Wizardry is a series of role-playing video games originally created by American publisher Sir-Tech.

The series was influential in the evolution of modern role-playing video games alongside Ultima and Might and Magic.

[4] The earliest installments of Wizardry were very successful, as they were the first graphically-rich incarnations of Dungeons & Dragons-type gameplay for home computers.

They were ported to many different platforms by writing UCSD Pascal implementations for the target machines (Mac II cross-development).

Datamost released the menu-driven WizPlus, a utility program that allowed users to make changes to both the characters and also to the playing environment of Wizardry; Bob Reams reviewed the utility for Computer Gaming World, and said that "WizPlus should be used with great caution or the spirit of adventuring will be diluted and, more importantly, you will not be able to continue with this exciting series".

Rather than monsters, the player faced typical adventuring parties, some of which were pulled from actual user disks sent to Sir-Tech for recovery.

Japan North America PAL region The original Wizardry game was a success, selling 24,000 copies by June 1982, just nine months after its release according to Softalk's sales surveys.

While noting limitations such as the inability to divide the party, or the emphasis on combat over role-playing, the magazine stated that "no other game comes closer to providing the type of contest favored by most players of non-electronic role-playing games... one outstanding programming achievement, and an absolute 'must buy' for those fantasy gamers who own an Apple".

[27] In Japan, readers of Famitsu magazine considered the Famicom port of the original Wizardry I to be one of the 100 best games of all time.

[29] Fans of the series included Robin Williams, Harry Anderson, and the Crown Prince of Bahrain; the latter even called Sir-Tech on the phone.

[33] Wizardry VI allowed starting with any class if the player invested enough time during the random character attribute generation.

Horii's obsession with Wizardry was manifested as an easter egg in one of his earlier games, The Portopia Serial Murder Case in 1983.

Experience would go on to create several other DRPGs using Wizardry's mechanics as a starting point, including Students of the Round, Stranger of Sword City, and Demon Gaze.

These "expanded" Japanese Wizardry mechanics would be reused in future Elminage games as well as notably Class of Heroes.

In 2009, several Japanese publishers and development teams started a "Brand Revitalization plan", which they called the "Wizardry Renaissance".

After Sir-Tech, the original Wizardry creator in the US, was dissolved, several semi-official games were created in Japan of varying quality and thematic elements.

The popularity of Wizardry in Japan also inspired various light novels, manga comics, Japanese pen-and-paper role-playing games, and an original video animation, produced by TMS Entertainment.

A popular light novel series titled Sword Art Online also had a character who stated that his inspiration came from this game.

Most have been released only in Japan, but Goblin Slayer is one such light novel series published in English by Yen Press.