A Gaming Artifact

"Oh man! Someone must have been really into this back in the day!" I exclaimed as I opened up the box, pulling out a folded bundle of maps and character sheets.

"Hah! Yeah. My Aunt was really big on this game. I couldn't figure it out, myself."

"Are you sure you want to get rid of these? It will be the same price whether you give us the box or just the cartridge or whatever."

"Nah, that's okay. Someone else can use them."

Jackpot!
 

 

—

Little bit of back-story…

I work at an independent video game store. We deal in anything and everything, from the Atari to the PS3; but NO PC GAMES! They are a royal pain in the ass because you can't warranty them, but I digress.

One day a guy about my age came by to trade in a medium sized NES collection. There was nothing amazing about the games included–except for a few games complete with boxes and manuals, and that is not common to see most of the time. One of those games was Wizardry: Knights of Diamonds, The Second Scenario (quite a mouthful). When I pulled back the cardboard to ensure that the proper game was in the box I found that the owner had not only held on to the beautiful and detailed manual ASCIIWARE included with the game, but someone had done a little manual making of their own. The guy didn't seem to see any reason to hold on to it, so the transaction was completed and I was free to look over the treasures after he made his exit…

Whoever his Aunt was, she had immaculate handwriting. It was like the character sheets were written by monks, though monks are unlikely to name their characters NinjaBob or WizardBob. It was some of the most gorgeous script I have seen in some time, making me mildly regret the printed and screen-viewed text in our modern world. There were some written notes about the dungeons  wrapped around the character sheets, and although I didn't have any reference points to what the notes were referring to I was still impressed by the short but humor-threaded warnings.

Paging through the maps I noticed that they were written on plain, but good quality computer paper and were carefully dotted with a ruler to create the grid. The dimensions were so perfect that they could have been printed, but the game was originally released in 1990 and most people did not have home computers back then. Each map was fully completed (I checked online) in terms of the floor plan, and every few spaces had a number or letter to indicate…something. I must be missing a page with a key to the maps because there must be something there, but I have no idea how to decipher what those some things are. Damn her lack of a stapler!

Who was this guy's Aunt? I started to think about it, using a little bit of some latent anthropological skill I assume I possess.  She could have been any age, but must have been in her 20's when the game was released judging from her skill in cartography and writing. That would make her thirty or thirty five at least, right? She could even be older, perhaps she was one of those individuals who got into games way before it was cool. Maybe she had a kid who started playing Wizardry, and as she watched she started to get the itch to learn it and play it herself.

You could easily put a hundred hours into a Wizardry game if you are not careful. What if she spent a big chunk of her life playing this game? Mapping it, thinking about it at work, discovering it. All that time, and the only thing that comes of it is having your artifacts being passed down to your nephew–who then sells it fifteen or twenty years later to a local video game store.

What if she doesn't even care?

Maybe she put all this effort into the game as a way to kill time, and after all that work she just put it in a box and tossed it in the basement. She could have just considered Wizardry a short obsession, a passing hobby, something that she did for a year and then moved on to…knitting, or something.

I felt a little guilty after I thought about it. I have this connection to a relative of a complete stranger whom I had only met briefly. This carefully drawn guide to Wizardry II is somehow important, though I can't even place why. I should have MADE him give the papers back to his Aunt, or at least asked what her name is. I could have phoned her out of the blue, just to see if she wanted the game and the maps back. At that point I could not do anything, however, so that's that.

I think I understand how archeologists feel when they dig up something as dull as a clay pot. It was someone's life. It's a connection to someone that was around far before they were born, or in my case before I was old enough to know them. 

In the end I took the map and character sheet home with me, since I already had a copy of the box and manual for Wizardry II. I showed my girlfriend one day, pointing out the awesome script they were written in, but she didn't seem terribly interested. I guess it was hard to explain why I felt these bits of old paper were important. I still have it carefully preserved in the beat-up old china cabinet that holds all my NES games.

Perhaps when I die, or take up knitting, I can pass it on to a niece or nephew so that the cycle can begin anew.

Wizardry is an American style PC RPG originally made for the Apple II. It was then ported to the NES by the Japanese. The game is similar to The Bard's Tale or the original Might and Magic titles where you crawl through grid-based dungeons from a first person view with a heavily customizable party. They are also hard as nails, and even getting past one floor of the usually ten floor dungeons is a lot of work and a lot of time. They are great games if you can track one of them down; they sure don't make them like they used to. If you want to get a more modern idea of what they are like, check out the Etrian Odyssey games on the Nintendo DS.