Wizardry Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord is the start to a classic franchise that is seemingly lost to history. What was once a leader in the role-playing game (RPG) genre is now all but forgotten by most gamers. That is if they knew it at all in the first place. The WonderSwan Color is a portable by Bandai that never left Japan. Those brave enough to import a Wizardry title know that most have an English option. It is often buried in the Japanese menus, but it is there. This translation patch fixes that by giving you a fully translated copy of the game.

Wizardry is a gaming legacy

First introduced to gamers in 1981 Wizardry Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord was unique. It found moderate success on the Apple II computer and then later platforms. You are tasked with creating a party of up to six adventurers before embarking on the story.

There is only one dungeon in Wizardry Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord. Do not let that throw you off though as there are ten levels in that single dungeon. Like Alternate Reality: The Dungeon, also sporting one multilevel dungeon, you are going to have your fight here.

Wizardry is no walk in the park.

Wizardry Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord has gotten around

There are tons of ports for this Sir-Tech Software role-playing game. From DOS to Commodore 64 and even the Nintendo Game Boy, the ability to play has been there. Another fan translation patch, this time for the Super Nintendo, saw the original trilogy of Wizardry titles translated. This was accomplished due to Japan getting a single cartridge that contained all three original games.

Much like that fan translation for the SNES trilogy, additional fixes were made. The English option in the standard game contained a lot of grammatical errors. Those, and other problems, are fixed in this fan translation.

On the WonderSwan Color we get the first game since there is no trilogy release on one cartridge. That is fine because we also see a slightly different version of Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord. For one, this version is portable. Second, there are slight graphical differences between WonderSwan and Super Nintendo versions. Nothing that would warrant a fan skipping one for the other if we are talking the first game.

This is an old school RPG. There is no tutorial, no getting started guide, or similar hand holding here. You create a party and are thrown into the thick of things – the deep end if you will.

If you want to grab a copy of the translation, then head over to ROMHacking.net and grab it. I cannot link to the ROM file though as that is illegal.

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Carl Williams

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