First of all: FINALLY! Awesome that Wizardry 6-8 are now available here on GOG! GOG continues to impress.

How high do you think the chances are that also Wizardry 1-5 will make their debut here on this fine site?

I guess it will help to vote on the Community Wishlist and even better, buy Wiz 6-8 if you want to see Wiz 1-5 here on GOG, so please feel free to! :)

ryz

Well, like you said, I think sales are the bottom line. If the currently available Wizardry games sell well, it'll certainly demonstrate interest in the series and provide impetus in making the financial arrangements to roll out the others. Here's hoping.

If so, they really should specially negotiate to get the OK to patch out the bugs, if they can. In the DOS versions, your stats go down significantly more than they do in the Apple versions, which is a bug. Short of editing your save files, it's extremely unlikely to ever get your stats up to become a Ninja, for example.

Is there a site somewhere that details the legal issues of the first 5 games? I love reading about that stuff. :)

What? I heard nothing of legal limbo since Sir Tech owned the rights to the series and then sold it off to Gamepot's parent company, the only legal troubles I ever been aware off are the ones involving unpaid royalties Sir Tech owed the series creator Andrew Greenburg for Wizardry 1-5

So is Greenburg going after Gamepot now for the royalties? I wonder if they would be more likely to come to GOG if a deal was made to give a sliver of revenue to Greenburg (though I seriously doubt GOG and Gamepot would be up for that).

But if there's nothing really going on, maybe GOG just wanted to bring out the most-wanted ones first, then the other ones later. It'd be pretty silly not to have the entire series here, though, just like Ultima and Zork.

I was under the impression that the entire ip is currently owned by the Japanese company that is still making Wizardry games.

they are, when Sir tech was going under they moved everything to their canadian branch which then went under after Wizardry 8 hit their properties then were auctioned off and Wizardry went to a Japanese company. Yeah after doing some searching this is what I found: As far as I am aware he hasn't gone after Gamepot of course they haven't tried to sell Wizardry 1-5 in the states

I also found something on the appeal:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/nyctap/I05_0008.htm

Now I am not a attorney but it sounds like Sir Tech who are now defunct are the ones obligated to pay Andrew the royalties for the Wizardry games he worked on(1-5) when they are sold in the states but since they are no more it's possible that Andrew would have to file another grievance with the court in order to see any money on those games from Gamepot or who ever should they become available for sale. Again I am not a lawyer so I maybe wrong on that, I'm just basing this on what I know about these things since Gamepot or their parent company can simply say "well the original decision from the court was only for Sir Tech and not us" Also he may have a harder time getting anything since their a Japan based company and Andrew only won that case in the first place because he was able to show that Sir Tech Canada had bought the rights to the games from Sir Tech who were based in NY and the games were being sold there, but since GOG is based out of Poland so a argument could be made that the games are not technically being sold in the state of NY(it's one of the reasons why NYer's don't have to pay NY state sales tax on games sold here) and Gamepot or in this case their parent company bought the games from Sir Tech Canada and not Sir Tech of the US it may not get anywhere.

I doubt that in nowadays the very old Wizardry parts like 1, 2 and so on are so interesting for the most people anymore. Even part 6 and 7 are very pixeled but Wizardry 1 looks like this:

http://www.mobygames.com/game/wizardry-proving-grounds-of-the-mad-overlord/screenshots

Im really no graphics-fetishist but this is really hard for me to look at. For some nostalgia feeling for some people, this might be ok or if you only want to complete the collection.

A few things:

It's too bad that the PSOne games Wizardry: Llylgamyn Saga (I-III) and Wizardry: New Age of Llylgamyn (IV-V) weren't ever brought to the US along with Wizardry VII (for some reason, VI was only on the Saturn, Super Famicom, PC98, and Amiga). Why? Well, the game offers up two graphics modes (original PC style with plain walls or nicely textured walls, lovely sprite art and lighting effects - both versions also sped up movement a bit, but you could still play step by step if you wanted to ) and an English text option for menus (not the story).

Wizardry VII was completely visually overhauled on the PSOne (but the character art, cinemas and info screens were the same as in Gold, but full screen), but entirely in Japanese though. I think it would have done well back in the day as a re-localized game, but oh well...

I guess I can be happy that the copy of the Ultimate Wizardry Archives I managed to dig up last year is still good for something. Because it seems like every time I'm successful in my quest to dig up some ancient game (without spending a fortune), GOG puts it out within a few weeks and I get to buy everything yet again.

There was a Wizardry game for PS2 the was released in the US. I have it. I had a blast playing it a while back. It was called Wizardy: Tale of the Forsaken Land. It actually came out around the same time as Wizardy 8.

[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizardry:_Tale_of_the_Forsaken_Land]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizardry:_Tale_of_the_Forsaken_Land[/url]

That last sentence, and GOG adding in some very nice bonus content...

Oh, I know that - I have something like 20 Japanese Wizardry titles here in the library along with a few US PC Wizardry games.

ToFL was well made and pretty cool, I thought. It's more of a mix of Shining in the Darkness and Shining the Holy Ark (both also very Wizardry inspired) with some core Wizardry elements, VERY nice character art and a really good soundtrack. To some diehard Wizardry fans, none of the imports are seen as "true" Wizardry games (but I see them as spin-offs that take place in the same universe and don't mind at all - except for that online game).