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When game director Hidetaka Miyazaki tried to explain his then new game The souls of demons for the masses, he chose another game as a starting point: the classic role-playing game inspired by Dungeons & Dragons Sorcery.

FromSoftware wanted to “make the fun and charm of a classic role-playing game interesting all over again with the latest technology,” Miyazaki told Famitsu in 2008. “Like long weapons crashing into walls, lighting up the area in real time with the torch in your hand […] taking the things you’ve done through the menus Sorcery and allows you to make them happen in real life.

Miyazaki wasn’t the only one who thought so. Sorcery — along with another RPG powerhouse from the early 80s, Ultima — has been cited by dozens of Japanese game developers as a major influence on their defining work. This includes Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi, Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii, and The Secret of Mana game director Koichi Ishii. Sorcery and Ultima defined the formula for menu-driven, turn-based RPGs for decades to come, inspiring developers to stick to its template and break free from it.

Thanks to the new releases Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlordit’s now very easy to experience what dazzled dungeon crawler fans since the early 80s. Witchcraft: Mad Lord’s Proving Grounds is a modernized overhaul of the original Apple II game, with gorgeous new 3D visuals and dozens of quality-of-life improvements that make Sorcery easier to play — but by no means easy – in 2024

The new Sorcery serves as a streamlined entry point into a game designed for a very different type of player, someone who would bang their head against the RPG’s inexplicable rules and rudimentary graphics to enjoy its authentic D&D-style party-based gameplay. The new version is lavishly repainted with graphics that exude the atmosphere of classic tabletop RPG book art and retro Sorcery magazine covers. It also makes stats and percentages more visible, explaining why you might have botched an encounter with a group of angry kobold skeletons, slimes, or bushmen. There’s even a rich bestiary that provides new entries for 101 monsters and other threats in the game.

It flows under the cover of Sorcery remaster is the game’s Apple II source code restored by developer Digital Eclipse from the original Pascal programming language. All dice rolls and random encounters determined by the classic SorceryThe rules of are present in the new version.

Along with this reverent attention to the game’s original rules, Digital Eclipse has packed a long list of quality-of-life features into its new Sorcery. You can easily assemble a group of adventurers with the click of a button — or you can create your team of fighters, thieves, priests, and mages completely from scratch. It has a lovely graphical interface that allows you to easily jump from the inn where your characters rest and climb, to the shop where there is actual useful information about the weapons and armor you can buy, to the maze where you will make your dangerous, creeping first person dungeon crawler.

Image: Digital Eclipse/Sir-Tech

Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord does a great job of letting players have it both ways; Digital Eclipse lets you choose which streamlining features you want to keep and which you don’t. The remaster even provides the option for different maze layouts, letting you choose between the PC version or the 8-bit console versions. (You can also choose to see the original Apple II rendering running in the corner of the screen so you can regularly marvel at 40 years of graphics evolution.)

During my first playthrough of the remaster, I defaulted to the simplest version of the Sorcery and soon discovered that these changes definitely did not make the game a pampering experience. Sorcery remains extremely difficult, even in its new form. I often lost members of my party after overexerting them, pushing us all deeper into the maze. But the mysteries and chance encounters of Sorcery I invite you to do this – explore, die and try again. And maybe recover the corpses of the previous team of hapless adventurers you sent to their deaths in the maze earlier in the game.

Digital Eclipse Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord it’s worth playing, especially if you’re a fan of the classic Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest games and want to learn more about their inspiration. As part of Digital Eclipse’s growing library of beautifully restored historic games (Atari 50, The creation of karateka, Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story), it’s a new way to experience a classic game in a form that’s clearly developed with respect for the source material.

Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord is available now for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X. The game is playable on PC and Steam Deck using a pre-release download code provided by Digital Eclipse. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. They do not influence editorial content, although Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased through affiliate links. You can find additional information on Polygon’s ethics policy here.