Wizard Of Wor

The player controlled characters are called Worriors. The elite monsters called worlings are known respectively as Burwors, Garwors and Thorwors. The bonus monsters are called Worluks and occasionally the Wizard also appears.

The game has a variety of mazes, most of which do not have names, but one of the later mazes is called "The Arena" because it has a wide open space between two walls. Another is called "The Pit" because it has no interior walls at all. The mazes all have different patterns.

There are three aspects of the game to look for. Firstly the maze is viewed as such from above, but the player character is not. This presents the appearance of the player literally 'walking' on the walls as if the maze was orientated vertically. Secondly although in two-player mode, both players work together to clear the mazes, but you score points for shooting your partner! Thirdly, shooting the Worluk before it escapes results in the next maze being scored at double points. Sometimes, after you destroy a Worluk, the Wizard will attack and continuously teleport quickly from one part of the maze to another while hurling lightning bolts. You must shoot the Wizard as quickly as you can whenever he makes a brief appearance near you.

The joystick has two contacts in each direction a direction contact and a movement contact. A light tap on the joystick will face you in a certain direction without moving the player. To move you just hold the joystick over in one direction.

NOTE: If anyone can reproduce these tricks/bugs on video tape, please send copy to Waleter Day of http://www.twingalaxies.com for validation. Thank you.

Depending on the ROM version of the game you have, you may be able to perform the following play for many hours:

During game play, if you are quick enough, with the power switch turn the game off and back on quickly and you will gain back all the players the game can hold: The limit is 16 players per left/right player. If the computer was playing the blue player, it will get back all 16 players. It does not matter which dungeon this is done in.

To make doing this easier, you can do the following: clear the dungeon of the worlings, then let the Worluk leave or shoot it. Then as soon as possible, take a shot for the Wizard before he appears. If you hit the Wizard before he appears, you freeze the game. The dungeon walls stay the orange sparkling effect and the sound is stuck on the sound of the players gun firing. Your players can not move but no more worlings or Worluks will appear and neither will the Wizard, so technically you have beat the game?! On old versions of this game, possibly the original ones, you can freeze the game after the Wizard appears/disappears several times. On later versions this procedure has to be done before the Wizard actually appears. And, yes, the computer player can freeze the game also. After freezing the game, turn it off and then back on quickly to regain all of your players as stated above. The left blue player can fire faster then the yellow player, so it is easier for the blue player to freeze the game. On old versions of the game this can be done seven or more times. On later versions, this can only be done three or four times.

Here are some bugs in this game:

• When the dungeon counter goes to 0 100 it will no longer count properly. The last digit will be correct, but the first digit will no longer be accurate.
• If you are very, very fast with shooting your gun, before the Wizard appears, and you hit the spot exactly where the Wizard was going to show up, you do what is called a pre-freeze, which is quite a spectacular event. Instead of freezing everything and going into the normal sequence, the sound goes crazy, the dungeon flashes black and white several times, but the players can still move and fire their guns. The dungeon then flashes the sparkling effect on the flashing black and white walls, the dungeon flashes a solid orange, then the dungeon flashes a sparkling orange walls. The players stop moving and firing and then the dungeon flashes black and white and the sequence stops. These are by far the most interesting effects that can happen in this game, although this is quite a rare occurance.
• If you survive to the 17th dungeon, the Wizard appears and stays on the screen for long periods of time. This is not for only part of a second, but around five seconds at a time, which is also quite a sight to see. He fires his lightning bolt every which way, until he kills a player, or a player shoots him in the dungeons that follow. From here, the Wizard's appearance time begins to shorten once again. He stays for long periods of time in the following dungeons: 18th, 43rd, 66th, 91st, 120st, 151st.
• The Wizard's line of fire is different from that of both players. You can line up in certain areas where the wizard will shoot at you, but can not kill you with his lightning bolts.
• The players can cancel each others shots and the Wizard of Wor's lightning bolts also.
• If you align your player up properly and in the right area, the worlings and the Worluk have to push you back/forward into a corridor/space to kill you by shooting you or running you over. This applies to the Wizard also, if he does not shoot you or appear on top of you first.

The power supply and PCBs are mounted on a tray that slides forwards and is accessable from the front of the cabinet.

The cocktail is a standard Bally Midway cocktail from the era. However, Bally Midway did a very strange thing for this game: the monitor is rotated 90 degrees from how it is normal viewed on the upright a person playing the upright sees the monitor horizontally oriented a player sitting at the cocktail sees the monitor vertically oriented. So basically, on the cocktail, you have to play the game sideways!

Shares a great deal of technology with Gorf. For instance, you can place the Gorf RAM/ROM board in the game and see, but not play, the game. The common features include the power supply, board slots, pattern PCB, CPU PCB and RAM PCBs.

The Wizard of Wor hardware included the Votrax SC-01 phenome speech chip, also found in voice modules available for the Commodore 64. It used a series of commands to create the Wizard's voice by combining the sounds into words.