jerry Bucksath. Best now thought of as a pre-Wizardry, the game inspired the first generation of commercial RPG developers, including Robert Woodhead and Andrew Greenberg. I covered it in 2013. It introduced Wizardry's races, classes, attributes, alignments, spell system, exploration mechanics, and trap system. Several later attempts were made to commercialize it. An iPhone version is still available as of 2020.
         
2. Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord (1981, USA; 1985, Japan), originally for Apple II; later ported to PC Booter (1984), FM-7, PC-88, and PC-98 (1985), Macintosh (1985), Sharp X1 (1986), MSX (1987), Commodore 64 and 128 (1987), NES (1990), TurboGrafx CD (1993), PlayStation (1998), Sega Saturn (1998), SNES (1999), Game Boy Color (2001), and Wonderswan Color (2003). Explore 10 levels to find the Amulet of Werdna for King Trebor. The first game in the official series establishes its most common tropes: a menu town, Gilgamesh's Tavern, Boltac's Trading Post, weird spell names, tactical combat, traps that your thief sets off more than disarms, gridded "blobber" exploration, Murphy's Ghost, and permadeath but with the ability of a fresh party to find and resurrect the dead one, among many others. An absolute classic that I still enjoy playing. My coverage was early in my blog, in 2010.
           

The menu town with Boltac's Trading Post and Gilgamesh's Tavern would remain a staple of the series well into the modern age.

         

3. Wizardry: Scenario #2 - Knight of Diamonds (1982, USA; 1986, Japan), originally for Apple II, later ported to FM-7 and PC-98 (1986), PC-88 and Sharp X1 (1987), PC Booter (1987), Commodore 64 and 128 (1988), MSX (1989), Macintosh (1990), NES (1990), TurboGrafx CD (1993), PlayStation (1998), Sega Saturn (1998), SNES (1999), Game Boy Color (2001). Although often known as Wizardry II, this "sequel" is actually more of an expansion pack for the original game. It requires the original game to create and manage characters (and to get them up to a level that's survivable in this game) yet still enforces permadeath. It tells a new story (retrieve the Staff of Gnilda, which protects the city of Llylgamyn, first by finding 7 pieces of armor) but with the same graphics and mechanics as the original. I won it in 2014.

     

4. Wizardry: Scenario #3 - Legacy of Llylgamyn (1983, USA; 1987, Japan), originally for Apple II, later ported to PC Booter (1986), FM-7, PC-88, PC-98, and Sharp X1 (1987), Commodore 64 and 128 (1989), NES (1989), MSX (1990), TurboGrafx CD (1994), PlayStation (1998), Sega Saturn (1998), SNES (1999), Game Boy Color (2001). Yet another expansion pack requiring the original game to create characters, even though they're regarded as descendants of the original characters for the purposes of the game's plot, which is to recover the Orb of Earithin from the lair of the great dragon L'kbreth. Mechanics and content are otherwise the same as the first game. Still fun. I had a good time with it in late 2014.
         
5. The Return of Werdna: The Fourth Wizardry Scenario (1987, USA; 1989, Japan), originally for Apple II, later ported to PC-88 and PC-98 (1988), PC Booter (1988), FM-7 and Sharp X1 (1989), TurboGrafx CD (1994). The oddest game of the series uses mechanics and graphics from the first three but tells a new story in which you play Werdna, having awakened from your defeat in the first game, now trying to escape the labyrinth. Famously difficult to the extent that it even required knowledge of random graffiti in the first game. Character development is minimized and there are different rules about death and saving, but exploration and combat are very similar. My truncated attempt occurred in late 2010.
        

The graphics looked similar in Wizardry IV, but the gameplay was very different. For instance, the lead character assembled a party of monsters at "summoning pentagrams" on each level.

         

6. Wizardry V: Heart of the Maelstrom (1988, USA; 1990, Japan). Released at the same time for the Apple II, Commodore 64, Commodore 128, and PC Booter, then ported to the PC-88, PC-98, and FM Towns (1990), SNES (1992), and TurboGrafx CD (1992). Woodhead and Greenberg left during the development of this game, which was taken over by David W. Bradley. The result is a game that has most of the original mechanics (though with some new additions, like NPCs) but Bradley's silly "humor." Again based in Llylgamyn, the game wants you to stop "The Sorn" from sucking the world into a magical vortex. Long and hard. I played it starting in 2011.
            

This is the kind of thing that D. W. Bradley added to the series.

          

7. Wizardry: Bane of the Cosmic Forge (1990, USA; 1991, Japan), originally for Amiga and DOS, ported to FM Towns and PC-98 (1991) and SNES (1995), Sega Saturn (1996). The first Wizardry game to emerge from wireframes. The new lead developer (David W. Bradley) kept many of the mechanics but introduced his own plot, races, skills, spells, and character development system, as a motley party explores and tries to uncover the secrets of an abandoned castle. It definitely feels like the beginning of something new rather than a continuation of the old franchise. See my 2013 coverage. 

8. Wizardry: Suffering of the Queen (1991, Japan). This Game Boy exclusive, first in the Wizardry Gaiden series, never had an official western release. Licensed from Sir-Tech by ASCII, it tells a story that could easily be the fifth scenario of the original game. Graphics are new (but not notably better); races, classes, mechanics, and spells are mostly unchanged from Proving Grounds. I played it in 2020.
           

The first Game Boy Wizardry has the same conventions as the first three titles.

          

9. Wizardry: Crusaders of the Dark Savant (1992, USA; 1994, Japan), originally for DOS, later ported to FM Towns and PC-98 (1994), PlayStation (1995), Sega Saturn (1996). David W. Bradley's storytelling and humor are on full display here, with both good and bad results. Graphics and sound finally catch up to the modern era; mechanics remain almost identical to Bane of the Cosmic Forge. The plot tells a continuation of that game, as the party blasts off into space and attempts to recover a universe-changing device called the Astral Dominae before the mysterious Dark Savant. I played in 2018. I didn't like the cliffhanger ending, particularly since it wasn't resolved for 9 years.
         

10. Wizardry: Curse of the Ancient Emperor (1992, Japan). The second in ASCII's Wizardry Gaiden series for the Game Boy, this one has you exploring a desert dungeon, with a "menu oasis" instead of a "menu town," although Gilgamesh and Boltac are still the franchise owners. Mechanics are identical to Suffering of the Queen, which means identical to the first Wizardry. Graphics have been somewhat improved.

11. Wizardry: Scripture of the Dark (1993, Japan). The third in the Game Boy Gaiden trilogy, this one departs significantly from the first two in including races and classes from the David Bradley Wizardry games (and their associated spells and special abilities). Combat looks closer to the original Wizardrys, however, and the spell system still uses the original names, and slots instead of the mana pool that Bradley introduced. Still, this entry shows that Japanese developers were aware of changes to the U.S. series. I haven't been able to find any information about the plot except that it takes place in the city of Dalia and there are apparently multiple endings. Permadeath is removed--in fact, the game now autosaves after every battle--unless you specifically choose the special "Mania Mode."
            

Scripture of the Dark is the first Japanese Wizardry to let you choose the new races introduced in Bane of the Cosmic Forge.

       

12. Nemesis: The Wizardry Adventure (1996, USA; 1998, Japan), released originally for DOS, ported to Sega Saturn (1998) and Windows (1998). This adventure-RPG hybrid shares nothing with the original series except the name. You play a single character, pre-defined, who has to recover 7 talismans to counter the evil meddlings of the Nitherin Mages. The interface is of the typical mid-1990s static-screen, point-and-click type. RPG elements are minimal.
         

13. Wizardry: Throb of the Demon's Heart (1996, Japan). A Japanese SNES (Famicom) exclusive from ASCII, this one is sometimes numbered with the Game Boy Gaiden series as IV.  It continues the tradition from Scripture of the Dark (to which it is a prequel) by taking races and classes from the D.W. Bradley series but otherwise feeling more like the original games.

14. Wizardry Empire: Emperor of Naraka (1999, Japan). This Game Boy Color offering has fewer borrowings from the Bradley series but introduces some innovations of its own, including an archer class, genders, and several new prestige classes, including the "Summoner," anticipating the 2001 game.
           

Notice that the copyright screens of the late-1990s offerings are referencing the mysterious "1259190 Ontario, Inc."

          

15. Wizardry Empire: Staff of Resurrection (2000, Japan). A sequel to the previous game, I can find very little about it.
      

16. Wizardry Empire: The Ancient Princess (2000, Japan). I can find almost nothing about this PlayStation 2 sequel.

17. Wizardry: Dimguil (2000, Japan). An obscure title for the PlayStation, this offering from ASCII looks a lot like the Gaiden series, which means a lot like the original games. Characters could even be transferred from the Game Boy titles with numeric codes.
        

The graphics are updated, but otherwise Dimguil has all the attributes, classes, races, alignments, items, and spells of the original games.

       

18. Wizardry Chronicle: Reclaiming the Holy Land (2001, Japan). A rare Windows game from a Japanese developer, I can't tell what's happening in this one except that character creation seems familiar, and exploration is still tiled and textured.
     

19. Wizardry: Summoner (2001, Japan). A Game Boy Advance exclusive from Media Rings, later ported to the PlayStation 2, this game has a lot of graphical improvements but is still recognizably Wizardry. A party of 6 with traditional races and classes, using a menu town as a hub, explores dungeons for a book of power. The "Summoner" class returns from Wizardry Empire, plus the dungeons are randomly-generated. Since it's only in Japanese, I can't otherwise fully tell what's changed and what's the same.

    

20. Wizardry 8 (2001, USA and Japan). The last game in the numbered western series, Wizardry 8 had a troubled development and was barely released for Windows and Macintosh before Sir-Tech Canada collapsed. It nonetheless garnered great reviews and has a dedicated fan following even today. It wraps up the story begun in Bane of the Cosmic Forge, as the party tries to recover the Astral Dominae from the Dark Savant. I think this is the first Wizardry to feature continuous (instead of tiled) movement. I'm otherwise avoiding finding out much about it.

21. Wizardry: Tale of the Forsaken Land (2001, Japan and USA). A PlayStation 2 exclusive, this is the first Wizardry to originate in Japan but also have an official western release. The party tries to find the Queen of Duhan, who disappeared into a dungeon beneath her castle after a magical event devastated the population. The interface is modern, but it's still clearly of the Wizardry line, with the same races, classes, alignments, and attributes (excepting some synonyms). Even the system for rolling the attribute pool hasn't changed. Gameplay otherwise looks similar to Wizardry 8, with continuous movement and turn-based combat with attack animations.
            

Combat may look different, but the options are essentially the same as the first game in the series.

         

22. Monthly Wizardry (2002, Japan). A short-lived series that was only available for a couple of Japanese mobile services. There were two chapters: Melancholy of the Young King and Intruders of Annedale Forest. I don't know what it was about, but it seemed to feature tiled movement along vectored graphics. The game's official site had some graph paper you could download and use for mapping.

23. Wizardry Empire II: Legacy of the Princess (2002, Japan). A PlayStation game from Starfish, the plot has something to do with evil stirring after the collapse of an empire. The player has to rescue a princess and recover a sacred book. I can tell you there's a menu town and character creation options seem to be the same as they were 21 years ago, right down to the pool of bonus points.
          

Graphics advance, but this screen never seems to change.

          

24. Busin 0: Wizardry Alternative Neo (2003, Japan). A PlayStation 2 sequel to Tale of the Forsaken Land.
    

25. Wizardry: Chapter 1 (2003, Japan). Released for mobile phones using the J2ME platform, this game features a single protagonist who wakes up in jail with no memory of having started a tavern riot and punching the mayor's son. To redeem himself, he takes a quest to clear the sewers of rats and grows from there. Some mechanics are drawn from Wizardry but greatly simplified.
     

26. DoCoMo Wizardry (2003, Japan). A 6-chapter series that ran through 2004 and was available for NTT DoCoMo phones in Japan. Chapter titles are Shrine of Bytek Irhai, Mystery of the Underground Ruins, Temple of the Immortal Dragon, Tower of Edith, The Issue of the Abyss of Lead Celest, and Upper Part of the Tower of Edith. I have no idea what gameplay looked like.

27. Wizardry Empire III: Lineage of the King (2003, Japan). The third in this series, released for PlayStation 2 and ported to the PlayStation Portable in 2007. The plot is set 200 years after the rescue of Princess Nilda in Legacy of the Princess. The player must deal with a demonic threat rising in a dungeon. I watched a video long enough to verify the original classes, races, attributes, alignments, and slot-based spell system, although there are alchemist and psionic spells (taken from the Bradley series) alongside the mage and priest slots.
         

Note that Japanese developers are still getting mileage out of the original Wizardry box graphic.

          

28. Wizardry Traditional (2004, Japan). Another mobile phone series with two chapters: Twelve of a Kind and Grace of the Moonspoon. Figuring out what gameplay was like now is impossible.

29. Wizardry Asterisk: The Scarlet Seal (2005, Japan). A remake of Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord by Starfish for the Nintendo DS.

    

30. Wizardry Xth: Academy of Frontier (2005, Japan). Another PlayStation 2 game that keeps the classes and some mechanics of the early series but takes place in a futuristic military school in Europe. The party is composed of students who explore randomly-generated dungeons as part of their training. Again, this one is all in Japanese, so there's a lot I can't tell. The graphics have a much stronger anime influence than any previous Wizardry game.
            

The setting is futuristic, but the combat is still recognizably Wizardry.

         

31. Wizardry Gaiden: Prisoners of the Battles (2005, Japan). Another rare Windows release in Japan, ported to the PlayStation 2 in 2006. A DLC called The Absence of Misericordia was published later the same year. Online videos show all the familiar Wizardry elements during character creation; this one doesn't have any of the Bradley-influenced classes, races, and magic.

32. Wizardry Gaiden: Five Trials (2006, Japan). This PC follow-up to Prisoners of the Battles included a scenario editor.

    

33. Wizardry Xth: Unlimited Students (2006, Japan). Another PlayStation 2 title. A sequel to Academy of Frontier, it seems to feature identical gameplay and a mostly-identical story.
      

34. Wizardry: Wedge of Life (2009, Japan). This Nintendo DS game kicked off what is often called the "Wizardry Renaissance" by Japanese developers. Videos suggest a much different approach--almost Wizardry fused with Dungeon Master, with real-time exploration, action-oriented obstacles like swinging blades and rolling balls, and lots of puzzles.
        

A scene from the demo trailer shows a swinging blade blocking a corridor.

       

35. Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls (2009, Japan; 2011, USA). This title for the PlayStation 3 and PS Vita (2015) was ported to Windows in 2020 and is available on Steam. Despite beautiful graphics and sound, it cleaves faithfully to the rules and mechanics of the original games--more so than any title since the Game Boy Wizardry Gaiden games. It even features a menu town and tiled movement. For some reason, MobyGames has catalogued about one million DLC equipment packs as separate titles.

36. Wizardry Online Mobile (2010, Japan). A prologue to the following year's Wizardry Online, this title uses an axonometric view for the first time in the series history.
         

A shot from Wizardry Online Mobile

         

37. Wizardry: Legacy of Oblivion (2010, Japan). A Nintendo DS sequel to Wedge of Life.

38. Wizardry: Prisoners of the Ghost City (2011, Japan). Despite its recency, I've been able to find very little about this PlayStation 3 title.

39. Tokyo Labyrinth: Wizardry 0 (2011, Japan). A social media game offered by one Japanese mobile provider. Wikipedia says that it "contains elements from card battle games."
   

40. Wizardry Online (2011, Japan; 2013, United States). Sony's attempt at an MMORPG lasted less than three years total and less than one in the west, probably because they went with an "old school" feel, not understanding that old-school players prefer single-player games. The game hewed faithfully to the classes, races, attributes, and bonus points system of the original titles, but the game is single-character and, like Wizardry Online Mobile, uses a third-person view.
       

The logo is the same, but little else remains.

        

41. Wizardry: The Magical Tower of War (2013, Japan). Another social media game, this one for the iPhone.
     

42. Wizardry Schema (2014, Japan). A game for the iPhone and Android that went offline in 2017. It apparently "played itself" after you created the characters and assigned them various tasks and missions.
     

43. Wizrogue: Labyrinth of Wizardry (2014, Japan; 2017, USA). Originally for iPhone and Android, this game was ported to the PC in 2017 and translated to English. It blends elements of Wizardry and roguelikes, and what I love about it from videos is the way that it conveys the "blobber" movement of the six-person party.