Tangentially, people should watch the series Children Of Doom on Youtube - which is only occasionally about id Software. It’s a history of first-person shooters, year by year, focusing on one landmark title before covering other major releases.
Admittedly it only starts with Catacomb 3D. The genre’s origins go back another decade, give or take. How far exactly depends on how you define it. Personally I would say: free rotation, on-foot gameplay, some kind of hitscan or projectile combat. Maze War from 1973 doesn’t quite count. Battlezone is a tank sim. (As is id’s Hovertank.) I think the earliest example I’d count is The Eidolon… by Lucasarts. They flipped the Rescue On Fractalus renderer upside-down so you can wander caves and hunt dragons. The game runs on Commodore 64.
Tangentially, people should watch the series Children Of Doom on Youtube - which is only occasionally about id Software. It’s a history of first-person shooters, year by year, focusing on one landmark title before covering other major releases.
Admittedly it only starts with Catacomb 3D. The genre’s origins go back another decade, give or take. How far exactly depends on how you define it. Personally I would say: free rotation, on-foot gameplay, some kind of hitscan or projectile combat. Maze War from 1973 doesn’t quite count. Battlezone is a tank sim. (As is id’s Hovertank.) I think the earliest example I’d count is The Eidolon… by Lucasarts. They flipped the Rescue On Fractalus renderer upside-down so you can wander caves and hunt dragons. The game runs on Commodore 64.