Computer RPG History is poorly kept in the West.
The stories told rarely goes beyond "Richard Garriott made Akalabeth – and there was much rejoice".
And that's with everyone speaking English, developers still being around, many books on the subject, and impressive efforts like emulators, the Internet Archive and Cyber1.
In Japan is way, way worst.
Few care about ancient Japanese PC games, emulation is difficult, the language barrier is overwhelming, trusty sources rare and companies have little interest in the crude titles of their youth.
As such, the origins of JRPGs are told as "Enix made Dragon Quest – and there was much rejoice desu."
Since I'm currently: a) living in Japan, b) creating a book on CRPG History, and c) unemployed, this seems like a perfect opportunity to tackle the subject with a handy guide to the origins of JRPGs.
Part I - The Glorious Japanese Tech
Forget PS4 vs. Xbone, or Nvidia vs. ATI. Back in the 80's, choosing hardware was serious business.
The Apple II, IBM-compatibles, Spectrum ZX and C64 held entirely different software, graphics, games, resources, prices, friends, romantic opportunities, etc... There are dusty old gravestones along untraveled roads which simply read "Bought a Coleco Adam".
In glorious Nippon, an early 80's gamer would have to pick between the Famicom (aka NES) or three mythical 8-bit machines we only hear whispers about: the PC-8801, the Sharp X1 and the FM-7:
Now, I'm in no way qualified to talk about the technical aspects of Japanese 80's hardware – I advise you to check this page for more info – but the gist of it is that, since the Japanese language uses crazy moonrunes full of details like 綺麗薔薇, their computers needed a higher resolution to display them. It was not about having fancy graphics, but about allowing people to read & write their own names.
So, while they struggled to render moving sprites (just look at this poor PC-8801 trying to run Mario Bros.), they could display still graphics that were years ahead of the western PCs.
For comparison, here's the title screens of two RPGs from 1984: Questron running on the Apple II and Heart of Fantasy / 夢幻の心臓 running on the PC-8801, :
Humm.... the Questron dude looks really happy with his castle, but still...
Similarly, here's two early text adventure games with still images – The Dark Crystal, part of Sierra's Hi-Res Adventures, and Enix's ザース / Zarth – both from 1983:
Looking at this, it's perfectly understandable why western developers like Infocom went "eh... let's keep doing text-only games", while Japan was like "THIS IS AWESOME! We should make a whole genre out of cute girls with text beneath them! We'll call them Visual Novels!"
Anyway, with this technological prelude out of the way, let's jump into zeh games!
Part II - 1982/1983 - The Early Years
Where does one begin when talking about the first Japanese RPGs?
Well, with some game from 1982/1983. Problem is, no one knows which.
Dragon and Princess / ドラゴンアンドプリンセス is often pointed as the first RPG made in Japan, and it's particularly interesting for being a party-based game with top-down tactical turn-based combat (before Ultima III popularized such combat system), but at its core it's a text-adventure game:
This excellent forum thread will tell you that Koei's Underground Exploration / 地底探険 predates all other games, but again, it's hard to call it an RPG:
King Khufu's Secret / クフ王の秘密 claims to be a "Roll Playing Game" and looks like a Temple of Apshai clone, but I couldn't find any analysis, video or disk image of it anywhere:
There are others: Mission: Impossible / スパイ大作戦, a spy-themed Adventure game; Dragon Lair / ドラゴン・レア, a mysterious game that might not even be Japanese; Genma Taisen / 幻魔大戦, based on a manga of the same name, Arfgaldt / アルフガルド, another text-adventure, etc...
I cannot write about this subject without also mentioning Seduction of Condominium Wives / 団地妻の誘惑, Koei's erotic RPG about a condom salesman visiting an apartment block, where he must knock on doors trying to "sell his products", while battling Yakuza and ghosts who roam the halls:
It's interesting many of these games already call themselves "Role-Playing Games", even thought few of them have traditional features like stats, XP, level ups, classes, etc. I believe this quote by Tokihiro Naito (creator of Hydlide), found in The Untold History of Japanese Game Developers Vol. 2, best represent the spirit that dominated Japanese game development at the time:
"Back then, Japanese people didn't have a well-defined sense of the RPG as a game genre. I suspect that because of this, the creators took the appearance and atmosphere of the RPG as a basic reference, and constructed new types of games according to their own individual sensibilities. In my case, I never had the opportunity to use an Apple II, so I was completely unaware of Wizardry and Ultima."
Even those who knew western games were doing experimental titles. Nihon Falcom began in 1981 as Apple importers in Japan, so they had access to the Apple II and its games. Later becoming developers, they jumped into the genre with Panorama Island / ぱのらま島, an exotic title that uses a hex-based overworld full of traps, plus wire-frame first-person dungeons (with auto-mapping!):
While it looks very RPG-ish (and pornographic?), and even sells itself as a "Fantasy Role-Playing Game", it lacks core elements like stats, XP, level ups... you only have to manage your food and money. Overall, it plays more like a crazy mix of platform and adventure game.
These are all interesting titles from a frontier age that ended when the genre's conventions were properly established, much like happened in the West in the early 80's. But how to classify them?
Some early games that are undeniably RPGs, such as Sword and Sorcery / 剣と魔法, Legend of the Holy Sword / 聖剣伝説 and Poibos / ポイボス, but they are very obscure, their release dates are uncertain, etc...
The Japanese are also very confused and frustrated by this. As the writers of the excellent Old Gamers History series of books explain (and I badly translate):
