Proclaiming something for sure in the realm of vidyagaems is just asking to be challenged and possibly humbled. Yet it seems likely that the first true video RPG, as pointed out by -Eclipse14- in this video (10½ minutes), is the Atari 2600/Supercharger game Dragonstomper.
I have played Dragonstomper, in fact I wrote about it in an ebook on 2600 games here, and it’s quite an interesting game. Defining an RPG these days is rife with complication, but then it a bit more obvious: statistics, character building, equipment, exploration and turn-based combat. Dragonstomper has all of these things and more.
The Supercharger was a peripheral that allowed games to be loaded off of cassette tape. The unit itself housed an amount of RAM that held the games that the system would run. The Atari 2600 didn’t have write lines leading out to the cartridge, so the Supercharger had to load the code itself, which looked like normal inflexible ROM to the Atari. But the Supercharger could handle multiload games, making it much easier to make large games for the console. Dragonstomper was stored on the tape in three segments, corresponding to three stages of the quest.
The first section, and the most open-ended, involved exploring the kingdom, fighting monsters, finding items and trying to build your character’s power. A complication to this is that five magic items, a Charm, a Cross, a Potion, a Ring, a Staff, have randomized functions that change every time you begin a game. (There is no saving; the Atari has no way of writing to the tape.)
To get to stage two, you must get past the guard to town, either by showing him an ID, by bribing him, or by defeating him in combat. (They have more health than the dragon!) Town is kind of a break area where you shop for items to help you in the final part of the quest: the tunnel to and fight against a dragon waiting for you in its cave.
There’s all kinds of interesting things you can do, that helps give the game a lot of replayability. For example, you can hire fighters in town to accompany you against the dragon. There are traps around but also items that can reveal their locations to you. You can fight the dragon in melee, or by firing a longbow at it, or you can even avoid fighting it all together by figuring out how to get the gem its guarding without fighting it. There is a GameFAQs guide to it (contributed as late as 2023) that gives a good rundown of how to play and win.
