By the power of Grayskull.... All the children in the 80s knew this catchphrase. They watched the adventures of He-Man and his friends (and foes) on TV, bought the action figures, read the comics. And of course there were several computer games for the most common systems of the time.
Terraquake is the only 'non-arcade' one of those. Infocom had its biggest era at the same time, so Interactive Fiction was 'in'. Many other companies tried their luck, but only very few reached the same quality as their big idol. So didn't this team (which includes Mike Woodroffe, who later became lead designer of the Simon the Sorcerer series).
Anyone who has done some serious maths will tell you that it can be quite magical. Even with the most basic of operations you can do some impressive tricks with astonishing results. It is that feeling of wonder you get, when you finish a long set of calculations that end up with surprising – simple but true – answers which makes people love mathematics. Just think of the flow of solving a problem, that single moment when everything fits together and you see all the connections, and you might know what I mean. And this magic moments is exactly what Junior Arithmancer is all about.
In the history of CRPGs, the Wizardry series should give every old school gamer a chill of ecstasy. The series began already in the early 80s and ended only in 2001 with Wizardry 8: Destination Dominus, but under licence, it has multiple further spin-offs. like Wizardry Online, primarily in Japan until the year 2012. An icon of game design called D. W. Bradley created the huge worlds of Wizardry V: Heart of the Maelstorm (1988), Wizardry VI: Bane of the Cosmic Forge (1990) and finally Wizardry VII: Crusaders of the Dark Savant (1992) for the company Sir-Tech before jumping ship and founding his own software company. D. W. Bradley even surpassed himself and created the (in my view) only legitimate successor to Wizardry 7, namely Wizards and Warriors, already one year before Wizardry 8.