Arcade, Commodore 64, Atari 5200, and Atari 2600 Game
Produced by: Midway (Arcade) and
CBS Games (2600 and 5200)
Model Number: 80000 (2600) and 4L 2713 (5200)
Rarity: 3 Uncommon (2600 and 5200)
Year of Release: 1980 (Arcade),
1981 (2600), and
1983 (5200)
Programmer: Uncredited (please
/msg if you know).
Fight me! I am the Wizard of Wor!
Wizard of Wor was an adventure maze game that was popular in the arcades in the early 1980's. It was a fairly simple maze game. You control a spaceman who moves around shooting various beasties. A radar screen at the bottom tracks all the monsters (including any that may be invisible at the time). From time to time the Wizard will appear and rapidly teleport around the screen shooting lightning bolts at the players.
This game featured some early speech synthesis that was done in a similar manner to that in Gorf (Gorf and Wizard of Wor ran on nearly identical hardware).
Shooting the spot where the Wizard was going to appear just a millisecond before he did would cause all sorts of strange things to occur in the arcade version of this game. There is also a reported bug that quickly cycling the power of the machine would cause the game to award 16 men to each player.
Scoring (Lifted from the Atari 5200 game manual, other versions may vary)
- BURWORS 100 points
- GARWORS 200 points
- THORWORS 500 points
- WORLUK 1000 points plus double score in next dungeon
- WIZARD OF WOR 2500 points plus double score in next dungeon
- WORRIORS 1000 points (Two-player version)
From the manual (5200)
Welcome to the mystical kingdom of Wor! You have been placed in command of an elite squadron of Worriors assigned to the task of outwitting the sinister Wizard of Wor! As you descend further and further into his diabolical dungeons, you will encounter deadly Worlings and maybe even the Wizard himself! Your only weapons are your trusty laser, your radar scanner and your agility and cunning. You will need them all as you attempt to beat the Wizard on his own turf and earn the title of Worlord Supreme! Prepare now, and let the battle begin!
Collectors Information
Wizard of Wor arcade units came in a white dedicated cabinet with sticker sideart of a menacing looking wizard. Cabaret and cocktail versions were also common. (The cabaret models had wood grain paneling with no sideart, while the cocktail versions had the monitor mounted sideways for some reason). This game used a special 4-Way Joystick that had 2 positions for each directions (pushing softly made your guy change direction without moving). No one makes this joystick anymore, so use a standard 4-Way for a replacement, ignoring the wiring for the direction change. The speech synthesis units on these machines are notorious for their high failure rates. So always check those out before buying one of these. As of September 2001 a Wizard of Wor machine in good working condition is worth about $250 USD, although this can vary wildly by location.
The Atari 2600 and Atari 5200 versions of this game are fairly common and worth around $3 USD (as of September 2001). Games with boxes and manuals are worth more.
There were a lot of ports of Wizard of Wor to various systems. Please /msg me if you have any port specific information that I may be missing.