Jeremy Parish checks out Legacy of the Wizard in NES Works 119

Wow, another metroidvania-adjacent adventure from Brøderbund? And maybe Compile, but probably not? Yes, well, you’d already have expected this had you been watching Metroidvania Works. But all the same, Legacy of the Wizard belongs to one of gaming’s longest-running lineages—Dragon Slayer—even if it has practically nothing to do with any other game in its series. Because the Dragon Slayer series is just like that.

This sprawling, complex adventure includes a number of notable elements, including the ability (or rather, the requirement) to play as five distinct heroes over the course of the journey; Soukoban mechanics in a side-scrolling action game; the NES’s only Yuzo Koshiro soundtrack; and a password system that ended up being the only way most of us ever actually saw the final battle. A massive commitment and a daunting challenge, Legacy of the Wizard suffers from a few balancing issues and some startlingly hostile design choices. Nevertheless, it really stands out as one of the biggest and most interesting games on NES to date.