Carl Muckenhoupt has a series of blog posts about Wizardry.
I didn’t know there was a remake, so thank you for both the posts on the original and for letting us know about the new one.
I never got very far in these games (I’m like three floors into a game inspired by it, The Dark Spire, but my DS is broken) but they’ve had a huge impact on tabletop RPGs.
D&D 5e’s spell casting system goes away from the Dying Earth “vancian” mechanics and instead uses a system 100 isomorphic with Wizardry’s spell points, confusingly renamed “spell slots”. Maybe the exact distribution of slots per level is changed but it’s the same mechanic where the different point levels aren’t exactly interchangable—wizards can’t use two level 1 slots to make one level 2 slot.
And, the front rank, back rank fighting system from Wizardry was used in The One Ring tabletop RPG (and I made my own fighting system for D&D based on the same idea).
Wizardry wasn’t only innovating in going digital—it was also solid, innovative game system design that’s been feeding back to tabletop. ♥︎