In games, there are certain fictional objects that recur across titles that have nothing to do with one another. Final Fantasy and Pokémon are made by different people, owned by different companies, and exist in entirely unrelated worlds, but both contain items called Potion and Ether, which have more or less the same effects - the former is a health restorative, the latter restores magic power (functionally ammunition).
"Potion" evidently derives from the Latin "potare", meaning "to drink", and became used to describe medicinal drinks around the 12th century. The concept of a magic potion is not exclusive to the RPG genre, and appears, for example, in the Asterix series, the first of which was published in 1959. But when did the idea of a potion in games become standardized as a health restorative, and is there a particular title we can trace the concept back to? And what about other common elements, such as the association of the colour red with health and blue/green with magic, or that irritating noise that plays when you are near death?
Potions, elixirs, draughts, etc., were commonplace in both the real world and fiction in world literature as the basis of medicine for centuries. Magical potions differed from real world medicines only in the supernatural effect they had (and many real-world patent medicines still claim miraculous abilities to heal various ailments). Healing potions, salves, wines, etc. were a staple of pulp fiction in the 1920s and 30s, such as Robert E. Howard's "The Slithering Shadow" (Weird Tales Sep 1933) includes:
the golden wine which heals wounds, prolongs life, and invigorates the most sated debauchee.
"Magic potions" were borrowed directly from fantasy fiction and the pulps by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson when creating Dungeons & Dragons, and "Appendix N" in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide (1979) lists a number of fantasy works and authors that include healing herbs (such as king's foil in The Lord of the Rings) and potions (orc draught, ent draught, and "miruvor, the cordial of Imladris" - and that's just in Tolkien!).
D&D set the precedent, which was then borrowed and expanded upon by Japanese video game creators. This was especially popular in the Legend of Zelda (1986 to present), Final Fantasy (1987 to present), and Fire Emblem (1990-) series and its various successors and imitators. Unlike D&D, which uses a Vancian magic system, video game JRPGs tended to use point-based spell systems - i.e. there were separate bars for Health/Hit Points/etc. and Magic/Mana/etc. - and so different restorative items were created for each. A parallel for this can be seen in the Fighting Fantasy gamebook series that started in 1982, which had separate potions to restore all three of the attributes: Stamina, Skill, and Luck.
And what about other common elements, such as the association of the colour red with health and blue/green with magic, or that irritating noise that plays when you are near death?
In Final Fantasy the colors of potions tend to change from game to game, the Red/Blue potion dichotomy seems to have been most strongly associated with the Legend of Zelda series. This is not an absolute convention, but a common one adopted by several later games. The Diablo game series, for example, explictly uses the red/Health, blue/Mana potion distinction.