Wizard and the Princess: An Iconic Adventure Game | Video Games Over Time

Welcome back. My name is ballerscuba.  This is Video Games Over Time. We are still in 1980. Today, we’re going  to talk about Wizard and the Princess. Our story starts back at On-Line Systems. We  previously talked about On-Line Systems in our Mystery House video. Capitalizing  on the success of Mystery House, Ken and Roberta Williams began  work on their next adventure game. The inspiration for this game came from the fairy  tales that Roberta Williams would read as a child. Roberta came up wit

h her own land,  kingdom, and plot for the game. On the technical side, Wizard and the Princess  is a big improvement over Mystery House. The game features color graphics, making  use of the Apple II’s capabilities. But, because the Apple II can only  display six colors simultaneously, Ken Williams was able to program the  illusion of more colors on the screen through dithering. Dithering is done by  placing colors next to each other, allowing the human eye to blend the colors together  to creat

e a new color in the viewer’s mind. Wizard and the Princess: Hi-Res Adventure #2, is a graphical adventure game, similar to Mystery  House, released in 1980 by On-Line Systems for the Apple II. For the plot of the game, we will  turn to the back cover of the game. It reads: You are a happy wanderer passing through a  village in the land of Serenia when you notice a large crowd. Being a curious wanderer,  you saunter over to see what is going on. From the middle of the chaos  you hear a bell ring

ing. As you get closer, you see the town cryer  with a proclamation from the King of Serenia. “HEAR YE” “HEAR YE,” he cries. “His Majesty  King George has just suffered a terrible loss. His fair daughter, the Princess Priscilla, has  been abducted by the great and dreadful wizard, Harlin, to his castle beyond the great mountains.” The crowd is now hushed, waiting to hear more.  The town cryer then shouts, “His Majesty offers half his kingdom to anybody who can bring the  princess back safely.” T

hat is all he has to say, but it leaves you shaking. Not only are you a  happy wanderer, but you love an adventure as well, and half a kingdom is a great reward. You decide  to find her. But where are the great mountains? As you look around you see no mountains.  Just a vast desert that seems never to end. You ask a villager where the great mountains are  located, and he points to the north and tells you, “there are a great many dangers  on the way to the great mountains, and the Wizard Harlin i

s very powerful and bad.” You thank the villager for his  information and start off to the north. As you enter the desert, you check your  belongings. You are carrying a flask of water, a small knife, a loaf of bread and a  blanket. Not much for such a long journey, but it would have to do, for you have  no money. And so, you are on your way… With the game now properly introduced, it’s time  to play Wizard and the Princess for ourselves. and here we are in the game as you can see the game has to

load we are in the wizard and the princess though you are in the village of serenia around you as a desert enter command so as you can see everything is going to be very similar to how it was in mystery house but in this game we are going to have color as you can see there's a lot of dithering going on so everything kind of is the same color but not because of the spacing of the colors we'll see that as we continue you see that the apple ii has to actually draw everything sometimes line by line

but let's get into it let's play wizard and the princess uh we are gonna start by heading south and everything's gets drawn you are lost in the desert already i am lost hooray yeah the desert is an easy place to get lost uh you can see there's kind of a rock on the screen that rock is important however every rock except for one is going to have a scorpion behind them and we need to find something else so it's going to take us a little bit of wandering around the desert to find that one rock tha

t does not have a scorpion we're going to start by going south for a second time and we're going to still be in the same desert notice that there's no rock this time though so it's a different screen then we need to go east and there we are again and they drew the rock at the end that must mean it's important let's head south all right we're we're doing all right here and then we will head east and there's another rock this time and we will go south now this will take us to the screen that we wa

nt to go to i should point out that once again this is not the original version of the game this is a later 1987 release but it kind of just kicks me right into the game so it's the game you're just gonna have to believe me on that one for now though um well obviously we're in serenity so it must be right uh here we want to get the rock this is the rock we want to get so we went south twice east south east and south and that's how you get to the right rock this is the only clue that they give yo

u on the manual is that look behind the rock one of them doesn't have a scorpion basically is what it tells you but we get the rock here and we're still lost in the desert but no scorpion came out to kill us hooray now we need to try to get out of here so north it's going to take us a little bit to load everything west we're going to go north twice and hopefully we'll find something interesting there we do it's a giant snake it just says you are in the desert but we're not lost in the desert any

more that's new we're gonna throw the rock you hit the snake on the head with a rock and kill it hooray let's go north again and then we're gonna drink our water yeah it says you'd better drink some water so we're gonna drink our water we did have it on us but now our flask is empty that's probably a problem let's head east from here and here we can find a stick i'm gonna get that stick that stick looks useful to me now whenever we encounter a rattlesnake i can use the stick to make it go away o

r well you know to kill more snakes let's head north from the stick we're still in the desert there's a lot of desert going on here we'll head west and here we can find something on the ground there's a locket here let's get the locket that's probably important for something we're starting to think like adventure game players if they give you something it's probably important so grab it every time let's head west from here and there's a note here um can i just read the note or are you gonna have

to make me pick it up read note you don't have it there's a note here all right get note read note there's some strange writing on the note you are in the desert i did say read not look can i look at the note is that going to be different well i mean at least they let me look at it um well hold on to that for now to me it kind of says nulud but i don't think that's a word it's not um from the the note we want to head south and here's another snake oh no it's trapped on a rock let's get the rock

it'll be nice to escape wow it beeped at me when you remove the rock from the snake's tail the snake looks at you and says i am the king of the snakes and to repay you i will give you uh not that button enter enter i hit space and that didn't do it and to repay you i will give you a magic word hiss then he leaves you are in the desert apparently don't hit spacebar hit the enter button doesn't understand that okay from here we want to head south we have a magic word we also have a very buff look

ing cactus then we want to look at the hole i mean there's a hole there so let's take a look at that what do we have in here there's a cracker here that's weird but we're gonna we're gonna get it we're gonna follow the rules if you give it to me i'm gonna take it hooray we have a cracker we're saved let's go north and we'll go north one more time i mean we're seeing different screens oh no there's a rattlesnake here you'd better watch out use the stick that's why we got it you hit the snake on t

he head with the stick and drive it away so we don't kill it but we make it go away we're more humane now that we advanced from rock technology to stick technology i've already forgotten where i was i think we need to head west from here and then north does that take me where i need to go it does this is the cab cow chasm there we go i want to say cavern for whatever reason you're at the south edge of a deep chasm there's a cottage and some woods on the other side well let's see what i can do um

they gave me the magic word right let's try that hiss you suddenly turn into a snake you're at the south edge of a deep chasm there's a kaiju that's probably not what i wanted to do can i turn back nothing happens can i say the magic word now hocus all right then we'll head north am i and i've changed back into myself again so using his didn't do anything bad for me um you're at the north edge of a deep chasm there is a bridge spanning the chasm hooray we made out of the desert plus i know i ca

n turn into a snake so that'll probably be useful at some point yeah hocus is the magic word there um you we're going to be back to magic words that we used in colossal cave adventure but yeah that's the first one all right so in the woods we want to go north there's a little gnome here i don't know how little that is but we'll let him ooh he's purple like even his skin color is purple um we'll let him finish drawing in and i kind of regret that uh look the little gnome grabs some of your things

and runs away with them you're in the woods i don't like gnomes gnomes are tricky let's head east from here and then we're going to ignore that hole and go north and here you're in the woods there is a bank with a small crevice in it this is where it's useful to turn into a snake then we can go whole go hole and that leads us into a small little tunnel here oh that is a loud beep you're an underground tunnel there is a small crevice going to the outside here sunlight is coming in through the cr

evice well there's only so much we can do here uh let's head south that's the direction that we're actually facing here the directions change on you a lot in this one you're an underground tunnel there's just enough sunlight coming through the crevice to see we'll head south again you've changed back into yourself again so it lasts what two turns right same things we want to go south a third time you're in an underground tunnel there's just enough sunlight coming in through the crevasse of sea t

here is a little door here all right well he uh seems to have dropped my stuff this is very important i need my bread all right we started with that loaf of bread that's what the intro gave us there's a little door here again then we can get the cracker i don't know how i'm going gonna deal with the beeps here i might just turn it down so you guys don't think i'm crazy but part of me says just to mute this whole thing all right then we'll get the locket all right once we have all that we can un

lock the door okay the door is unlocked then we can open the door once again everything's a bit of a process here gonna beep with me again aren't you yep nothing new either you just beep at me to beep at me all right let's head south and we're inside you're at the bottom of the stairs there's a little door here let's see what do i want to do here i've lost my spot um then we want to go up that's the way we want to go you're inside a tree there are stairs leading downwards there's a hole leading

outside uh let's go to the hole go hole and we made it back to the woods see that's the hole that we kind of ignored earlier but we got our stuff back and we cleared the gnome i guess you could say he stole our stuff we got it back and now we're fine and we're not going to deal with him anymore uh let's head nor or sorry east we'll head east first and then we'll head north you're in the woods there is a parrot sitting on the tree well that must be what paulie wants let's give paulie a cracker th

e parrot eats the cracker and is very grateful he sets you a vial of liquid on the tree branch he sets a vial of liquid on the tree branch for you there is a vial here you are in the woods there is a parrot saying a tree all right well we're nice they're nice back let's get our reward we got ourselves a vial all right nothing new there so let's move on we'll head south yeah you kind of need to map this out as you go if you're playing this for the first time uh we'll head west then west again and

then we will head south no north all right there we go you're in the woods there is a babbling brook here so then we're going to get the water your flask is now full of water you're in the woods there's a babbling brook here all right so then we can head south and west and there's a lion things are not going good on this adventure that's not normally the color of a lion you're at the edge of the woods you see the ocean well i should probably deal with the lion that you didn't mention first so w

e're gonna give bread to the lion the lion wolfs down the bread and then walks away you're at the edge of the woods you see the ocean the lion wolves does it okay once that is done we can pass by heading north and here we can make it to the beach there is a rope here you're at the edge of the ocean on a beach there is a row boat here well rope is vital to everything so let's get a rope those are always going to be good nothing new there so then we can go on to the boat there's a hole in the boat

well there we go our plans of escape no there's a there's a hole in the boat you're in the rowboat on the beach okay um do i do i have that use blanket you stuff the blanket into the hole let's hope it works you're in the robot on the beach i don't remember them saying that i had a blanket but i've had a blanket apparently and gnome didn't take it i don't remember getting it any other time either but hooray we had a blanket i mean honestly is there like an inventory thing here flask of water a

stick a pocket knife a note a large rock a locket a full vial a rope so apparently if i had done that i would have known that i had a blanket but that is weird because i don't remember picking that up at any time all right so once we have plugged the boat let's head north in our boat we're in the middle of the ocean that's good hopefully the blanket can just absorb the whole ocean as we go we're going to go north again you're hot and thirsty i think he would better drink some water luckily i hav

e that so we'll drink some water that's much better now your flask is empty you're in the middle of the ocean remember don't drink seawater uh we're gonna head north there was a little island there but it's kind of moving over there so let's head east still over there east and east one more time and we've made it to another island you're on an in a row about on the beach of an island let's go to the beach that gets us off the boat as everything draws in for me you are on a beach on an island i'v

e gathered that there's also an x there that you don't seem to want to mention let's head north ah there's a path here you're in the jungle of the island the path goes north and south we'll go north again then okay well there's more going on here there's a tree house up in a large tree a path goes east and south i honestly did not think it was a tree house i thought it was just a house behind a tree so good thing they described that to me um did i i went north twice right so let's go east there

we go there is an anchor here that's what i'm looking for we're probably going to need that here on the beach on the island let's get that anchor then we'll head back west and that takes us back to the tree house thing we're going to tie the rope to what that is a good question uh you're in the jungle of now then there's a large treehouse in a large tree uh a path goes east and south but remember that they're asking us what to tie the rope to so we have to type in two anchor the anchor is tied t

o the rope you're in the jungle on the island there's a tree yeah all the same stuff so we have tied it then we're gonna throw the rope the rope is thrown over the branch hooray now we can you know probably climb up that that sounds good let's go up this is a very fancy looking tree house you're in the tree house not gonna mention what we have there give me the shovel and then we can head out that is what we needed from here let's head south a couple times we got our shovel using an anchor adven

ture game logic it it makes sense in the moment but as soon as you take a step back it's very strange but we have moved south twice now we're back to the beach let's dig on that x you have uncovered a treasure chest hooray we got a thing there it is it took a while to load you have uncovered a treasure chest you're on a beach on an island well let's open that up a pirate jumps from behind a tree shiver me timbers trying to steal my treasure he grabs the chest and runs you're on a beach on an isl

and so anticlimactic after what happened uh he ran away let's chase him east he didn't they didn't say where he ran but he ran east uh then we can go north and we can go west and here we can find a cave there's a cave here in the middle of the island the path goes east let's go into the cave and we have ourselves that treasure chest let's open it you're in a cave the cave ends right here they don't tell me anything really all that descriptive look in the chest there's a small harp here we risked

our lives for a small harp i'm gonna get it all right we got that so let's head out of the cave that would be north then we can head east then we can head north again and i think yeah i'm i'm moving along here all right so you're on a beach on the island uh once we get here we want to drink the vial when you drink the liquid your arms when you drink the liquid your arms turn into wings you're in a beach on an island well that's a little unexpected let's head north and we fly you're on a beach y

eah we're gonna go north again you have changed back into yourself again there is a beautiful sapphire ring here once it loads you're in the foothills hooray the foothills let's get that ring that's probably going to be useful for something we're just in the foothills all right let's move north how you doing who is this uh you are in the mountains there is an old peasant woman here talk woman can i do that she warns you of the giant who lives in the mountains she doesn't seem too friendly but at

least she's given me useful information um we want to go west there is a slight drizzle and there's a rainbow you're in the mountains uh let's go toward the rainbow there's a gold coin here at the end of the rainbow i knew it let's get the coin is the leprechaun gonna get me now the sun came out i stole a coin and the rain went away hooray let's head north you're at the east edge of a deep gorge there is a rickety bridge crossing the gorge i don't think it can hold much weight so here's a kind

of a command that you can use to get rid of everything right enter first uh lucy everything you are carrying disappears you have nothing left hooray let's head west and we crossed it thanks to the fact that we had no weight additional weight on us i should say we're at the west end of a deep gorge we'll head west again and then we'll head north here in the mountains there's a cave here let's go into the cave and all my inventory is here that is a lot of inventory you're in a cave it ends right h

ere all right so what you can do here is get all and just pick up everything hooray let's move north out of the cave yeah lucy just moves all your inventory there south there's some magic words here that's always fun west again and here we can encounter a giant you're in the mountains no no nothing about the giant here um what we can do is play the harp i swear i never make these typos when nobody's watching all right the giant is a great lover of music he thanks you for the harp and leaves with

it i didn't say give harp i said play harp well i had to show it off first i guess you're in the mountains hooray we can now move forward let's move move north move north again there is a peddler settling wares for one gold coin each how lucky for me that i have one gold coin you're in the foothills on the north side of the mountain all right so there's a lot of things here some of it looks more useful than others the one that we want is the horn by the horn i know that one didn't look particul

arly useful but you knew it wasn't going to be the knife right that one looks far too useful that can't be the one that that we need let's move north away from the peddler hey there's a castle here you're in the foothills on the north side of the mountains you see a castle in the distance let's head toward it you are in front of the castle there is a moat around the castle full of crocodiles where did you get crocodiles in this kind of european style whatever it's a thing uh we'll play the horn

and they've lowered the drawbridge for us in front of the castle there's a moat around the castle full of crocodiles but the crocodile disappeared it doesn't like drawbridges let's move north and we will head into the castle oh we're making progress today you're in the entry hall of the castle there are doorways to the north west and south which is behind you that's nice of them to to tell us all right we're going to start by heading north you're in a maze of passageways passages go south and we

st hooray we're already lost in a maze let's head west uh passageways goes north east and west will go west a second time uh passages go east and west we'll go west a third time all right maze of passageways passage passages go north east and west will go north this time an amazing passage as i go east and south um we'll go east once uh this time they go east west and south we'll go east a second time i have to say this not only to keep track but uh in case anybody's trying to follow along all r

ight passages go north and west we'll go north once then passages go in all directions uh we'll go north a second time all right passages go west and south we'll go west and then we'll go north and then we will go east once twice three times all right we've made it you're in a small empty room there's a passage behind you we're going to use the knife that we've had since the beginning to pick the lock yeah that's what we use the knife for you pick the lock you're in a small empty room there's a

passage behind you we're going to open the door and then we're going to head east all right we're making progress we made it through the maze that's something you were in a short hallway let's climb up the stairs you're in a tower there are stairs leaning down well let's go down the other side well actually no we didn't go down the other side we went down the same way you're in a short hallway let's go up this is actually what we need to do though hey there's something here this time you're in a

tower there are stairs leading down this is one of the things uh there's so many things in this one a rub ring things that like i don't know how you figure out on your own you know what i mean but this time we're gonna rub the ring you turn into a cat leap up and eat the bird you are yourself again you're in a tower there are stairs leading down okay let's head down i turned into a cat i ate the bird i turned back to normal there was a point to that yes yes there was we'll head down now we can

go east and here's a giant frog well it's just a normal frog really but there it is you're in a tiny room so what do you do you kiss the frog the frog becomes a princess there's a princess following you i've never heard of kissing a frog to turn into a princess i've always heard it being the prince but you know what i enjoy the the change of pace here a bit uh yeah if you didn't catch the bird um kissing the frog would not have turned her into a princess so there's that all right let's head east

from here and the princess is continuing to follow me which is nice you're in an east hallway uh we'll go east one more time princess is following me but she's not just on the screen here there's a room with the closet well let's open the closet see who's waiting to come out of there you're in a room with a closet look at the closet why why aren't you showing me anything in the closet it's very suspicious there's a pair of shoes here there's a princess following you you are in a room with a clo

set no i'm in the closet right now uh we're gonna get the shoes we're going to wear the shoes um okay so now we have them on does the princess say anything about this no way we can't even talk to the princess no so once again we're going to use a magic command here and that would be woosh you're transported to serenia there is a princess following you it just saves us so much time uh let's head north oh you're transported to serenia there's a princess following you you're in the village of siren

ia around you as a desert i'm gonna head north congratulations you have safely returned the princess to serenia for this outstanding feat you have been declared a junior master adventurer hooray we did it green valley publishing thanks you for playing the wizard and the princess you're in the village of serenia yeah this this particular version is green valley publishing but it's the same game all right so we have done it i think the game just starts over that's all we get that is the game WIth

the game now played, it’s time to  talk about how the game holds up today. playing the game today is a little weird of course it's going to feel dated having the computer load each and every screen so the technical achievement of turning in a full color game in 1980 obviously isn't going to bear as much weight as it did then playing it now uh so it's hard to kind of look at that and go hey that's great there's color uh because the color is very clearly dated it looks old um so it's hard to say t

hat this is a good game to play today it's an interesting game to play for sure but would i say that i had a lot of fun playing it probably not there was a lot of waiting that i had to do um just the technical aspects of the game were a lot of a detraction for me as i went through the game then of course there is just the core gameplay of the game which is very similar to things that we have played before we have played colossal cave adventure we've of course played mystery house i would even um

lump in adventure kind of into this as a game that is an example of this style of game um but really if we're just looking at colossal cave adventure and mystery house i would say this one although much harder is not necessarily harder because there are puzzles to figure out it's just kind of more random and you just kind of have to guess and hope um i don't know if anybody would think to rub a ring maybe you could wear a ring maybe somebody tells you to rub the ring that kind of thing just kin

d of keeps happening in these games it's starting to become a style of roberta williams to have kind of obscure things to put a stop in the player's progress it's not necessarily a difficult thing to figure out as much as it is just i don't know what to do you haven't given me any clues i guess i'll just type in random phrases and hope that it works you know you come across a door and i don't know how many people are going to think i can uh lock pick it with a knife but that's what you have to d

o um plug a hole in a in a boat with a blanket um i can almost guarantee you that that would not work for the um for the robot i have looked over my notes and it does say that we actually do have that blanket when we start but i just didn't remember it just didn't seem important and so it was lost and then you know for me the the rowboat blanket thing it's obvious that it wouldn't work to me there's no such thing as as far as i know as a waterproof blanket you know i always picture blankets as s

oft and cuddly and that's not going to help you plug a hole in a boat but maybe it's a different kind of blanket than you know i'm used to but they didn't describe it at all um for me there were a lot of issues like that in the game and although it was still interesting for me to play of the games that we have played of this style i would argue that this is among my least favorite if not my least favorite of the bunch but it is important because of what happens afterwards so if you are intereste

d in what happens afterwards with this game then this is something that is uh worthwhile to play or at least worthwhile to watch but is it recommended that i um say that you should play this game i would say no i don't think that this is a game that most people would want to go back to and for those that are interested in what happens afterwards probably a brief summary of the plot is good enough but overall that's kind of where my thoughts are is that it's not necessarily worth going back to wi

th the exception of um the plot of the game which is this is the first game that we've had with plot so i have to give it some credit but it's a very uh generic and basic plot um the first one that we've actually played through the plot instead of just kind of it exists and then it's not relevant to the game at all like adventure where it's just there's a there's a wizard and go get the things and bring them back okay same with colossal cave adventures go get the things and bring them back techn

ically this one is go get the thing and bring it back but at least it's somewhat of a plot as to why we have to get those things so i'm gonna consider this one the first one with a plot so i have to give it some bonus points for that but from a modern standpoint um the the plot is almost non-existent and so it's hard for me to recommend this and that is my modern review When Wizard and the Princess was released,  just like Mystery House, it was released in plastic bags with the floppy disk and t

he  instruction sheet. Also like Mystery House, Wizard and the Princess proved to be  a success. By June 1982, the game sold 25,000 copies, becoming one of the better-selling  games of the time. In total, the game would sell 60,000 copies, the first game with  full-color graphics to sell that many copies. Once again, reviews of the game at the  time of release are hard to find. But, once the reviews did start trickling in, the  reviews were positive. The reviews approved of the graphics and the

theme, although the difficulty  of the game was seen as high and frustrating. With now two hits on their hands, Ken and  Roberta Williams would continue to work on computer graphical adventure games and we will  continue to follow their careers as we continue. The game’s lasting impact would be one that is  important, but is largely forgotten. The land of Serenia and the plot of Wizard and the Princess  would influence future games by the couple, but we will talk about that  more when we get to

those games. That will do it for the story of  Wizard and the Princess for now. My name is ballerscuba. This  has been Video Games Over Time. Thank you so much for watching and I hope to see  you in our next video, when we go on the defense.