This magical game has you taking on the role of a brave space Worrior in a quest to slay the mighty Wizard of Wor. Armed with a unified-field- disturbance rifle, you’ll descend into a series of dangerous dungeon mazes. With tactical strategy, bravery, and bit of good fortune you might just survive the Wizard of Wor.

HEY! INSERT COIN!

That is just one of three idioms that the Wizard of Wor boldly states while sitting static. The attract mode also randomly spouts, “I’m out of spite, ha ha ha ha!” or “Find me… the Wizard of Wor.” In fact, the coin-op was quite the chatty machine. Revolutionary at the time of release, Wizard of Wor wowed game players with early speech synthesis. In fact, the Wizard rattled off a whopping seventy–one phrases, each correlating to a specific scenario. When a quarter was inserted into the machine, there were eight possible lines it could drop, including, “Another coin for my treasure chest.” In fact, each of the dungeons opens with its own line. Earn a bonus player… another of eight possible lines would be randomly spoken. The Wizard would certainly mock you when you died, and the GAME OVER banter wasn’t much friendlier! A few choice lines of dialogue from the game are featured in BOLD in this column as bumpers between content paragraphs for your amusement…

WORRIOR, WHILE YOU DEVELOPED SCIENCE, WE DEVELOPED MAGIC.

In a time when co-operative coin-op gaming was in its infancy, Wizard of Wor was one of the best. Players were meant to work as a team against the Wizard’s army. Since friendly fire was lethal, an accidental or missed shot often turned one player against the other, creating a whole new two-player dynamic! Don’t have any friends? That’s a-okay, as a computer controlled Worrior will enter the arena to try and aid you

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Michael Thomasson Michael Thomasson (63 Posts)

Michael Thomasson is one of the most widely respected videogame historians in the field today. He currently teaches college level videogame history, design, and graphics courses. For television, Michael conducted research for MTV's videogame related program Video MODS. In print, he authored Downright Bizarre Games, and has contributed to nearly a dozen gaming texts. Michael’s historical columns have been distributed in newspapers and magazines worldwide. He has written business plans for several vendors and managed a dozen game-related retail stores spanning three decades. Michael consults for multiple video game and computer museums and has worked on nearly a hundred game titles on Atari, Coleco, Sega and other console platforms. In 2014, The Guinness Book of World Records declared that Thomasson had “The Largest Videogame Collection” in the world. His businesses sponsor gaming tradeshows and expos across the US and Canada.  Visit www.GoodDealGames.com.