Sorcerer's Maze

Sorcerer's Maze
Also known as: Prism Land Story (JP 1998), Action Puzzle: Prism Land (JP 2000), Prism Land (EU 2000) Developer: Dcruise Publishers: Dcruise (JP 1998), Hect (JP 2000), Midas Interactive Entertainment (EU 2000), XS Games (EU 2003/US) Platform: PlayStation Released in JP: March 19, 1998 (Dcruise), February 24, 2000 (Hect) Released in US: December 4, 2003 Released in EU: 2000 (Midas), 2003 (XS) This game has unused graphics. This game has unused cinematics. This game has regional differences. This game has revisional differences. This game has unusual dummy files.

Sorcerer's Maze is an Arkanoid/Breakout clone that was released five times within five years for some unfathomable reason.

To do: Document the changes from Prism Land to Sorcerer's Maze. The story was significantly changed and massively cut down, with large swathes of it literally blanked out.

Unused Video

Only found in the original Japanese release is a video titled COMP.AVI at the root of the disc. It is 45 MB in size and takes up over two-thirds of the disc space. It is a short animation of a square-shaped plane bouncing off of the edges of four solid tubes.

Unused Graphics

Only the Japanese versions have a save feature, but the graphics related to saving/loading were translated for the first European release.

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  Loading

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  Memory Card not inserted in Memory Card Slot 1

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  Overwrite existing data?

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  Loading data... Do not remove Memory Card

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  Saving date... Do not remove Memory Card

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  Load?

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  Save?

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  Loading completed

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  Save completed

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  Formatting completed

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  Proceeding. Do not insert/remove Memory Card

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  This Memory card has not been formatted. Would you like to format?

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  Save Failed. Memory Card Full. (1 free block needed)

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  Saved data not found in Memory Card.

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  Load menu option

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  Save menu option

Additionally, the continue option from the title screen was also translated and is present in all three English versions.

Found in all versions is this graphic which translates to "Parsing succeeded! Congratulations". It is the first image in some of the .bin files containing the game's graphics.

Regional Differences

As mentioned above, a total of five versions of the game were released:

• Prism Land Story in 1998 by Dcruise in Japan.
• Prism Land in 2000 by Midas in Europe.
• Action Puzzle: Prism Land in 2000 by Hect in Japan.
• Sorcerer's Maze in 2003 by XS Games in both Europe and the US.

Prism Land Story	Prism Land	Action Puzzle: Prism Land

• Prism Land Story and Prism Land share the same title screen artwork, while Action Puzzle has its own generic one.
• The Japanese versions feature Memory Card and mouse support, which were removed in the English versions.
• Prism Land Story and Prism Land feature extra stages and a "good ending", unlocked by not using a continue in the first 7 stages. Both versions of Sorcerer's Maze only have one ending, and the extra stages are available by default.

US	Europe

• The spacing of "HI SCORE" was changed.
• Sorcerer's Maze seems to have been based off of Action Puzzle: Prism Land, as it (would have) used the same save icon and the Action Puzzle logo is left over in the game.

Prism Land Story	Action Puzzle: Prism Land

Prism Land Story and Action Puzzle: Prism Land use a different save icon. The first one is also present in the European Prism Land, and the second is also in both versions of Sorcerer's Maze.