In 1980, Norman Sirotek formed Sir-Tech Software and launched a beta version of the product at the 1980 Boston Computer Convention.

[5] Starting in the town, which is represented only as a text-based menu, the player creates a party of up to six characters from an assortment of five possible races (Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes, Hobbits), three alignments (Good, Neutral, Evil), and four basic classes (Fighter, Priest, Mage, Thief),[1] with four elite classes[6] (Bishop: priest and mage spells; Samurai: fighter with mage spells; Lord: fighter with priest spells, and Ninja: fighter with thief abilities) unlocked once the characters have progressed sufficiently.

After characters are equipped with basic armor and weaponry, the party descends into the dungeon below Trebor's castle.

The goal, as in most subsequent role-playing video games, is to find treasure including ever more potent items, gain levels of experience by killing monsters, then face the evil arch-wizard Werdna on the bottom level and retrieve a powerful amulet.

The game's lack of an automap feature, which had not been invented at the time of its release, practically forces the player to draw the map for each level on graph paper (included in the box) as they walk through the 20x20 dungeon maze,[8][6] step by step – failing to do this often results in becoming permanently lost, as there are many locations in the maze that have a permanent "Darkness" spell upon the square (making the player walk blindly) or a "Teleport" spell sending the player to a new location.

The original releases of Wizardry also do not announce that the player has teleported and play resumes as if one step forward was taken.

Completion of Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord allows a player to export the winning party to Wizardry II and III.

[8][12][6] The Commodore 64/128 versions of Wizardry 1-3 share a common code base with the Apple originals, as they all use the same run-time 6502 Pascal interpreter which provides support for overlays and low-level functions to interface with the hardware.

Lengthy load time and extensive disk access was a problem with Wizardry; however, the Commodore versions, which particularly suffer from this, provided a variety of workarounds.

Wizardry 2-5 also detect if 16k or 64k of VDC memory is present and can use the 1571 drive's burst mode for faster load time.

[12] By 30 June 1982 it had sold 24,000 copies, making it one of the best-selling computer RPGs in North America up until that time.

Humphrey stated that "There is so much good about this game, it's difficult to decide where to begin", and concluded by describing it as "not easily beaten or solved, I recommend it to anyone tired of mediocre programs and ho-hum dungeon encounters.

[8] In early 1985, Computer Games magazine called Wizardry the "all-time tops in role-playing entertainment.

"[18] The Macintosh version of the game, known by fans as "MacWizardry", was reviewed in 1986 in Dragon's first "The Role of Computers" column.

He wrote "I don't know what the fascination of Wizardry I is; if I describe it in objective terms, it seems boring—which it certainly is not, as witness the time it has eaten this month".

[31] Macworld commented that the Macintosh port's conversion to the Classic Mac OS mouse-driven graphical user interface enhanced the game's charm[32] and streamlined its gameplay;[33] the game mediates actions through "such familiar Macintosh devices as windows, alert boxes, icons, scrolling lists, and so on.

The editors wrote, "The seminal dungeon romp, this RPG sent AD&D fans scrambling to buy Apple IIs".