This Week's Wizards

On 07/15/2023 at 10:50 AM by KnightDriver

Watched this 1983 one season bomb of a show called Wizards and Warriors and played a bunch of retro games and a few more modern ones.

Wizards and Warriors: Not the NES game but the 1983 tv show, a fantasy attempting to also be clever and funny. It is neither, but it did win (and almost win) awards for costuming and hair styling. I'd say, these are the silliest (and for me most entertaining) parts of the show, which was what I was looking for to begin with. This comes to fullest guffaws with the opposing wizards. Vector is the evil wizard (I wish he was a woman named Vectrex instead) who wears the most rediculous skull caps I've ever seen. Nicol Williamson as Merlin in Excalibur (1981) had a cool silver one. Clive Revillas as Vector does a great impression of Nicol's voice but his skullcaps? Ha ha. Here is the only photo I could find of one of his less rediculous ones, but I will endevour to take photos next week to prove this point more surely.

vector

Ian Wolfe plays Traquil, a good wizard that helps the heroes. His dialog is almost actually funny, but his hair, that is something to behold. He has so much white hair covering most of his body that he might be a relative of Cousin Itt from The Addams Family. I wish I could find a photo online right now but can't. I will, as with Vector, get some screen shots for next week. It makes me laugh.

Retro: I looked up a bunch of stuff and made this list of 80s games I played or want to play when I can get a copy.

Toon: The cartoon Role-Playing Game: This is a Steve Jackson game I discovered a few years ago that seemed to mesh perfectly with my current attitude in playing Dungeons & Dragons. It's avaialble as a PDF for free online which I may go print out. I love bringing silliness and outright irreverance to DnD these days. A Mad magazine version of DnD is what I would like to play.

Gauntlet, Spy Hunter, Commando, Gradius, Twinbee, and Sky Kid: I was able to play all of these on Xbox Series S through Midway, Capcom, Konami and Namco collections. My favorites are Twinbee and Sky Kid.

Advanced Squad Leader: This is the 1985 update of the Squad Leader board game I played all through my teenage years. I might have even had a copy of this at the time, but it's where I largely stopped playing board games. Only recently have I been reaquiring these things and trying to play them again.

And finally the regular plays:

Arcade Paradise: This is on Game Pass. I've been playing it a lot lately. You run a laundry business with a small arcade in the back. The object seems to be to make the arcade more profitable than the laundry so you can go full arcade with the business. At the beginning though, you do mostly laundry, which isn't too bad in itself really. You make money and use it to buy new arcade games. If you play the games between laundry duties you earn English pounds to use to buy upgrades like shoes to make you move faster or new records for the jukebox. The video games are all knock offs of popular arcade games but they aren't bad. I enjoyed playing them. My only gripe is that if I don't do the laundry right away, you get a lower ranking and less money. This reduces your game time, but, I guess, it fuels your desire to make the arcade succeed so you can quit doing laundry. I'm enjoying the game.

Forza Horizon 4: I randomly rolled a Game Pass game and revisited this. I played in the Lego expansion and actually accomplished a few challenges I didn't get years ago, even earning a few achievements. Who would've thought? Great game though. I'll try more.

EDF 2025: Discovered the DLC for this finally. How I missed it all these years is a mystery. There are three mission packs for a total of 45 new levels. I got the first one of 5 levels and played them all. Nothing particularly new so far but the other packs introduce some new bug types and gameplay changes. I played as my Ranger, assualt rifle and big boom rocket launcher equipped for every level. I even managed to beat some Hardest difficulty levels in the main game I hadn't beaten before on solo play. Weird, but a few slightly higher level weapons will make a big difference. My highest is level 65 so far. I've seen as high as 92 with other players. Would that I could get those.

Cary Woodham

07/16/2023 at 07:01 AM

Never heard of that TV show but my friend and I rented the NES Wizards and Warriors a few times. We beat it once.

I remember that Toon RPG, I've just never been able to get into that pen and paper stuff.

My brother Jeff LOVED Spy Hunter when he was little. He'd sit there and play it on one of my collections for hours. And he was like, five!

I really like SkyKid a lot. Only place I ever saw the arcade version was at the front entrance at the Wal Mart near my house when I was little. I would've played it more, but they also had a Super Pac-Man machine there so, you know. Very catchy music.

I wrote a blog about Arcade Paradise a while back that you might remember.

http://www.gamerdad.com/blog/2023/05/12/the-games-of-arcade-paradise/

KnightDriver

07/17/2023 at 01:59 PM

Apparently the show W&W was a CBS 1 hour special every Saturday for about 8 weeks. Easily missed and its ratings were low.

I don't know who I would play Toon with these days, but I like the idea so much, I want a copy of it. The original box is expensive and rare unfortuneately, so I'll probably print it out.

Sky Kid and Sky Kid Deluxe are really cool. I lost my copy of Namco Museum Virtual Arcade for Xbox 360 though which has Deluxe on it.

I read it again. I like the Woodgal Adventure game the best so far.

SanAndreas

07/19/2023 at 11:10 PM

Sky Kid has catchy music. There's a game on the Switch called Sky Skipper, which is sort of like Sky Kid, except that instead of being an automatically scrolling game you fly in all directions through a closed area. It was one of Nintendo's first arcade games.

Being able to play Spy Hunter on Switch would be nice, but WB Discovery doesn't care about Midway's old library. I'm stuck playing the Midway Arcade Treasures collections on GameCube.

07/21/2023 at 10:19 AM

Sky Skipper looks interesting and has a 2600 port too. I'll have to check that out.

Spy Hunter, regardless of the port, really needs a steering wheel and pedal. I can never get anywhere in it with a standard controller, but I used to really get into it on the arcade cabinet.

PixlBit