Topic: First First Person Shooter

[-<WillyP>-]

The first first-person shooter | Polygon

Interesting article about the beginnings of first person shooters. Kinda reminds me of one I spent many hours playing back in the day.

Sometime in the late 70's I had acquired a Tandy Color Computer which had a slot for a cartridge, and one of the cartridges I had was titled 'Dungeons of Daggeroth'. The dungeons were 2d mazes represented by 3d wire-frames. All the cubes were the same size, but the lines of the cubes were different colors. To move, you had to type in  series of commands, then hit enter. After you moved, the monsters would move. And after a few plays, you would know where they would be and so you could type in (in abbreviations) all your moves, and strikes (melee weapons only) to kill the monster and pick up a new weapon where one would drop. Clear the level and find the hole in the floor you'd have to climb down to the next level.

Despite it being primitive by today's standard, it was a lot of fun and a few of my friends would come over and we'd all take turns playing. Not sure I have the patience to learn that game today.

[Scyphi]

That's pretty neat, actually, and the description of the game seems very familiar...I think I've seen some variant of Maze sometime in my childhood...but it was so long ago it's hard to know for sure...

[D2Disciple]

Interesting! I thought that Battlezone was the first FPS (despite it featuring vehicular combat), but I often wondered if the concept had been explored before using more primitive technology. I guess this probably actually classifies better as an FPS. You learn something new everyday. Thanks, WP! 

BTW: Found this little video demonstrating Maze War on two Xerox Alto machines. Looks fun!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7chDIySXK2Q

[-<WillyP>-]

Nice... inspired me to look for a video of Dungeons of Daggerath:



(oh, and btw, the trick to embed videos from YouTube is to remove the 's' from 'https')

[-<WillyP>-]

Found a PC port of Daggerath if anyone wants to try it out: DungeonsOfDaggorath0.5.0 - Download - 4shared - Rob Kline