Andrew C. Greenberg, the co-creator of the seminal Wizardry RPG series, has passed away at 67. His death was announced on Facebook by his Wizardry collaborator, Robert Woodhead, and also shared on Twitter by game developer and design professor David Mullich.
Greenberg and Woodhead's contributions to RPGs and PC gaming are immeasurable. Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord was one of the first recognizable RPGs available on home computers. It brought the experience of tabletop RPGs and games designed for the powerful PLATO mainframes found on college campuses to the Apple II, a home computer.
Wizardry was groundbreaking in many ways, including being one of the earliest RPGs to allow players to control a full party of characters, each with unique abilities and traits. Players explored a vast, first-person, wireframe labyrinth, uncovering hidden doors, evading traps, and facing formidable enemies. At the dungeon's end awaited the "Mad Overlord" Werdna—a playful nod to Greenberg’s own name, Andrew, spelled backward. Greenberg continued to use this moniker long after his gaming career, adopting it as a personal email handle and the username for a YouTube channel where he documented his work on a bowling scorecard program.
The impact of Wizardry, alongside the Ultima series, was profound throughout the 1980s, with both games and their sequels being ported to major personal computers like the Commodore 64 and MS-DOS PCs. Wizardry's influence was particularly strong in Japan, where it contributed significantly to the birth of the JRPG genre.
Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii has frequently cited Wizardry as a major influence and recalled in a 2022 tweet meeting Robert Woodhead, remarking, "When I think back, it all started 40 years ago when I got really into Wizardry."
After developing the Star Saga games in 1988 and '89, Greenberg transitioned from the gaming industry to a legal career, initially specializing in intellectual property law in Florida before becoming general counsel for the renewable energy company Xslent. Despite his career shift, Greenberg's passion for programming endured, as evidenced by an archived version of his personal website and his active YouTube channel. A 1999 letter shared on a Wizardry fan site reveals that Greenberg married Sheila McDonald, a Wizardry playtester, and the couple had two children.
Though Greenberg left the gaming industry long ago, his legacy continues in modern RPGs, from Baldur's Gate to Persona. His work on Wizardry is still accessible today, especially through Digital Eclipse’s recent remaster of the original game, which includes a picture-in-picture view of its classic 1-bit graphics and was developed with input from the Wizardry creators.
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