Tales From The Code Front Stories in words and pictures

Open the pod bay doors, HAL.

Welcome to another week of "Oh what fun I had with early C64 games."

This week's game is ...

Wizard of Wor

You are about to enter the dungeons of the WIZARD OF WOR!! [...] As a "noble warrior", your mission objective is to descend deep into dungeon mazes, battle visible and invisible monsters, evil demons, and even the Wizard of Wor himself! Go as far into the dungeons as possible, beat the Wizard and his monster babies, while scoring as high as you can.

(from the game's manual)


Title screen and one of the basic dungeons.

First thing I noticed is that the dungeons are semi-random, and the manual confirms that there are 25 combinations, it also informs that the difficulty takes place on two levels: basic dungeons and Worlord dungeons (plus "The Arena" and "The Pit").

Ignore all the yadda-yadda, and it boils down to "shot everything that doesn't look like you".

The one thing that made this game one of my favourite games from the early tapes is that it also is a two player game, and boy, did we play it. For hours on end - sometimes when friends stayed overnight, for some hours more.


After you've killed the 6 blue things, you go for a yellow and orange one and then a giant ... fly?

We usually played as a team, but had a healthy competition when it came to the scores.


Another blue thing to shoot at.

Interestingly, it is a game that still works for me, even as single player game. A quick round from the couch (with the TheC64 mini or using Vice) is good for "wasting" some 20 minutes and with a second player around for some more.

I'd give it a 4/5 for replayability.

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