Wizardry: Gold

You Can't Judge A Game By Its Cover, But you can point at it and laugh sarcastically. m Which is exactly what I did when I saw the cover of Wizardry Gold, a barely-clad, big-titted warrior chick surfing her way towards the viewer atop a shimmering gold Wizardry CD. The game is equally banal: what we have here is Wizardry: Crusaders of the Dark Savant re-packaged and re-released for Windows 95 geeks. Flick-screen role-playing at its most bearded and dated, in other words. And the wince-inducing accompanying commentary more or less redefines the term ''irritating". According to the accompanying bumph, the creation of the Wizardry series is an achievement almost on a par with man's conquest of the moon; it goes on to brag that the games have inspired "a movie, a television show, classical and modern music and its own line of books." Modern music? S'yeah, right. Talk about shovelling it with both hands. Well, here's a little song of my own (the lyrics, at any rate; you can make up the tune yourself): "Old, cold, shouldn't be sold - covered in mould, it's Wizardry Gold." Okay?