Producer: Go!/Capcom
Retail Price: £8.99 cassette, £12.95 disk
Author: G Bolton, P Houbart, D Drake and D Worton

Chief Wizard is an accolade that can only be earned by the best. Taking the part of a junior wizard, the player embarks on a quest to defeat mysterious beasts and seven evil wizards in an attempt to gain the coveted title.

The first of three levels sees the young novice travelling between seven cities and six monsters. The player's movements are depicted on a scrolling map in the centre portion of the screen. The first time the player passes through a town he is given one food ration.

As he is spotted, an enemy's image appears on the screen, and battle commences. Each combatant is given the chance to select a spell. Once defeated, a monster yields one of six treasures. Returning this to the appropriate town adds a further two rations to the wizard's stock. With all six treasures safely delivered, the wizard moves on to the second stage.

A test of the player's power locks him in battle against a series of monsters. In the process he fills his book with powerful spells and, once successful moves onto the third and final round.

COMMENTS

Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston
Graphics: miniscule play area, but detailed and colourful display
Sound: title tune only

Wizard Warz is a brave attempt at a role playing game, that sadly doesn't quite make the grade. Graphically, the status screens surrounding the main playing field are effective, especially the spell books and opponent ID boxes. The main play area itself is a bit of a joke though, with a fat wobbling sprite limping around a drab and largely unimpressive background. Gameplay is slow and tedious; trundle around the landscape for a while, shoot at sprites as blobby as yourself, trundle around a bit more. I soon found myself bored almost to tears by the repetitious nature of the game. Sorry GO!, I can't say that this is a game on which I would readily spend my hard-earned cash.
MIKE [40%]

Wizard Warz is a strange sort of game with loads of different spells and monsters, and a very long list of instructions. The first level is fairly easy to complete; just defeat the six monsters and return the treasure to the correct cities. Things get harder on the second level with about 30 different monsters. Graphically the game isn't very impressive, with small characters, although the still pictures of the monsters are detailed and colourful. The problem is that in play, all these beasts look identical. There is little sound during the game, but a nice title tune on loading. Using different spells to suit your current enemy is fun and a lot of strategy is involved in choosing the best ones. Wizard Warz doesn't completely hold your attention and the multiload is a pain, but fantasy fans should enjoy it.
PHIL [74%]

The first time I played Wizard Warz I was bored. It was so difficult to get into the game that I felt like giving up there and then. But I persevered and when I finally sussed it out, a relatively good game began to emerge. The graphics are very varied - the figures that appear when you go near enemies are excellent, but the scrolling landscape is very plain and mainly made up of different types of shading. On the sound front there is a tune (if you can call I that) but no effects. I'm sure the programmers could have livened it up audio wise. Once you work out how to control the spells and which ones are best to use on each monster, you can get some fun out of Wizard Warz. It just takes a long time to work out.
NICK [74%]

Go!
£8.99
Reviewer: Ben Stone, Mike Dunn

'A game that takes fantasy role playing one step further' claims the cover of Go!'s latest offering. What?! Neither of us claim to be role-playing nuts, but we've seen an awful lot better than this!

You start off a fresh-faced magician with only a few spells and not much power. Fret not though, spells and other interesting goodies can be picked up easily enough throughout the game. There are plenty of monsters on the first level, who again, don't appear to have done anything wrong but must be blasted if the magic man is to proceed to the next stage. The range in 'ardness from the awfully wimpy Giant Bat to the wickedly bad Vampire. And your object in the first level is to blast the six monsters who guard stolen treasures and then return the treasure to its rightful owner. As a reward the city gives you some food to restore your energy and stamina.

The second level is meant to be a test proving your ability to enter the third level. (Not very imaginative, I know, but I suspect that Go!'s writers were having a bad day!) Here you get to choose which monsters to battle with, and killing one gets you a reward. Rewards can be in the form of another spell or a familiar, (that's a cat or crow, you know the sort of thing), and these can be useful for giving you extra powers or making you invulnerable to certain spells. The major reward is a magical item - and you need three of these to go on to level three. Assuming you survive this arduous task (it isn't the game's difficulty that's the problem it's being able to breathe in the atmosphere of boredom it creates!) then we can stomp (and what a poorly animated stomp it is too), into level three , where you've got to destroy the seven Wizards and their guardian monsters in order of difficulty. If after tackling one of these truly 'ard guys you don't have enough energy to go on, you are awarded some more - what fun!

You may have gathered that we're not too keen on Wizard Warz. That's putting it mildly: it's rubbish!

Strategy games are fine when they do involve strategy, but this relies far too much on 'arcade type action' which simply isn't fast enough to handle enjoyably. The graphics are very poor indeed - the playing area involves character scrolling which shouldn't have emerged from the dark ages.

At full Go! price Wizard Warz is nothing short of a rip-off. It has to be one of the least fun pieces of programming we've had the misfortune to play in months.

Label: Go!
Author: Canvas Software
Price: £8.99
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Chris Jenkins

If you like computerised versions of Dungeons and Dragons, you normally have to put up with pathetic graphics showing piddly little matchstick men going, "ecky-ecky-ecky" in featureless boxes meant to represent amazing pixie treasure chambers. There are so many games of this kind around that I seriously think D&Dists actually LIKE pathetic graphics.

Fortunately, you now have a choice. You can be a weedy wet and stick with the matchstick men; or you can get Wizard Warz and enjoy an altogether more visual experience.

Wizard Warz casts you as a junior sorcerer with big ambitions. The game is in three parts. First, find the treasure, defeat guardian monsters and claim your reward. Second, slay a selection of demons. Third, defeat the 7 wizards and take your place as the Big Boss.

The playing screen is divided into 8 main sections. Starting top left, you have your spell book. There are around 30 spells from which to choose; as you gain more power, you can add more spells to your book. The abilities of each spell are explained in the manual, so selecting the best ones for the current quest is a major part of the game.

Below the spell book appears your own image, which changes according to your state of health. Below this are the 3 bar charts which show your physical, spiritual and metal state. You can exchange points between these attributes, and boost them by performing certain quests, eating food and so on.

In the middle of the screen is the main playing area. This is a large scrolling landscape through which you move in search of cities, treasures and monsters. When you encounter a monster, this changes to a combat screen where you must cast your magical spells in an attempt to slay each opponent. Below the main display is your inventory, which shows your food supplies, treasures which must be returned to the cities and so forth. On the right of the screen appear your opponents' spell books, images and attributes. Sound effects are minimal, after the admittedly decent theme tune.

Apart from the fact that the controls gave me no end of gyp - select Interface 2, and you get Keyboard control, then the Fire key doesn't work, and all kinds of hassle - Wizard Warz is good fun, and much better looking than many similar attempts to do a D&D. The big problem, which it has in common with previous titles, is that there are long periods of wandering around with nothing happening; I suppose you could argue that it captures the boredom of being a junior wizard wandering around without knowing where one's next quest is coming from. But even so it's still dull as ditch water in this section. Still and all, I'd rather see a system which guarantees continuous action.