Atari acquires rights to original five Wizardry games

Atari has acquired the rights and underlying intellectual property for the first five Wizardry role-playing games, originally released between 1981 and 1988.

The titles covered by the agreement 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).

Wizardry VI through VIII remain under the ownership of Japanese company Drecom and are set in a different fictional universe from the original five entries.

Atari intends to republish and remaster the acquired games and to release compilations, console ports and physical editions. Work on those projects will be handled in part by Digital Eclipse, Atari’s in-house studio focused on restoring and remaking older titles. Digital Eclipse has already completed a full remake of Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord that overlays the original game with updated visuals for the Nintendo Switch.

Wade Rosen, Atari’s CEO, commented in a statement:

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.

Atari has not provided a release schedule or a full platform list for the remasters and collections and said additional details will be announced at a later date.

The Wizardry series began in the early 1980s and is an early example of Western computer role-playing games.