Atari Acquires Rights to Wizardry IP - News
by William D'Angelo , posted 23 hours ago / 1,267 Views
Atari announced it has acquired the rights to the first five Wizardry games and their underlying IP.
The five games are Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord (1981), Wizardry II: The Knight of Diamonds (1982), Wizardry III: Legacy of Llylgamyn (1983), Wizardry IV: The Return of Werdna (1987), and Wizardry V: Heart of the Maelstrom (1988).
The acquisition also includes other Wizardry-related video games, contract rights, and other related intellectual property. Alongside the rights to game publishing, there will the release of merchandise, card and board games, books and comics, and TV and film projects.
"When Andrew Greenberg and I created Wizardry back in the 1980s, the video game industry was still in its infancy, and the original games were some of the first to bring the role-playing experience to PCs and consoles," said Wizardry series co-creator Robert Woodhead. "As Atari continues to reintroduce the games on new platforms and to new audiences, I’ll definitely be paying attention to the reactions of gamers who decide to take on a real old-school challenge."
Atari CEO and chairman Wade Rosen added, "Wizardry is such an influential RPG franchise, yet many of the games have been unavailable for more than two decades. We are excited to have this rare opportunity to republish, remaster, and bring console ports and physical releases of these early games to market."
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
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If only someone could get the Ultima IP out of EA’s hands….
situations like this always have me wondering what's going to be going on with the japanese exclusive wizardry spinoff series.
Drecom owns the rights to Wizardy 6-8, so this probably won't effect their game.
Just 2 years ago, Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord was remade by Digital Eclipse. I'd love Atari to remake the rest of them. Perhaps they mean to do another remake of the 1st game? Originally, you could import your characters from the first game to the second.
