When people think of the origins of first-person games, "Wolfenstein
3D" (May 1992), "Doom" (December 1993) or (for those who think they
know about this sort of thing) "Ultima Underworld" (March 1992) are
usually the names that spring first to mind. And its true; these games
were the ones that - in many ways created the genre as we recognize it
today.
But there were others that are too often overlooked.
Bethesda's "The Terminator" (1991) actually came out before "Ultima Underworld"; it too boasted a polygonally-rendered map. Playing it
today, you can see a lot of similarities between its 30-year old
engine and modern Bethesda RPG games; it has a bunch of NPCs wandering
about, a large open world, and going through a door pops you into a
separate map instance.
There's Id's own "Catacomb 3D" (November 1991) games, of course;
essentially "Wolfenstein 3D", except with magic spells 'n' orcs
instead of machine guns and Nazis, and all in bilious 16-color EGA
instead of the 'lifelike' 256-colors VGA offered by its more famous
cousin.
Other might point to "Hovertank One" (April 1991), another Id game.
This one preceded even "Catacomb 3D". It is in EGA too, and lacks the textured walls of "Catacomb 3D" and "Wolfenstein 3D", but otherwise
boasts the same smooth-flowing movement.
But what about games like Spotlight Software's "Total Eclipse" (May
1989). Few remember that one. Released three years before "Ultima
Underworld" its world was rendered in filled (but untextured)
3D-polygons. More an adventure/puzzle game than a shooter, each room
was its own separate instance (largely because moving that many
polygons was too much for the 286 and 386s of the day) but you can see
a little bit of Quake in its maps.
Mindscape's "The Colony" (December 1988) used wire-framed renders to
create its world, but you could move through it just as smoothly as
through any "Doom" map (well, assuming your PC had the horsepower).
Mindware's "Tracker" (1986 on C-64, Jan 1987 on PC) also utilized
wire-frame maps, and limited you to much smaller mazes, but its
shooting mechanics (complete with mouselook!) feel oddly familiar
despite being 36 years old (and preceding "Wolfenstein 3D" by five
years)!
And, of course, there's always Atari's "Battlezone" (November 1980),
which boils down first-person shooting to its most quintessential...
and came out in 1980. And "MazeWar" (1973) came out even before that, although you needed a mini-computer to run it, and anyway it was never commercially released. Plus, it wasn't really smooth scrolling,
instead jumping from step to step like "Dungeon Master" or "Eye of the Beholder". Still, "Maze War" is often credited as the "first
first-person shooter".
Plus, arguments could be made that games like "Test Drive" (or any in-the-drivers-seat simulator) might also count as a 'first-person'
game. In which case, I think that "Night Driver" was probably the
/first/ first-person game I ever played.
But I guess it all depends on where you draw the line. Still, I think
its unfair to some of the titles I mentioned above to ignore their
part in the development of the genre.
So give a thought to some of these oldies who helped make the
first-person genre what it is today. And maybe share a thought on what
you consider a fair definition of what is - or is not - a first-person
game, and which one was your first.
On 25/02/2023 01:19, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
That did get me thinking when was the idea of an open world added to
FPSes. The first game I remember doing that was Far Cry but I assume
there was others that pre-dated it.
Descent was my first fps. I'm sure I played Doom, but yeah Descent. I have played Test Drive on an old 286 or 386 (great game) as well as Battlezone in an arcade
rms <rsquiresMOO@mooflashmoo.net> wrote:
Descent was my first fps. I'm sure I played Doom, but yeah Descent. I have >> played Test Drive on an old 286 or 386 (great game) as well as Battlezone in >> an arcade
Mine was Catacomb was my first FPS IIRC.
On Sat, 25 Feb 2023 10:50:57 +0000, JAB <noway@nochance.com> wrote:
On 25/02/2023 01:19, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
That did get me thinking when was the idea of an open world added to
FPSes. The first game I remember doing that was Far Cry but I assume
there was others that pre-dated it.
Again, it depends on how you define things. Arguably something like
"Elite" (Sept 1984 on BBC Micro, 1987 for PC) would count, because it
has a first-person view, you shoot things, and it has a huge open
world. But on the other hand, it's also a 'flight sim' (well, space
flight), and a lot of that world is empty space (the game being set in
space ;-).
But Bethesda's "The Terminator" (1991) is a much better fit. It is definitively a first-person shooter in a form we'd recognize today,
and it featured a large open world. There were buildings you could
enter, cars you could drive, and NPCs you could interact with. The
mission structure was fairly sandbox and open-ended. Both the
technology and the newness of the genre meant it was far more limited
than more modern takes on the concept, but even so it is very
recognizably an 'open world' FPS to modern gamers.
It was really my recent discovery of "Total Eclipse" that prompted the initial ramble. Here was a game that allowed players to move around
fully 3D-rendered dungeons of the sort that wouldn't be common until
the advent of Quake... but in 1988, eight years prior to the release
of Id's masterpiece. "Total Eclipse" could run on an 8088 XT machine
with 256KB of RAM, for Gods sake!* Admittedly, there are differences
between "Total Eclipse" and "Quake"** but still, it was an impressive achievement from a game I'd never heard of or seen mentioned when FPS
games were discussed.
So I decided to give it - and a few other games - a shout-out.
Forgotten programmers of these forgotten games, it may be 30+ years
later, and on a forum almost nobody reads anymore, but still, let me
be one of the first to say it: you done good. ;-)
Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:
When people think of the origins of first-person games, "Wolfenstein
3D" (May 1992), "Doom" (December 1993) or (for those who think they
know about this sort of thing) "Ultima Underworld" (March 1992) are
usually the names that spring first to mind. And its true; these games
were the ones that - in many ways created the genre as we recognize it >>today.
I'd say these these games are recognized by people think they know
about this sort of thing as the first 3d textured games with 360 degree
of movement. No one thinks of them the original "first person" games, >although Wolfenstein 3D is often decribed at the first firest person
shooter. While that's not strictly true, it definitely was the game
that popularized and defined the FPS genre. Before Wolfenstein 3D no
one would've known by what you meant by FPS, even in the frames per
second sense.
When people think of the origins of first-person games, "Wolfenstein
3D" (May 1992), "Doom" (December 1993) or (for those who think they
know about this sort of thing) "Ultima Underworld" (March 1992) are
usually the names that spring first to mind. And its true; these games
were the ones that - in many ways created the genre as we recognize it
today.
Games from a first person perspective, I certainly played some on the
Speccky 48k but the first one I can remember playing at all outside of
an arcade was 3D Monster Maze on a friend's ZX81. Quite a revelation
for the time.
JAB <noway@nochance.com> writes:
Games from a first person perspective, I certainly played some on the
Speccky 48k but the first one I can remember playing at all outside of
an arcade was 3D Monster Maze on a friend's ZX81. Quite a revelation
for the time.
ZX Spectrum 3D games I remember are:
Driller (1987): ><https://worldofspectrum.org/archive/software/games/driller-incentive-software-ltd>
Dark Side (1988): ><https://worldofspectrum.org/archive/software/games/dark-side-incentive-software-ltd>
Impressive. Not so much for the technology, which was better done
earlier and elsewhere, but that they managed to do it on a Speccy and
within 48 kilobytes of memory.
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