Format: Cartridge
Genre: Arcade
Developer: Dave Nutting Associates
Publisher: Commodore Business Machines

Wizard of Wor's blue-colored stages look like boards out of Pac-Man, and the sharpness of their lines is impressive. The player characters are well animated, while the enemies range from little dragons, dinosaurs, scorpions, and even an evil wizard! There is a radar on the bottom part of the screen, which is helpful for tracking enemies when they otherwise turn invisible. Other than the slight "shade of blue" color and the fact the sprites have one color instead of two, this C64 port is an almost exact visual match for the arcade original.

The arcade original's audio was characterized by two things: the classic Halloween-style "bum, bum bum bum bummmm, bum!" song, and real-time voice synthesis talking along as gameplay was going on. The C64 replicates the main theme motif perfectly, along with the various laser and hit sound effects. Amazingly, if the user has the correct speech synthesis cartridge, the C64 can almost perfectly imitate the voice aspects as well!

Wizard of Wor involves running around Pac-Man style mazes, shooting enemies with laser beams. There is a bit of nuance to rounding corners and getting one's character facing the desired direction, which adds some nuance to the proceedings. Every so often a fast-moving enemy appears which, if killed, can add double points to the next round-- crucial for high scoring! Killing the evil wizard should he appear is worth a huge amount of points as well. The game is also two-player by nature, although the second player will be killed off naturally during single-player runs.

This release isn't going to knock anyone's socks off, but it is a solid albeit basic arcade game with a pleasant aesthetic, fun core gameplay, a silky smooth framerate, and full-on two-player simultaneous support.