Intellivision Wizard of Wor Review
Wizard of Wor is an arcade game released in 1980 by Midway. In it, up to two players face off against each other from opposite sides of the maze or dungeon, fighting a series of seemingly random enemies thrown their way. Being that the game takes to play in the land of “WOR”, the player’s characters are therefore called “WORriers”. In single-player games, the computer plays as the second “Worrier”. You can choose to destroy the other “Worrier” or play co-operatively. Once you clear the dungeon you are advanced to a new maze with a slightly different configuration and the enemy speed ramps up slightly. The dungeon itself has a door on the left and right sides which when traversed will teleport the player or enemies to the other side. At the bottom center of the display is a radar map that indicates the enemy locations. This is especially useful when the enemies camouflage themselves.
Starting on level two, after clearing the enemies the mysterious “Warluk” may make an appearance, followed by the “Wizard of Wor” himself. Both enemies may periodically disappear and have to be tracked on the radar before reappearing. The Warluk can escape through the side doors so you must act quickly. The Wizard battle however is a battle to the death and the Wizard can teleport himself to random positions on the map and shot lightning bolts towards your Worrier.
In the Intellivision port of Wizard of Wor, as is the case with the arcade version, there are options to start a single or two-player game with either three or seven Worriers. The game supports the Intellivoice hardware add-on. With this device plugged in, you will hear a multitude of phrases that are spoken during the gameplay and on the title screen. This does add to the fun, but I do find many of the phrases are difficult to decipher, actually, I consider that part of the fun.
Controls
Controlling your “Worrier” with the Intellivision controller can sometimes be a challenge. You may use either controller. From time to time I did have difficulty making quick direction changes in order to dodge the enemies. It might just be a matter of getting used to the controls for this game.
Included with the ROM purchase of the game, is a nice PDF version of the manual, which describes the scoring for the game.
Scoring
The first three common enemies are named Burwors, Garwors, and Tharwors are worth 100, 200, and 500 points respectively.
The Worluk is worth 1000 points plus double points in the next dungeon.
The Wziard of Wor is worth 2500 points plus double points in the next dungeon.
Should you destroy your opposing Worrior or 2nd player, that is worth 1000 points.
You are awarded a spare Worrior should you make it to the fourth maze, “The Arena”
Strategy
From the manual:
1. Worlings remain slow for a longer period of time in the early dungeons. As you advance to later dungeons, get your Worrior to the dungeons as quickly as possible and blast away Worling after Worling before they speed up.
2. Learn to use your radar scanner and rely on it to locate invisible Worlings and track their movements.
3. Don’t shoot without having a plan to hit something. otherwise, you may not be able to shoot when you must.
Graphics
The graphics in Wizard of Wor for the Intellivision are surprisingly good and are a huge part of what makes this game so great. It looks very much like it’s arcade counterpart, if not just slightly less detailed, but hardly noticeable. For example, the starfield in the background gameplay is missing here but shows up when you complete a maze. I appreciate the colors and the exciting announcement which happens when you complete a maze.
Sound
The biggest selling point for me is the voice and sounds effects in Wizard of Wor. Hearing the Wizard himself shouting out smart-aleck remarks and jabs is humorous and entertaining. There’s the background drum, a sound for firing your weapon, making a hit, dying, tunes between levels, tunes for facing the Worluk and Wizard, there are a wizard teleport sound and separate tunes for destroying the Warluk and Wizard.
Glitches
Unfortunately I did run into a few issues while playing Wizard of Wor that I found a bit puzzling.
For the first one, it is common to move straight through the enemy without dying and it seems to occur on the faster mazes when I was firing or changing directions. Check out these examples. I sort of look at it as the Wizard being nice to me, giving me a few extra chances. It’s much more forgiving than the Arcade version.
I ran into a few other glitches in my brief time with Wizard of Wor, related to sound effects. You might call then nit-picks but here they are anyway.
It seems to me these sound issues could easily be fixed. I’ve had this happen when I was trying to program a sound effect and somehow the stop condition isn’t met so the tone keeps getting louder and louder until it either wraps back around and starts over at a lower tone or is reset by something.
And finally, this isn’t a glitch so much as maybe an oversight. In the arcade version of Wizard of Wor, you had to move out of your cubby hole within 10 seconds. Here, both players can stay down there indefinitely. This creates the situation where you could actually start a two-player game with 7 Worriers each and play two complete single-player games one at a time, leaving the second player in the cubby hole, giving you up to 14 lives to burn through, but with two separate scores of course.
None of these issues are that big a deal and did they did not detract me too much from gameplay.
Ports
According to the Wiki article on Wizard of Wor, this game was ported to the Atari 8-bit family, Commodore 64, Atari 2600, and Atari 5200 and renamed to The Incredible Wizard for the Bally Astrocade.
Other Reviews
Willie from Arcade USA youtube channel has posted his review of the game. Link in the description.
Purchasing Information
The ROM can currently be purchased along with the Cosmic Avenger ROM as a two-pack, for $25 on the Atariage forums. Link in the description. In order to play the ROMs, you must have an LTO Flash! Cart. This is to protect the developers from illegal copying and distribution. As for the physical release, it is my understanding that this game was released overseas in limited quantities and will eventually be made available in the US. The PDF manual seems to back this up as it says overlays are provided for convenience.
Conclusion
Wizard of Wor has exceeded my expectations of what could be done on the Intellivision. Somehow the developer managed to squeeze in all the important elements from the Arcade game into this port. This game has nearly everything you can want from a game; an exciting environment, random scary voices, multi-player with your choice of either coop or battle mode and an exciting single-player experience. The game’s developer “Dr. Ports Intellivision” on Youtube, has done a great job with this port along with Cosmic Avenger, the only two games that have been released so far. After seeing these two games, I cannot wait to see what “Dr. Ports Intellivision” comes up with next.
Highly Recommended
Youtube Description:
This is my quick review of the Dr. Ports Intellivision port of Wizard of Wor.
Box Purchase info from Good Deal Games:
http://www.gooddealgames.com/inventory/Intellivision.html
ROM purchase Site:
https://atariage.com/forums/topic/305394-intellivision-cosmic-avenger-wizard-of-wor-roms-for-sale/
Arcade USA review:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrbVkDTFXr0
Youtube Original Post Date: 04/25/2020
