Wizard

Wizard was to be the last of Atari's 2600 games, but went unreleased in favor of the new 5200 games. Chris Crawford puts it this way: "Wizard was spec'd as a 2K game, but just four months later, when it was ready, the marketing people had decided that everything should be 4K, so they asked me if I could expand it to 4K. To be honest, I really didn't want to work on the 2600 -- I was eager to get going on the 800. So I told them that you don't just expand a 2K game to 4K: you start from scratch and design it for 4K from the ground up. That was true, and marketing lost interest, so I got to move to the 800." Since Wizard was never advertised in any Atari catalogs and it was never assigned a part number, most people don't even know if its existence. Wizard can best be described as a cross between Berzerk and Wizard of Wor. You control a wizard (at least I think he's a wizard), who must attempt to destroy the swirling star shaped creature. The board layout is a giant maze, which makes it... Read more