GameBanshee links to a video from SYFY, the American science fiction network, which makes a somewhat controversial claim about what the first computer role-playing game was:

MUDs, Rogue, and other roguelike projects were already being played at universities around the world and Richard Garriott had technically been selling Akalabeth: World of Doom in Ziploc bags since 1979 before moving on to Ultima I in the first half of 1981, but apparently the Syfy channel believes that the first commercially available CRPG to debut upon the PC scene was Sir-Tech’s Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord (also in 1981).

Note the interesting qualification: that Wizardry was the first commercially available CRPG, whereas apparently titles such as Akalabeth and Ultima 1 were too limited/small-scale in their releases to be so considered. And while that’s probably true in the case of Akalabeth, one has to wonder whether it’s also true in the case of Ultima 1.