This one is for some of our long-time readers. Atari, yes, that Atari, has bought the rights to early "Wizardry" games.
I get asked a lot how I got started using Apple products. Specifically, it was an Apple II in the late seventies, no plus, e, C, or GS. Amongst the early titles gifted to young me was the original Wizardry.
That was in eighth grade, for graduation. I'm sure some high school grades suffered from having it.
It didn't always boot on my single-drive DOS 3.3 system. But the disks were portable, and I'd lug them over to my friends' houses, who later in that high school period had Apple IIc and Laser 128 compatibles.
Thanks, Luke and John. Also, thanks to a reset key on the keyboard, which, if you hit either it alone on my Apple II keyboard or control-open Apple-reset on the others before the drive updated the characters as dead, would allow you to recover them easily.
Anyway, for years, emulation, sketchy acquisition methods, and more recently classic game vendors were the only way to play the first few games in the series, despite the franchise flourishing in Japan. Flash forward to 2026, and the modern incarnation of Atari has purchased the "complete and exclusive rights" to the first five games and their intellectual property.
Starting with Breakout developed by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, Atari has had a tough time across the decades in an evolving industry. Without delving into the various sagas, the most recent major shift was a leadership shift in 2021, including a strange blockchain and NFT period.
In 2026, the present Ship of Theseus Atari has a big focus on releasing modernized versions of classic titles, and Wizardry is one of them already.
"Wizardry is such an influential RPG franchise, yet many of the games have been unavailable for more than two decades," said Wade Rosen, CEO and Chairman of Atari. "We are excited to have this rare opportunity to republish, remaster and bring console ports and physical releases of these early games to market."
The acquisition, announced on May 7, comes two years after a Wizardry "remake." The remake essentially layers modern graphics over the old Apple II interface, similar to how Halo, the Master Chief Collection layers 2012 graphics over the 2000 Xbox original.
Unfortunately, it's not great. I've been playing it off and on, on my gaming PC, and it has some show-stopping character-deleting bugs.
Atari managed to talk to Robert Woodhead, one of the co-creators of the franchise.
"When Andrew Greenberg and I created Wizardry back in the 1980s, the video game industry was still in its infancy, and the original games were some of the first to bring the role-playing experience to PCs and consoles," said Woodhead. "As Atari continues to reintroduce the games on new platforms and to new audiences, I'll definitely be paying attention to the reactions of gamers who decide to take on a real old-school challenge."
Andrew Greenberg, the other co-founder, passed away at age 67 in August of 2024.
So far, I'm not encouraged by the state of the first remake, which was made by one of Atari's in-house studios. We'll see if things improve after this announcement.
The titles included in the deal are:
All of them had Apple II versions. The first two had Macintosh versions in the US, and a third was released in Japan, covering the first three installments. There are other titles past V, but they are owned by a different company, not covered under this deal, and considered an alternate universe.
The acquisition also includes many other Wizardry related video games, contract rights, and other related intellectual property. Presumably, this also includes WizEdit and other character editors that I used back in the day to make my characters younger.
In case you were wondering, I managed to beat the first two titles back in the day.
