GSK

I can't say I'm particularly excited for Digital Eclipse's Wizardry remake: DE's re-imaginings are generally the least interesting aspect of what they do, so the notion of them focusing solely on that angle with OG Wiz to the exclusion of all else doesn't do much for me, nor does the aesthetic they've chosen; I wanted The Making of Wizardry and they're instead Making A Wizardry. Oh well, can't win 'em all.

What does interest me, however, is finding out just how and from whom they've managed to license OG Wiz: one of the long-standing issues with that series is that, due to a contract between Sir-Tech and original co-creator Andrew Greenberg that may or may not still be in legal effect¹ , the first five classic Wiz games—that is, the games themselves but also many of the characters, enemies, spell names and other nouns—are in legal limbo, and any of the many games that have been perceived to encroach on the content of those original games have been hit with infringement notices.

Case in point: Wizardry: The Five Ordeals, a recent globally-released remaster of the 2006 Wizardry Gaiden title for PC, subtitled Itsutsu no Shiren:

This particular game is the final entry in a trilogy of games that succeeded the original ASCII-produced Wizardry Gaiden series that spanned Game Boy, Super Famicom and PlayStation; those original games were produced and developed by ASCII, and this successor series was essentially self-funded and produced by key members of the former ASCII team in an attempt to maintain a line of more traditional Wiz games during an era where other licensees were starting to get weird with it.

What's especially interesting about Itsutsu no Shiren is that they treated it like an engine first and a game second: the game shipped with am extremely substantial scenario editor, with the intention of ensuring that long-time fans would be able to continue to create and share their own scenarios that could lean into whichever elements of classic Wiz they most enjoyed—depending on which games/series one is used to, they might prefer ruthless battles, or super-intricate dungeons, or overarching puzzles, or character-focused scenarios, and the engine can recreate all of that in quite intricate detail, so it became a haven of user-created content. This new remaster lets you play the campaigns of the previous two games as DLC, even.

(The obvious downside is that the included scenarios are explicitly balanced for hardcore players, but the suite of user-made content is surprisingly varied and includes a lot of scenario packs that were explicitly intended as a bridge to the official scenarios for those who didn't want their teeth immediately kicked in; the devs have manually converted all the user-made content from their old servers for the new remaster.)

Of course, they've been very explicit about the stipulations of their editor—don't remake the original games, don't use any of the Sir-Tech content, don't import anything from other licensees, don't remake the original games—and players have, by and large, been very cautious not to attract unwanted legal attention. Did it work? In Japan: yes! Outside of Japan: it doesn't matter, because the remaster devs started getting legal notices the moment someone noticed they were offering a scenario editor. As of now, the editor still hasn't been officially released for the remaster, and the devs have in fact been forced to excise it from the main software and put together some sort of external browser-based editor in order to keep the main game safe. (Japanese players are beta-testing the external editor right now.)

The character/monster art posed further complications: primarily due to budget, this sub-series uses a lot of art licensed directly from Jun Suemi, the Japanese artist whose works defined the look of ASCII Wizardry and were directly adapted into pixel art for many of the original Famicom Wiz conversions. Now, most of Suemi's designs deviate drastically from those seen in the original Sir-Tech games, and Suemi themselves still has ownership over many of them, but if any of the rights holders of those classic Wiz games (which, to be clear, does not cover the ASCII ports) feel like kicking up a stink about them, they will, and finding the time and resources to shut them up can be a real inconvenience. It seems these folk have finally gotten them off their back, but their plans were derailed for a minute.

EDIT: the music's clearly based on FC Wiz, too...?

I do wonder, then, if the takeaway from the licensors on DE's remake is that Suemi's designs are open-season—a lot of those designs look like Suemi's (as put through the low-budget-Warcraft filter) and I wonder if it's going to cause them any problems, or if they're just winging it and figure nobody's going to notice or care... my hope is that it might be reflective of some sort of loosening of the rights, but until someone says something to that effect, I can't be so sure. Either way, just getting classic Wiz back in one form or another is a big deal, and I hope it leads to more classic reissues, a clear path to the resurrection of a lot of Japan's Wiz library and more breathing room for those looking to keep the series' legacy alive.

1. My basic understanding is that the current legal incarnation of Sir-Tech may still be on the hook for a ton of unpaid royalties to Greenberg and that any explicit reissue of the older games might force them to have to pay up, and that Greenberg himself doesn't necessarily believe that they'll actually pay him under any circumstance, so both parties are very active about screening for any unauthorised commercial continuation of those games.