
The first first-person shooter (2015) - elorant
https://www.polygon.com/features/2015/5/21/8627231/the-first-first-person-shooter
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jansan
I was really impressed with The Eidolon by Lucasfilm Games when it was
released in 1985. Those "fractal" graphics were just so advanced at that time.

Here is a gameplay video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-IrtXGcRGA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-IrtXGcRGA)

Isn't is sad that Lucasfilm Games no longer exists?

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Andrew_nenakhov
Yeah. Monkey Island 1&2, Loom, Maniac Mansion, Full Throttle, Tie Fighter... I
could go on, these guys were special.

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larsbrinkhoff
The 1974 MIT version of game is now running in its original form, using a
PDP-10 emulator and an Imlac emulator.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYRFDLYPeTU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYRFDLYPeTU)

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blickentwapft
Dave Lebling invented the first person shooter? The irony is beyond belief.

For those who don’t know Dave was a key player in Infocom text adventures, the
antithesis of graphic games.

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larsbrinkhoff
He didn't invent it. He enhanced an already existing game.

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bane
I know this is nitpicky, but I feel like this is the first maze game, and it's
a different (related, definitely a predecessor) genre to the first-person
shooter. The big distinction in my mind is that a maze game locks the player
into a fixed position and view in the maze and movement is made by advancing
along this grid, while an FPS allows for free roaming. Maze games, while
earlier than FPSs, and definitely an influence, went an entirely different
direction, and remain a parallel genre to the FPS genre (see Legend of
Grimrock).

I think it's as important a distinction as other first-person genres like in-
the-car driving game, in-the-cockpit space shooter, and flight simulators --
which are also not in the FPS genre, but feature things like a first-person
perspective.

Maze games also consist of your normal first-person dungeon crawler (lots and
lots of D&D type games), MIDI maze and so on. Just like the distinction we
make in genres between FPSs and Third Person Shooters (Tomb Raider, etc.).
There's also a Third Person maze games (Xybots).

I'm not entirely sure what the first FPS was, but somebody else here mentioned
the Eidolon, that might be it. It most definitely wasn't Wolfenstein 3D (id
even had an earlier games: Hovertank 3D and Catacomb 3D).

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dang
Discussed at the time (2015):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9585794](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9585794)

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xtiansimon
The first first person shooter I encountered was this game on a Macintosh:

Super Maze Wars (Macintosh game 1995)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmDeO9Tqx-0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmDeO9Tqx-0)

