Topic: 2021/01: Legacy Of The Wizard (NES) - FlyingArmor

[JonLeung]

Legacy Of The Wizard

For this month's "Maps Of The Month" featurette, I wish to draw your attention to FlyingArmor's Legacy Of The Wizard (NES) maps.

Dragon Slayer IV: Drasle Family - as it is known for its original Japanese MSX2 release - was developed by Falcom and published in North America by Brøderbund as Legacy Of The Wizard.  The titular wizard is Douel, who had sealed away the dragon Keela into a painting, which has been kept underground.  The time has come for the Drasle Family to now search the dragon's labyrinth for the four crowns that will unlock the DragonSlayer, a magical sword capable of destroying the dragon once and for all.

Grandfather Douel is not up for adventuring anymore, and now only verifies passwords to continue the game, which the grandmother, Jiela, provides.  Instead, you will be in control of Xemn (the father), Meyna (the mother), Roas (the son), Lyll (the daughter) and Pochi (their pet monster).  Each character has their own unique abilities - like Pochi not taking damage from other monsters - and there are special items that only one of them can use - like the DragonSlayer, which can only be wielded by Roas.

Because they play differently, they take their own paths through the labyrinth, comprised of 256 screens (if you consider each screen to be 256 x 192 pixels).  It's a massive game on the NES, one that is very challenging to take on without at least some guidance. Thankfully, FlyingArmor is here to help you get around this gargantuan grotto!  FlyingArmor definitely likes to take on epic fantasy games, including this legacy!

(Ironically, the unique title sounds like it's not actually part of an ongoing legacy, but it actually is!  Obviously, from the Japanese name, it is part of the Dragon Slayer series, but Dragon Slayer II: Xanadu has a side story that NES owners may be familiar with, in the form of Faxanadu, and 2017 saw the release of Tokyo Xanadu eX+.  If you are familiar with Sorcerian, released on the Mega Drive in Japan and on the PC in North America, you might be interested to know that that is part of this series, as well.)

So to recognize the effort put into mapping this adventure that is fun for the whole family (including the pet), FlyingArmor's Legacy Of The Wizard (NES) maps will be known as VGMaps.com's Maps Of The Month for January 2021.

[FlyingArmor]

Thanks very much for the honour, Jon!

I started mapping this game because I wanted to fill in some of the gaps in the NES Atlas here on VGMaps, which I was surprised to discover were fairly massive (only about 40% coverage of North American released titles at the time). I liked the look of the game, so I gave it a go.

At first I was mapping away slowly, and then I started to wonder just how big the game world actually was so I'd have some rough idea of how much more there was to cover. After doing a quick image search, I discovered it was absolutely huge! At the time, I wasn't using cheat codes, but soon switched to using them which saved me a ton of time.

For me, this game was fun to map, but I wouldn't want to play it, especially if I was going into it without any previous knowledge. But it certainly is nice to look at though.

[JonLeung]

Thanks again, FlyingArmor!

I figured this was overdue, and I was surprised that I hadn't honoured any NES games in all of 2020.

Legacy Of The Wizard is also the subject of my favourite Atlas Video, thanks to this very map - and the tool-assisted speedrun of Lord Tom.  If you can view this in 4K on a large TV, you should; it looks really neat!