Wizball

The action of Wizball takes place in the once brightly colored kingdoms of Wizworld, which the villain Zark deprived of flowers, turning into a boring and gray place. Wizard ( Wiz ) and his cat Nifta ( English Nifta ), who play for Wizball ( Eng. Wizball ) and Catelaita ( Eng. Catell ) ^[5], should return to their former beauty.

Wizball is a side scroller inspired by the game Gradius (outside of Japan known as Nemesis ) ^[6] , but offers more dynamic gameplay. Over eight levels, the player explores the landscape and shoots enemies. However, the main goal of the game is to search for drops of paint in order to restore color to the magical world. At the beginning, objects on the map are drawn in three shades of gray. The main goal in each kingdom level is to search for red, blue and green ^[7] . Between stages, a player who takes the form of a green ball can move using portals. At first, only the first three levels are available, but after the completion of each of them, access to the following ^{[8] is} opened. The object of the player’s search is jumping spheres of different colors. They are broken into colored drops that need to be collected. Each kingdom needs to be painted in special shades of color, composed by collecting a certain amount of red, blue and green drops. At higher levels, the paint spheres begin to shoot themselves, making achieving the goal more difficult. Eight colors are available in total: in addition to three for coloring, five more give the player special opportunities: invulnerability, extra lives, calling for help, plunging the world into darkness and a mutant cat. The last two effects are negative, and the droplets causing them should be avoided.

Wizball itself is not able to collect droplets of paint and at first it is very limited in its movements, being able to only jump up and down at a given frequency and rotate at different speeds. This determines how fast the ball will move after the next touch of the earth. Green bubbles fall out of certain types of enemies, collecting which the player receives tokens to buy improvements, for example, to increase the ball's handling or the power of shots. With their help, you can also call an assistant - Katelaita ^[9] . Cathelite, like Wisball, is a ball, but smaller, and follows Wisball everywhere. He can move on his own, but when controlling the Catelight, control over Wisball is lost. Catelight knows how to collect droplets of paint, which makes it necessary for passing levels. Wizball allows you to play together, then the second player controls the Cathelet.

In a 1987 interview, game developers said that work on Wizball began before Parallax , although the latter came out earlier. Priority was given to Parallax , because it was possible to solve the problem of asynchronous background scrolling used in this game. It was also important for the team to show new ideas in the usual way and make themselves known in the game world ^[10] .

Later, in an interview with Retro Gamer magazine, John Hare said that he was inspired to create Wizball by Nemesis (the original name is Gradius ), as well as Salamander ^[11] , and the original concept was to create a hero ball and a way to control it. The storyline was invented later ^[6] . The idea of ​​level coloring was suggested by the Commodore 64 monitor device, which had a button for switching from monochrome to color mode. In general, the game was created without a plan: ideas appeared, were implemented, and either were abandoned or forgotten ^[11] .

The presentation of the game to the publisher of Ocean Software, as in the case of other early games of the company, took place only after the implementation of all the basic ideas: original control, shooting, coloring levels. Financially, the development was supported by an advance of £ 8,000, which was the result of the success of Parallax , which inspired the publisher’s faith in the team’s abilities, although the project looked like nothing ^[11] .

Heroes

John Hare gives priority to the invention of the unusual protagonist Chris Yeats, who programmed a jumping circle. Hare himself added a face to the mug - and it turned out to be Wizball (from the English wizard - “wizard” and the English ball - “ball”). Cathelite (from the English cat - “cat” and the English satellite - “satellite”) was added later, the prototype for it was Yeats cat nicknamed Nift, who constantly wandered near the owner ^[11] .

The music for the game was composed by Martin Galway, who had previously worked with Heir and Yates on Parallax , but this time the scale of the work was larger. The creation of the soundtrack took several weeks, Galway wrote some of the compositions based on the tunes played by the developers who had previously played together in a rock band and had a good command of the guitar. The music for the initial screen saver was written in two parts: the first was inspired by the fantastic atmosphere of the game, the second seemed to tell about the life of a wizard surrounded by mysterious flasks and scrolls ^[11] .

Sensible Software developed the original version of the game for Commodore 64. For Atari ST and Amiga, adaptation was made by Peter Johnson ^[12] , other third-party teams worked on versions for other platforms ^[13] . On Commodore 64, enemies appear in 4 or 5 groups at a time, but at least one group includes paint spheres. Because of this, the game turned out to be very difficult, but it allowed the player to focus only on the spheres if it was required to collect only a small amount of color to complete the current combination. On Amiga and Atari ST, only one group of enemies was present on the screen, which made the game easier, but they had to be destroyed all in order to wait for the appearance of spheres with paint.

In 2007, in honor of the 20th anniversary of the game, Graham Goring made a remake of the game for Windows and MacOS . The basis was taken for the version for Commodore 64 version, which added updated graphics, music and sound effects.

Sequel

In 1992, Sensible Software developed the sequel to the game, Wizkid: The Story of Wizball II , which was released by Ocean Software . Although the plot of the sequel directly continues Wizball , the games are only partially connected with each other.

The game was recognized as one of the best original games developed for Commodore 64. An interesting concept and masterful use of the platform's capabilities in terms of graphics and sound were noted. The control method was characterized as innovative, at first causing difficulties, but after training it increases playability . Readers of Retro Gamer in 2011 named Wizball the second among the best games of all time for Commodore 64 ^[19] , and in 2004 they placed 25th among all games ^[20] .

In July 1987, the game was awarded the Sizzler Prize from Zzap! 64 magazine, the reviewers of which rated it 96%, almost awarded a gold medal. In November of the following year, Wizball, the same magazine, called the game the number one shooter for Commodore 64 ^[21] , increasing its rating to 98%. A month later, she was declared the best game of all time in the opinion of Zzap! 64 ^[22] - this moment John Hare called one of the most glorious in his career. At the same time, sales of the game were disappointing, which was attributed to the unsuccessful marketing strategy of Ocean Software ^[23] .

In 2002, Zzap! 64 dedicated the Wizball article and, by universal suffrage, put it in second place among the best games of Commodore 64, adding a comment: “How she missed the gold medal in number 27 is beyond our understanding” ^[24] . In a 2005 Zzap! 64 article, also dedicated to Wizball, magazine editor Gary Penn once again confirmed that this great game was supposed to get gold. ^[25] Versions for the ZX Spectrum and 16-bit platforms in general received favorable reviews. Sinclair User magazine rated the game a top 10 , while The Games Machine magazine rated the versions for Amiga and Atari ST 87% and 84% respectively ^[3] .

Gary Witt, who became the editor of the American version of PC Gamer magazine in 1993, described a sense of humor as one of Wizball 's main strengths. In his opinion, the developers moved away from the existing practice of trying to give the products of the emerging gaming industry a super-serious look, and did what was natural: they added laughter and fun to the game. He called Wizzball his favorite piece from Sensible Software ^[11] .

In a retrospective of the entire history of the Commodore 64 platform, Wizball is seen as a “masterpiece” in the shoot 'em up genre, and the soundtrack is considered “awesome.” The game emphasizes the originality of the concept, which differs significantly from Parallax , as well as the cooperative mode, which provides a “good challenge” to the players in their coordination and the accompanying “great entertainment” ^[26] .

• The Making of .. Wizball // Retro Gamer : journal. - Live Publishing, 2006 .-- No. 31 . - P. 38-41 .

• Wizball at c64-wiki.com
• Wizball Archived from source: CPC Zone