What Was the First Naruto Video Game?
The first Naruto video game arrived while the anime was still in its first year. Naruto: Konoha Ninpouchou was released in Japan on March 27, 2003 for the WonderSwan Color, Bandai's own handheld console. It is a role-playing game built from the manga's opening arcs, following Naruto through his earliest missions in a format closer to a handheld Dragon Quest than to the fighting games the franchise became famous for.
The platform is the story. The WonderSwan was Bandai's challenger to Nintendo's Game Boy line, designed with Gunpei Yokoi's involvement, and by 2003 it was losing that fight decisively. Konoha Ninpouchou is the only Naruto game ever made for a Bandai console, a small artifact of the brief era when Naruto's publisher-cousin also sold the machines its games ran on.
Western players waited three more years for any Naruto game at all. The first releases outside Japan came in March 2006, when Tomy's fighters and handheld titles arrived in North America as Clash of Ninja and Ninja Council, timed to the dubbed anime's first year on Cartoon Network.
First by weeks, not years
Spring 2003 produced three Naruto game debuts in quick succession: Konoha Ninpouchou on WonderSwan Color in March, then the GameCube fighter Gekito Ninja Taisen and the Game Boy Advance Ninja Council game in April and May. The fighting lines would define Naruto gaming for a decade, but the RPG on the dying handheld was first by a matter of weeks, which is why it holds the answer to this question.
The object itself
A complete copy means the small WonderSwan cartridge, its box and manual, all Japanese only. Because the WonderSwan never launched in the West, every copy in an American collection is an import, and the game anchors the Japan-only wing of the Naruto game shelf alongside Gekito Ninja Taisen 3 and 4.