Dragonstomper

You know what Dragonstomper was? It was the first JRPG ever!

Okay, maybe not. Wizardry I predates it, although in Dragonstomper, you lead a single character, from a top-down instead of a first-person perspective, so I guess it would've made it the first console JRPG. You lead a warrior in a fantasy realm and as you wander around you enter randomly generated opponents one-on-one(ala Dragon Quest 1) and fight spiders, demons and humanoids. You only have two sizable stats, Strength(which doubly acts as your HP), and Dexterity, which you can only increase by using stat-boosting magic items you get as you progress in the non-linear world.

Now, when I say non-linear, it's actually kind of misleading. The game follows a procedure of four acts, each of which gives you a "hub" to hang around in, but you can't retread back to the previous act from whence you came. The first act involves you running around in the wilderness, grinding monsters so you can get gold, equipment, magic items, and occasionally go to a church to buy yourself healing. You also need to get a paper ID which lets you enter the second hub, which is a non-threatening, NPC village. You should grind and get a lot of dough(people recommend getting anywhere from 2500-4000 gold) before entering the village, because it is vital to purchase supplies such as potions, magic scrolls, and mercenaries in it before you go into greater dangers.

The third act is a gauntlet of traps, which can be easily avoided if you had proper equipment set, but also demand action sequencing similar to Frogger. Lastly, you enter the fourth act, which is a gigantic boss battle against a dragon, made far more impressive than what the 2600 Adventure would make you believe. You need to coordinate your party members, shoot with ranged weapons, use spells, healing potions, and everything at your disposal to get the beast down... or run past him and get the amulet, whichever. Any of those actions will end the game.

It's unfathomable that in 1982 a game of such complexity and far-sightedness existed, but that is to be said for all games that required the Starpath Supercharger. This is the earliest console game I remember that used significant number crunching and stat-counting as a component that married it with an RPG convention, and it's a shame it got buried so bad because it really shouldn't have been. This needs to be considered a console classic along with the 2600 originals like Pitfall or Adventure.