We would have never expected such a global impact with so many positive, encouraging and kind words, so thanks to all of you for this. ID cemented the FPS with its excellent Wolfenstein, DOOM, and Quake franchises, but even they stood on the shoulders of other giants.About three months have passed since the release of Blade of Agony and the feedback so far has been impressive. More than just a simple genre, the FPS gives players an intimate perspective and puts them into the actual shoes of their avatar as a result, it has influenced just about every major type of video game. Nearly 40 years since Maze War introduced the concept to the world, the FPS has conquered the gaming market. Unlike Battlezone and Hovertank 3D, Catacombs 3D starred a human character with fully animated hands. It's is a dark-fantasy first-person shooter, in which players navigate dungeons, cast spells, and fight monsters. Later that year, ID released Catacombs 3D, which set the template for the company's future titles. Called Hovertank 3D, ID Software's original FPS emulated Battlezeone's player-controlled tank, but it differentiated itself by requiring players to not only fight enemies but to save civilians and navigate a maze. ID built off these technical innovations and released its first FPS in April 1991. Battlezone put players in a tank and tasked them with dodging missiles and destroying enemy tanks.
As reported by PC Gamer, the first successfully marketed FPS was an arcade game called Battlezone, developed by Atari and released in 1980. However, despite its innovation, Maze War never made its way to consumers, so it was more a proof of concept than the realization of a product.
In the game, players navigate a disembodied eye through a series of mazes as they fight off various enemies. According to Polygon, Maze War was developed by high school students during a NASA work-study program and later expanded upon when they went to college, and it pioneered many of the features that have become synonymous with first-person shooters. Technically, the very first FPS was a student project called Maze War, created in the early 1970s. The Origins of The First-Person Shooter Genre
But, while Wolfenstein set ID Software up for stardom, it wasn't even ID's first FPS. So, in regards to ID's three major franchises Wolfenstein came first, then DOOM, and then Quake. Quake followed both those titles in 1996 and innovated on the FPS genre, shifting shooters away from sprite-based graphics and introducing fully rendered 3D worlds and fast-paced gunplay. Related: Skyrim & DOOM: Pregnancy Test Edition Is the Best Thing No One Asked ForĭOOM released in 1993, one year after the seminal Wolfenstein 3D. However, while DOOM may have popularized the genre, it was not the original first-person shooter. After all, throughout the 1990s, first-person shooters were known as " DOOM Clones," rather than entries within a larger genre. But which one came first? And are these even the first first-person shooters?ĭOOM is often considered to be father of the FPS. From Fallout to Bioshock and RPG to action game, the first-person shooter genre has defined a wide array of video games. ID Software, the developer behind like DOOM, Quake, and Wolfenstein, is regularly credited with creating the FPS, with those games seen as the granddaddies of the genre.