Not necessarily. The earliest makers of electronic games like OXO and Tennis for Two don't seem to have necessarily known about one anothers' work. Early popular FPS's like Wolfenstein 3D do not seem to have drawn any inspiration from 1973's Maze. The NES adaptation of Friday the 13th published by LJN was one of the first games that can be considered survival horror, but there is no sign that the creators of Alone in the Dark or Resident Evil had ever heard of it. And although The Outfoxies predates Super Smash Bros by a few years, we again have no evidence that the latter was inspired by the former obscure arcade exclusive.

Genres are funny things, and it's entirely possible for separate creators to end up making the same kind of experience without direct influence.

I agree with this sentiment. To push it further even in cases where there are prior games made by the same developers (King's Field and Demon's Souls by Fromsoft) those first games might not be what truly started a genre. What starts a genre is imitation to the point that one can think of it as a genre. For the Souls-like games I think you could argue that Dark Souls was the true start of the genre. Demon's Souls was a crazy cult classic and I loved it but it wasn't until Dark Souls that this became a genre unto itself. 

Before Ultima came Akalabeth, also from Lord British Richard Garriot. It did beat Wizardry by 2 months though. Both together were major influences in creating JRPGs as a genre: The overhead map and travels from Ultima were combined with the combat system of Wizardy and then simplified, especially the spell systems (many spells which were absolutely deadly in Wizardry and/or Ultima became borderline useless in the transfer, especially status effects were nerfed beyond recognition. This btw makes those older games much more difficult for most modern players as they have the uselessness of those spells and effects in the back of their mind and don't use them even in favor of the nukes though they're pretty much the best ones to use in those games instead)

Yesn't.

The very first RPGs in PLATO were pretty much all MMORPGs, and had graphics. Of course, they weren't nearly as elaborate and generally single-color (orange), but since they were on PLATO they were always online and you could meet other players at the time.

This post by the CRPG Addict is a good starting point on the first Computer RPGs. Also, isn't it funny that CRPGs basically started with MMOs before become single-player games?

This also gives us: First (surviving) CRPG: The Dungeon/Pedit5.

By the way, how could we miss it so far? Rogue => first Roguelike.

Metal Gear. Stealth action.

Was shining force the 1st of its kind? It was the first strategy game I played as a lad.

Shining Force was made to counter Nintendo's Fire Emblem so no. Not even the first Shining game lol.  FE is not the first either.  Plenty of 80s strategy stuff. Famicom Wars from Nintendo even predates FE. I don't know the first SRPG tho.

FE was Japan only?  As a kid I don't recall seeing it.

Yeah FE stayed in Japan until Blazing Blade for GBA. Possibly due to Smash Bros. TBH  Shining Force III is possibly better than any FE of that era. My friend is a FE superfan and feels that way and not even until the Wii game did the series catch up on some things Shining Force III did better according to him. I've only played the original FE. A couple 3DS games. Shining Force 1-3 tho are amazing.  Esp 3.

One could say that history almost repeated itself - original D&D was not game that you play with few friends around the table, it was more of a club were there is shared world in which different DMs host many different parties.

As for topic of first, I'll give example of D&D. Before D&D there was Blackmoor and before it there was Braunstein. And while there is direct design thread leading from Braunstein through Blackmoor to D&D, this is good example for introducing term proto-(insert name of genre) into debate, since Braunstein could be labeled as proto-TTRPG, while Blackmoor is an actual TTRPG and direct predecessor of D&D.

Often games that are most influential early on in the genre end up as one treated as one's that created the genre, though, if we're really honest, most likely none of them are.