“Wizardry” is a series of dungeon crawling games developed originally by Sir-Tech in the 80s.
I have been a fan of the series for years now (I think I played my first game of Wizardry in 2016), and have been playing on and off since then. Since 2025 however I have also been interested in the “expanded” Wizardry universe. That includes novels, mangas, and other media production (like the official OVA). I have since then slowly started building my own collection, both physical and digital, which I am trying to preserve through the Internet Archive for everybody to enjoy.
While my personal favorite is the fourth entry in the series (“The Return of Werdna”, incidentally the most hated entry due to its obscure puzzles and random difficulty spikes), I enjoyed the first three games (“Proving grounds of the mad overlord”, “Knight of diamonds”, and “Legacy of Llylgamyn”) as they were bundled in the SNES cartridge I played.
Though, to be perfectly honest, I first played the DOS version of “Proving grounds of the mad overlord” because it was free to download and play.
That’s how I racked something like 20-ish hours on my first playthrough. I was extremely slow in progressing, scared shitless I’d lose my party to a slime or some misidentified trap.
After I read the manual (which, admittedely, I should’ve done earlier), I beat the first game in 10 or so hours. I did not, however, completed the second and third games. I did almost complete Wizardry 8 (thanks to the GoG.com improved version) and I honestly have no idea how I lost my progress on “Heart of Maelstrom”. The sixth and seventh entries of the series, to me, are the weakest games, so I played them for a bit but couldn’t find enough motivation to put the effort in to see the game to the end.
On the other hand, I have been playing (couple of years or so, by now) “Wizardry: Variants Daphne”, the latest installment of the game. Variants Daphne is a gacha (eugh) game, much to my disappointment, but it plays quite well on both Android and Windows (and Linux, though it’s not ufficially supported).
There have been multiple physical games with the Wizardry brand that were not videogames. While I own the first edition of the TTRPG, there are other games I know about but either no one is selling them, or they are asking for way, waaaaay too much. Still, I think it’s relevant to have them here.
I collected what I know of these in this page
It’s music, mangas, and novels, of course.
Do Jun Suemi’s illustrations books fall in either category? Probably both. I am waiting for a decent price drop before getting the latest reprint (2025).
I realize I may not be the best person to explain everything about Wizardry. That’s why below are a list of useful resources I personally recommend if you are interested in the world of Wizardry:
To be perfectly honest, fan translations and scans of (formerly) copyrighted material is a gray, murky legal area.
Of course, I will not post anywhere any of the currently releasing novels (“Blade & Bastard”) or mangas (“Blade & Bastard”, “ Wizardry Variants Daphne ～名もなき最後の冒険～”, and the manga based on the “Ash and Youth” novel).
What does this mean for the other mangas and novel translations? It means that there shouldn’t be a problem posting them online. Again, as far as I can tell, I am not dealing with material under active copyright. Some of the comics where one-shots appearing in now defunct magazines. Longer serializations were released under ASCII Comics, and often rebundled into a single book.
If I am mistaken though, I will gladly remove the material I have posted.
Though I hope that, unlike what I’ve seen happening in the past, this would not mean that these amazing products of the creative minds of their writers would be lost forever.
My goal with all of this is to save these artifacts from being forgotten, and making them as accessible as possible. Just as in many other niche groups, there are people who are passionate about content that compliments the main product.
I am one of these people, I guess.