The family that slays together, stays together: Legacy of the Wizard | NES Works 119
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- čas přidán 26. 12. 2023
- Wow, another metroidvania-adjacent adventure from Brøderbund? And maybe Compile, but probably not? Yes, well, you'd already have expected this had you been watching Metroidvania Works. But all the same, Legacy of the Wizard belongs to one of gaming's longest-running lineages-Dragon Slayer-even if it has practically nothing to do with any other game in its series. Because the Dragon Slayer series is just like that.
This sprawling, complex adventure includes a number of notable elements, including the ability (or rather, the requirement) to play as five distinct heroes over the course of the journey; Soukoban mechanics in a side-scrolling action game; the NES's only Yuzo Koshiro soundtrack; and a password system that ended up being the only way most of us ever actually saw the final battle. A massive commitment and a daunting challenge, Legacy of the Wizard suffers from a few balancing issues and some startlingly hostile design choices. Nevertheless, it really stands out as one of the biggest and most interesting games on NES to date.
Production notes:
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NES footage captured from Analogue Nt Mini. Video upscaled to 720 with xRGB Mini Framemeister. "Before the Storm" courtesy of Jacob Le. - Hry
This game led to my one greatest joy from Nintendo Power. I wrote in asking a question about the mothers pass, and a month later I received a type written letter, fully explaining what I needed to do. The next month that question appeared in the counselors corner of the magazine. I thought that was pretty cool as a kid.
You're a celebrity!
That's pretty cool at any age
Because you were cool as a kid!
They sent me a map! When I wrote them a letter asking for help.
That's cool as shidt.
One thing I love is that the game provides what is essentially a tutorial character through Pochi. The low risk scenario gives the player time to familiar themselves with the game’s mechanics.
The problem is I never really got past that Pochi entry point at any time in the last 30 years
The Dragon Slayer series really is one of the most influential but underappreciated game series ever made. People just don't realise how important these games were to the development of gaming.
Also interesting trivia: the family in this game is NOT the Drasle family- that's just a portmanteau of DRAgon SLayer. They're actually the Worzen family, as revealed in the credits.
Got this for Christmas in 89, because i specifically asked for it. Holy shit, did i have absolutely no idea how to play this back then. Still resides in my collection, may have to revisit it with wisdom gained through age, and - let's face it, videos on CZcams explaining how the hell to play it.
That's how it is.
I dunno why I asked for this game. I had faxanadu, strider, ff1, etc, under my belt. I didn't even make a dent in this games armor. I kept going back to it over and over. Brick wall over and over.
Probably the only game I can recall (at least back in the day) where the final boss was viewable right in the beginning of the game and scared the shit out of me for some reason
Yep, I get what you mean. You get to the 4-way split path with the last boss just always lurking right there at the fork waiting for you the entire game. And it's a badass sprite too, one if the coolest looking dragons on the NES. Intimidation done very well.
Yeah this game used to scare me too for some reason lol. Still loved playing it though.
@@egocide9034His musical theme is pretty sweet too.
@@osurpless No doubt. Legacy of the Wizard's soundtrack in general is my personal favorite on the NES. At the very least, next to Zelda 2 and Mega Man 2.
Loved this game as a kid. It’s not too hard to beat if you put in the time exploring. The part that drove me nuts was finding the shield. Each of the 64 chambers has an inn and a shop. One chamber has only the inn visible. If you touch the inn’s sign, it turns into a shop, and that’s where the shield is.
One note: the original Ultima was a single-character affair. The Ultima series did not feature multiple party members until U3 in 1983.
This was one of those games that was amazingly complex in a wonderful way.
13:13 This channel has operated 0 days without a Tower of Druaga reference.
Druaga AND Sokoban. If only there had been a Xevious influence we'd have the trifecta.
And/or a Heiankyo Alien reference@@ryucross
Here it is, been waiting for this one... I have intense nostalgia for this game. The soundtrack is outstanding, favorite on the system. Anyone who's a fan of NES music and hasn't heard Legacy of the Wizard, seriously, go ahead and listen to any track. I'd recommend "All Together Now", personal favorite.
There's no other game I played so much with achieving so little. Had this as a kid and would sink hours into it.
This game also awakened my appreciation of game music independent of the gameplay. I would let the title screen idle to hear the BGM
I, in fact, did finish this game on my own, long ago. I don't think I have nearly the patience to do that now.
Also: KITTY WIZARDS
Your whole bit about the game's item generation closely mirrors what I wrote here, 2/3rds the way into the video. Fortunately I watched the rest before hitting the Reply button!
I would really like to make a Sorcerian-style party-based platformer, but instead of a focus on RPG elements, leaning into having each of the characters having different platforming properties. So, the highest jumper would be able to clear the highest walls, but the rest of the party would be left behind until some other means of progress for them was found. I have lots of ideas like that, which some people would call "bad," but I am convinced that a lot of community opinion about game design is just ancient internet carping that's gotten calcified into conventional wisdom....
An mud looking golem called Memes as well.
Told you they were dangerous!
I love love LOVED this game as a kid, even if I was never able to finish it. It was so colorful and so mysterious, and the assortment of characters just drew me in. I could be TWO different girls, AND a cute monster dog? FANTASTIC. Something about the whole experience kept drawing me back in to explore more and more, even if I couldn't fully puzzle my way on through. Learning that the music was by Yuzo Koshiro is wonderful and also makes perfect sense, the music is SO good, too. Man, I think I need to fire this up and give it a go with an adult's brain...
I loved it too. I rarely beat games as a kid so I didn't mind the obtuseness
I always wanted to like LotW, but I never could understand it.
One of my main confusions is that the solutions to the environmental and traversal puzzles never felt like "aha! This is what the developer intended". Instead, it always felt like I was cheating or tricking the game into allowing me to reach areas that I wasn't supposed to be visiting yet.
BTW great Metroid analogy.
I've been obsessed with the music from this game since I was a kid. I had no idea it was Yuzo Koshiro that composed it.
I think I rented this game once (without a manual, as was common at the time) and I was utterly baffled by it.
Oh man that's like baking something without a recipe
I owned it as a kid and I was still baffled by it.
Fond memories of this one. I initially assumed it was a poor game at the time, because I'd always see it in the discount bins and used game stores. I got extensive playtime on a copy eventually (rented or borrowed, can't remember) and at first definitely felt the obscure nature of it. But at some point it just clicked. I 'got' it, and how the systems worked together. Still hard, still lots of block pushing and manipulation, but ended up being a hidden gem to me. I have since gotten a copy but am a little afraid to go back to it, afraid of the nostalgia goggles. Other thing I remember is that there are cheat codes, but they were very complicated, requiring inputs on the second controller as well as the first. Normally meaning you needed rubber bands and toes to pull it off if alone. It also had super long passwords like Metroid and The Battle of Olympus. Good times. Thanks for the trip down memory lane!
Omg Legacy of the Wizard was brutal to play when I was 10.... Jesus.
A lot of fond memories of this game having an impossibly difficult time with the block puzzles and getting lost. Great video.
OK, in the Metroidvania Works video on Nihon Falcom, I didn't notice the "angry face" that Pocchi (sp?) makes when he attacks. It is now my new favorite thing.
Yes! One of my top five NES favorites. A forgotten gem, that deserves more credit. Would love to see this game or the series that it came from (Dragon Slayer) continued in the modern era.
"Next time on NES works we continue soaking in the Sokoban"
Has the time I've been waiting for since I've started watching for my namesake to be looked at? 😲
I used to rent this game as a kid because I loved exploring all the different areas!
One of my favorite things from this year was when Yuzo Koshiro liked a tweet of mine over the summer. (I got a like and a response on a different tweet from Chip Tanaka, which was also pretty cool.)
The "if you use magic to get gold, you'll get stuck in a loop where you get magic instead of gold" issue you're describing is easily overcome by way of what is low-key the single best item in the entire game: the spiked shoes. Equip them, and you can defeat enemies by jumping on them Mario-style, requiring the use of no magic whatsoever. Absolute game-changer of an item -- makes grinding for gold and keys quick and easy!
This is genuinely one of my favorite games of all time -- particularly the MSX2 version, which made a lot of quality-of-life changes from the NES version that allow for more balanced navigation of the maze, and even -- with a bit of finesse -- skipping the father's section altogether (by completing it with the son, of all people, making him actually SOMEWHAT USEFUL!).
No matter which version you play, though, this game is just an 8-bit masterpiece, as far as I'm concerned. They just plain don't make 'em like this anymore!
The MSX2 version is interesting, and while I don’t like Pochi’s new theme, I do enjoy the changes to Xemn and Lyll’s area.
Too bad there are no controller modifications for selecting items, as having to press the enter button to frequently switch between the Glove and Spiked Shoes was a bit trying at times…
@@osurpless Yeah, that's an issue with a lot of games on retro microcomputers, sadly. Almost every one of them settled on a 2-button controller, and while it's possible to drive everything in your game with a D-pad and 2 buttons with a little ingenuity (one need only look at how games like Fire Hawk and Psycho World did it), it's definitely a challenge for developers, and one that's not easily overcome.
@@Wyrdwad Yep, even pressing Up+A/B would’ve done the trick.
I love this game so much. I only played it with a Game Genie (infinite money and magic) but it was still such a rewarding challenge exploring the dungeon. It felt like my intro to a sandbox game like GTA. Where I would just kinda wander around just experiencing the world until I would find something cool. Zelda is a similar sorta open-world feel but that game did a better job with its clear goals. Whereas here, I eventually completed Legacy of the Wizard on my own by just wandering around, untying little parts of the knot and trying various things. So much nostalgia for this game.
One of my favorite NES games. Wonderful soundtrack and fun to explore. I’ve had this game since I was 8.
On the Gamefaqs NES board, Legacy of the Wizard saw so many "What game was this?" threads over the years, it was practically a meme. The giveaway was that they always mentioned a family, or playing as family members, including maybe a "dog". Seems like it's a game a lot of people have played, even if they don't necessarily remember it.
fyi the screen clearing item is the cross. the scroll increases player movement speed with multiple stacking together.
As a child, I wanted a game based on Captain N, and in retrospect, the exact sort of game I wanted it to be was Legacy of the Wizard, though probably less grindy in design.
Part of me feels like with enough retooling, one of the Wai Wai World games probably would have made a serviceable Captain N NES game
Legacy is still one of my favorite games from the old NES era. I lost so many hours just wandering in there as a kid, not really understanding what I was doing, playing my grandfather's copy in the early 90s. I picked up a cartridge a couple years ago, but haven't really had a lot of time for it so I've only managed to figure out my way through the daughter's area and found some key items for the mom and dad. It's left me curious about the rest of the Dragon Slayer franchise, since Nihon Falcom make two of my favorite franchises, the venerable but excellent Ys and the world spanning Trails.
I put more hours into this game as a kid than perhaps any other in my NES era, and yet never managed to finish it. A little more patience would have probably allowed me to break the wall and get the clear, but the fact that it has no save function and instead runs on an STUPIDLY long and complex password system (a string of 8 sets of 4 alphanumeric characters) that, for me, resulted in only about 25% of the passwords I wrote down successfully loading on subsequent sessions, meant that I would have to wait about 20 years to beat it. As an adult, I did eventually go back in for the W. It was kind of a bucket list item lol Alas, I fear my other white whales of Ninja Gaiden and Castlevania will likely languish in the halls of "unbeaten" for eternity.
I'll eventually give Legacy of the Wizard another shot but it's definitely neat that it appears to have been developed by Nihon Falcom themselves. Of course, Legacy is not the only Dragon Slayer game we'll see in 1989 for NES. And the possibility of Adventures of Lolo next episode is nice too.
Coincidentally enough I got this game for Christmas as a child along w/ my NES. I never really ever figured it out though.
It's insane how much ambitious tried to be on NES
I remember that Nintendo Power magazine. I read that particular issue many times over.
I was really glad to see the regular Wednesday video this week. I was afraid the bonus vids would shift the release cadence.
I rented this game a couple of times and I so wanted to get into it but I just couldn't. There was a lot to like but as mentioned in the video it was all just a little too opaque for me to truly enjoy at the time.
I don't think I actually ever beat that one, but I had fun messing around with it enough that I didn't mind.
I got this as a gift for middle school graduy, and definitely spent a few weeks with it. All of my summer break and even into fall of the next school year. It was so frustrating to spend 40 minutes getting deep into one path only to have a mimic take you out in one misstep. The fathers path was the worst with this. The pet could do that one, but couldnt beat the rock boss...i made sure to do that one last with the dad so he could use his strength. Half the game would be the daughter...her fetchquests to get most of the items, and then crown 1 and 2 so she could beat the weaker bosses. Mom on #3, and dad on 4. It was so satisfying to finally start using those crowns and take on the dragon.
I had so much fun with this game as a kid, i played many hours of it. Couldn't figure out how to beat it or what i was supposed to be doing but i loved trying to figure it out.
I loved this game as a kid. Didn't beat it. Didn't care. I could play as a monster and roam through a MASSIVE dungeon full of strange creatures and awesome music. I'd play for hours just to roam and explore.
Been waiting for this banger. Still love the music from this game. Thanks for doing the works Jeremy you're my hero.
I picked up this game somehow as a kid. It gives a great first impression and I still love the music, but it is damn hard and super cryptic. I never even got to, let alone beat, the first dragon.
damn. i was so lost but i loved the world, the music, the art style. i didnt get far in it but at least i had fun running around.
found this one in one of the compilations I got on the switch. and wow, where was this when I had a NES, it's surprisingly good, if flawed
From what I recollect, this is the game Nintendo Power hotline staffers most hated to receive calls about, as the callers inevitably started out by saying "I'm in a room with gray bricks."
A la Clerks:
“Do you have that one with that guy who was in that movie last year?”
One of my favorites and has one hell of a sound track I'll put on to vibe out.
I don't think I've ever seen this game. I definitely would have been obsessed with this as a kid though.
I wish I remember how I ended up with this game as a kid. I think I asked for it based on the cover alone. It was incredibly difficult for me at 8-9 years old.
This game was way, way, way beyond my 7 year old self when I played it.
I've been waiting for this one! What a great way to end the year. Love this game.
If there was ANY game that deserved to have some sort of fold out map included in the box, it was this one.
I tried to make a paper map and gave up after sheer frustration.
I still never beat it and I am wary to play it as it is great at sucking up vast amounts of time in a blink.
This is a title that I have seen many times since I was a kid, but I had no idea what kind of game it was until now.
around 2009 i rescued an nes and genesis tossed in a ditch, replaced the 80-pin connector at a local retro game store and picked up some games.
this and the guardian legend were among two of the ~8 or so pickups i got.
i grabbed this because sword and sorcery titles get me every time but i keep my expectations p low. so imagine my surprise at getting a super opaque but rather charming dungeon crawler (that i never got far into).
For a five year old obsessed with beating NES games. This game broke me mentally. I would play for hours completely clueless and lost.
I adore this one. It is however utterly inscrutable without the manual (or apparently Nintendo Power?) I didn't have any clue the family members had bespoke abilities, or dungeon areas, when I first played it for example. The contemporary expectation from games like TMNT or Mario 2 was simply that characters were each a little different but you could pick whomever and be fine. Not so here.
I've no idea if it's something younger folk would still get a kick out of nowadays but why not give it a shot. Once you understand what the game is asking of you, as Jeremy covers pretty clearly here, it really is quite the special little game.
After playing it on the Switch through Namco Museum Archives (go figure), Legacy of the Wizard is really fantastic as long as you have 3 QOL adjustments - use save states whenever, learn which family member goes which way ahead of time, and watch a youtube video on how to use the glove once you have it. It honestly made something once obtuse extremely fun and rewarding.
Imagine my struggle getting this game out of the blue on Xmas back in 89 😅it wasn't until I was an adult that I was able to finish it thanks to the internet
It’s the ability to save that really makes these games fun. People just don’t understand the frustration that we experienced without these luxuries 😂😂
Ppl shit on this game but my brother played it and i enjoyed wtching him. I was probably 3. I hadnt heard or seen this game since orobably the mid 90s, and just last year i watched some footage of a playthrough nd the music stopped me in my tracks.i couldnt bekieve how deep in my brain it was. Its like living in a house and one day you find a door thats always been there, and you never saw it or knew it was there.
somehow I could never find this game, I really wanted to have it back then
nowadays, things are different, I finally got to play it. Cool game!
I got this game for Xmas 89 out of the blue. I loved playing it and the music was always killer but I had no idea wtf to do. I rarely found any gaming magazines that had any info on it. I didn't finish it until I was an adult with a mostly modern internet 😂(still dial up)
is it just me or if these games were given a quick remake they could hold up very well today?
add a save feature, polish up the graphics slightly, maybe fix up a few mechanics and kick it out onto the app stores
Thank you for not making these into video essays.
You are a legend. Every video is gold!
Yuzo Koshiro, feels like I should know that name.
*Streets of Rage music intensifies.* Why do I feel the need to get down and boogie?
Everyone who’s a fan of gaming should…
His lesser known works like Half Minute Hero and The Scheme particularly.
This game was a weird love/hate for me. I found it wonderous, vastly satisfying with the adventure aspect... but the scope made it frustrating to figure out even with what little help an instruction book and small tidbits from Nintendo Power or any other tipbooks of the day with various levels of accuracy. Trying to map this was far more frustrating than Simon's Quest, and that was a nightmare to someone who was wholly unfamiliar with tabletop gaming or *needing* graph paper for anything but certain math homework at about 8-9 years old.
Even later in life, I tried to earnestly play through, and made it to the very end sequence where you're supposed to lead Rojas so the final battle, only to get confused and lost from the painting warp puzzle to the sword and never making it to the last boss. It was more mentally exhausting than I would have liked, and I tapped out. I eventually did finish few years back (as a supposed grown ass man) thanks to emulation and save states, but playing this through on console always seemed like a big ask... even if you use the big sound test & item cheat to cut out the grind/buy aspect.
Speaking of sound test, this game has one of the most underrated soundtracks of the entire NES library. While it doesn't contain any "certified classics" like tunes from Metroid, or the Megaman series, or even the individual themes of the kids from Maniac Mansion, none of them are boring. Hell, thanks to the sound test cheat, you can discover a few more good tunes that AREN'T EVEN USED INGAME ANYWHERE! There's enough soundtrack for a potential sequel just sitting as unused code on the cart.
Man, I played this as a kid a bunch and never got very far cause I couldn’t figure out what to do. Have good memories of trying though :)
Back when I still collected NES games I got a CIB copy for like 5$ and then fell in love with this game, I played nothing but it for nearly 2 months and I did eventually beat it. It's definitely one I'd recommend against using a guide for as most the fun is slowly teasing out the dungeon as a whole. I really enjoyed the fact that the dungeon feels like one giant puzzle but that also causes it to be less enjoyable on multiple play throughs other than going for the intentionally super opaque secondary path in the game that's faster to do once you know how but a lot harder to execute. I've been thinking about giving it another play through as it's been years since I last played it but if I do it's going to be on my Steam Deck via emulation as my actual NES needs repaired.
Somehow I came into possession of this game as a little kid, no instructions of course. I'm sure i have close to 100 hours on it and i dont remember even hitting a boss. Id just walk around as the dog thing since enemies didn't hurt him.
Such an awesome game, and an excellent review! Apparently there are some extra boss BGMs not used in the game, plus Pochi's theme is different for the Japanese version
Happy New year to this channel. 😀👍🎮
I had this and never had a clue about what to do or where to go.
Thanks to remember such great game but back in the day I just played the MSX1 and later the MSX2 port...
On Knightmare, I think you just played as Popolon, and Knightmare II: Maze of Galious added Aphrodite as the second playable character?! (heard konami tapped my favorite developers to do a remake and I'm just waiting to hear more on that!!)
anyway...
I do remember fondly trying to figure out the game in my youth, but certainly never finished it. More recently with the release of Namco's Famicom games on Nintendo Switch under the Namco Museum label, I was able to return to this one though Xemn's block puzzles still stymie me to this day! so someday I'll see it to the end, whenever I can get back around to it to figure out what the heck I'm doing there.
Poor Pochi looks so sad. He clearly didn't want any part of this adventure.
I owned this one as a kid and had a love hate relationship with it.
Exploring? Fun. Trying to deal with the password system? Less so.
I’ve had a better appreciation for it in the days of save states to where I can resume as needed rather than risk getting a password wrong or looking at my NES funny and having the 10NES chip randomly kill my progress through resets.
This is yet another in the line of “learn it yourself” NES games but not nearly as user unfriendly as, say, Friday The 13th or some of the cut and paste dungeons of Metroid
I still come back to this one occasionally, through the Namco collection or otherwise, so it certainly has legs 30+ years later.
I love the VHS look
Even though this is the version that I played years ago, I actually like the MSX2 version of Drasle Family, though. One of my favorite songs in this game is the title theme. I didn't know Falcom developed this NES port until I watched this video.
Great video as always 👍
My uncle had this game when I was a kid. I played it a lot but could never figure out what to do lol. Was far too complex for 6 year old me.
Legacy of the Wizard sounds a lot like indie darling Children of Morta.
Definitely had to make a few call to the Nintendo game counselors for this one. Not to mention using the 128 lives cheat code
I got this game for my birthday that Summer. I had never been more frustrated and confused in my life.
i hand drew every map on xerox paper and taped them all together in order to beat this game, which set an unrealistic expectation for every other game that followed
You only had to wait 20 years for La Mulana!
I’m interested in the rabbit hole of single player but controls multiple characters. The earliest I’m thinking of is Ghostbusters, or does it not count?
I played this to death as a preschool/kindergartner.
It was so cool, and I loved it. I keep learning about it to this day. I've gotta try it again someday.
Pochi is so cute
😂😂😂 I thought this was going to be a retrospective on the movie, the wizard.
Legacy of The Wizard got lots of dungeons.
Accidentally Alan Wake?
Wait a second, where did you find that "MSX2 Plus" title screen at 8:15?
As far as I know, there are only two DS4 versions, one for MSX1 and another for MSX2 and none have MSX2+ compatibly. I'm also not familiar with that "DRASLAY Family" spelling. Is it a fanmade hack?
It's actually a fan translation of the MSX2 version, the real title is DRASLE FAMILY, which is letters derived from DRAgon SLayEr.
@@starlightwitch12 Yeah, I know what Drasle stands for, I just didn't know there was a fan translation with a misspelled title and the video saying it's for the "MSX2Plus" made it even more confusing because there's no such version.
I tried so many times to enjoy this game but could never get into it. Maybe I needed the manual.
Lolo is next. I just bet.
Impressive job doing this with jank emulation controls. I can’t even imagine doing this like that.
No emulation here.
I’ll take the wizard!
God yes RPG episodes! please give me more of this!
Any spare copies (1) of the playstation retrospective book or a purchasable ebook/pdf?
It hasn't been made available for sale yet, so... no
Thank You for answering! @@JeremyParish
Huh, guess I was wrong on Compile solely developing the NES version, but maybe they did uncredited contract work?
Oh well, this is still a classic I hope Nintendo and Namco put out on the NES NSO app.
Nothing to do with Compile
Sorcerian => Dragon Slayer 5
Ah, THIS is what Blizzard copied (in Lost Vikings).
Yeah i still like Deadly Towers better