Another of my absurd M.A.M.E. preoccupations is Midway's 1980 classic Wizard of War, a simple, satisfying game, with awesome sounds and a classy use of a primative color palette. I fed a lot of quarters into the Wizard of Wor game at Coachlite Skate Center in Roselle, IL, back when Journey's "Escape" was the big new album, but I'm still no master of the game. There don't seem to be any discernible patterns, and it appears that the Wizard himself only materializes when he damn well wants to. When he does appear, it's impressively scary, but if you do manage to kick his hooded ass back into the nameless void from whence he came, the program flips out and goes all black and white with extra weird freak-out sounds a'la The Bishop of Battle. Here's a dude getting his ass handed to him by the Wizard... but still managing to stomp my high score by nearly ten grand. Damn him! Anyway, here's the screenshot, which, now that I've had a moment to think about it, seems pitiful on many levels.
November 19, 2007
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4 comments:
That second video clip makes the gameplay look very, very tedious. Is "wizard of wor" any fun at all with one player? Two-player mode is filled with thrills (back-to-back firepower) and spills (accidentaly shooting your teammate, elliciting a punch in the shoulder and a "dude, what's your fuckin' problem?" from the deceased).
And I almost forgot about that stupid "bishop of battle" story from that bad anthology movie. But at least it introduced me to black flag.
Playing solo, the typical game (for me) lasts about 6 levels or 5 minutes. With two people, it's probably shorter. My friend Steve had a Bally's Astrocade, and it ran a version of Wizard of Wor which seemed identical to the arcade version. Two player games always devolved into "oh, fuck you!" because we'd pin one another down and blast away. The monsters were merely obstacles.
I can't help but think of "wizard of wor" as a tandem-only game, like "fire truck" or "space duel". But this video clip is enough to get me started on that MAME cocktail cabinet with dual controllers I've been drawing plans for.
The machine at the roller rink was a cocktail table. I'm sure it's in a landfill by now.
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