Another game that took us months to master.
A brilliant game. Genius. There were so many layers to this game.
We would play this up at Mick's place at the end of the road, on the C64.
You had to collect all the elements to get on the plane and win the game before your opponent does. Sounds simple! It's not.
You could see on the map, some rooms have little dots in them. That's where the special items are hidden. But you can only carry one at a time, until you have the BAG. But you don't know which dot is the bag. So as you search and find each item, if they're not the bag, you just have to hide them again. You can booby trap them to stop your opponent from getting them, but you have to remember which sort of trap you used, so you can disarm it when you return!
All the while, the other player is trying to do the same thing! But at the same time, they can watch your half of the screen to see what you're doing! What are you carrying? What sort of booby trap are you putting on that object you hid?
But they can't watch you all day, or you'll win the game! So it's this constant struggle of trying to collect the items, watch your opponent, find the correct objects, remember which booby traps you've set, and all the while having bouts of "pokey pokey" combat with your opponent when you run past each other on this mad circus of a treasure hunt!
This is multiplayer gaming of the finest vintage quality.
Now this was a weird game. We played this A LOT, up at Mick's place at the end of the road, with me and my twin brother Evan. We'd take turn being the player and the cat, with the third person watching and commentating along.
We never got bored of it.
It was such a challenging game.
Again, it took us a long time just to figure out how it worked. WAGGLE THE JOYSTICK the activate the currently highlighted powerup? OK...
There was a REAL sense of camaraderie in this game.
The wizard character had to actually EARN the other player, by collecting 3 pickups (by killing a whole set of an enemy type for each pickup), and then choosing to waggle the joystick to "manifest" the cat. Then the cat player would appear and be able to play until they die. The cat is required to pick up the paint drops, which is the point of the game.
It's all very interesting and unique. I can't really think of an equivalent type of game today! Can anyone out there think of something like Wizball?
I can only imagine that this would have been a very iteratively made game. I am guessing that Sensible Software started working on it from a basic concept, and then just "felt out" where it was going from there, adding powerups and features as they went.
I really don't see how you could go about designing this game from the ground up, entirely on paper. No sirree!
A real gem. And that guitar lick at the end? GOOOLD.
I remember drawing pictures of the Worrior in this game on pieces of paper, seriously wanting to make computer games. I loved the way he looked, with his little backpack, and his helmet, and his gun. He was a compact and powerful little space adventurer, ready for what the cosmos had to throw at him. It really got me thinking about pixel graphics, and how to make them.
I saw that you could program on the C64, and I tried doing it myself, but all I could do was print out little shapes on the screen, made up of those basic shapes that are shown on the C64 keyboard. I could make round cornered boxes and lines. Hmm. I tried looking at some books with example game code written out in them, but they never seemed to add up to the GOOD games that I actually liked playing. And the books didn't seem to really explain the RULES behind harnessing the power of the language. So I gave up on those and just kept playing!
Wizard of Wor was great! We'd play this at our friend Michael's place on a hill up the end of the road. We'd ride up their on our bikes, or trounce up the road stamping in puddles with our gumboots, and huddle in front of the TV in their rumpus room. They had this awesome big house that you could run around, and lots of board games and things to do! Mick always loved games, and we'd often play chess, and he'd very often beat anyone up for the competition. We'd play Marco Polo, and clothesline the unsuspecting blindfoldee with a blanket, and end up just wrestling and fighting. We had great times up there on his hill.
He had Wizard of Wor on a cartridge, which was awesome, because it would just start straight away without that whole disk loading rigmarole! LOAD "*",8,1 (Whoever thought to make kids type that archaic command to load their video games?)
This was one of the first games I played with two players on screen who had to cooperate, and COULD shoot each other. And of course, WOULD shoot each other half of the time. On purpose by accident. Thus resulting in many off-screen jostles and punches. Which was, of course, half the fun.
The sound effects are so over the top! I love the sound when the Warluk appears. It's quite terrifying, and induces immediate panic.
The way the enemies can sometimes disappear and reappear, the whole screen flashing scarily, this game really was something else.
Special mention must also go to Gauntlet, at the foot of which we also worshipped for many many hours.
