Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord for Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)

Delve into the challenging depths of a sprawling dungeon in Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord for the Nintendo Entertainment System, a console adaptation of the influential PC role-playing game. This pioneering dungeon crawler tasks you with assembling a party of up to six adventurers, selecting from various races (like Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes, and Hobbits) and classic RPG professions (Fighters, Mages, Clerics, Thieves, and even advanced classes like Samurai, Lords, and Ninjas). Your quest, issued by the Mad Overlord Trebor, is to descend through ten treacherous levels of a labyrinthine dungeon, filled with monsters, traps, and secrets, to defeat the evil wizard Werdna and retrieve a stolen amulet. The game is renowned for its demanding first-person, grid-based dungeon exploration, strategic turn-based combat, and unforgiving difficulty that requires meticulous mapping (often on real-world graph paper!) and careful party management.

Key Features:

• Classic First-Person Dungeon Crawling: Navigate a labyrinthine dungeon from a first-person perspective, moving one square at a time.
• Party Creation and Management: Recruit and customize a party of up to six adventurers with diverse races and classes.
• Strategic Turn-Based Combat: Engage in tactical battles against various monsters, utilizing spells and physical attacks.
• Permadeath and Risk: Face the threat of permanent character death, adding high stakes to every dungeon delve.
• Deep Character Progression: Level up your party members, improving their stats and unlocking new abilities and spells.
• Resource Management: Carefully manage your party's health, magic, and inventory for extended dungeon expeditions.
• No Auto-Mapping: The game famously requires players to map the intricate dungeons themselves, adding to the challenge and immersion.

Metadata:

• Genre: Role-Playing Game (RPG), Dungeon Crawler
• Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)
• Developer: Game Studio (NES Port), Sir-Tech (Original PC)
• Publisher: Nexoft (NA), ASCII Corporation (JP)
• Release Dates:
  • Japan: December 22, 1987
  • North America: July 1990
• ESRB Rating: Not Rated (Predates ESRB)
• Mode: Single-player