Atari just bought the rights to the big daddy of PC RPGs, and a reissue campaign is afoot
Released in 1981, Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord was the first grid-based first-person RPG—what we nowadays call blobbers—and it proved enormously influential. Its art was rudimentary: the monochrome dungeon halls were a series of white lines carefully placed to simulate the feeling of moving through a three-dimensional environment. Leaving the ruggedness of its "3D" world exploration aside, it was an unprecedentedly complex and immersive take on the CRPG, and the American-developed series sold loads—especially in Japan.
The earliest Wizardry games varied a lot depending on the platform: DOS and Commodore 64 versions were as described, but the Nintendo ports were graphically much more vivid, with evocative fantasy pixel art. What unites the first five Wizardry games, no matter the platform, is that they're mostly unavailable to play in 2026, save a remake of Proving Grounds handled by Digital Eclipse and released in 2024.
But it looks like that's about to change: Atari has announced it's acquired "the complete and exclusive rights" to the first five Wizardry games and their "underlying IP". That's pretty big news for CRPG enthusiasts, especially since Atari seems pretty eager to get them back on the market. The announcement cites the possibility of "remasters, collections and new releases" as well as a bunch of other non-game stuff like merch, cards, board games, books, comics, TV and film projects.
It's worth pointing out that most of the Wizardry games currently on Steam, while bearing the same Wizardry name, belong to a different strain of the series. Wizardry was massive in Japan and proved influential on the then-germinating JRPG. Japanese publisher Drecom owns the rights to Wizardry 6 through to 8, but it has also published or licensed the IP to various others, including Acquire, who released Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls in 2020. The most recent Drecom-associated Wizardry was Variants Daphne, which is basically a gacha-fied take on the series (Drecom has a lot of experience in this field).
So the most recent Wizardry games tend to have some fairly overt anime styling, at least where character design is concerned. That's OK, but that's unlikely to be the case with Atari's take on the first five games, and it'll be interesting to see them exist at the same time. How much Wizardry is too much Wizardry? Well, finish the remake of Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord without having a nervous breakdown, and then get back to me.
“Wizardry is such an influential RPG franchise, yet many of the games have been unavailable for more than two decades,” Atari CEO Wade Rosen said. “We are excited to have this rare opportunity to republish, remaster and bring console ports and physical releases of these early games to market.”
It's a pretty wise time to bring back the Wizardry series. Blobbers are having a bit of a comeback, and I'm not even talking about Legend of Grimrock which is basically ancient at this point. Some recent highlights include Legends of Amberland, Dragon Ruins, and Cyclopean: The Great Abyss.