My Very First FPS: Wolf 3D…!!! (um, 12 years ago?)

Published by simon on January 22, 2007

Last week’s post was all about real time strategy (RTS) games. Today, since the alignment of Jupiter and the moons are right, let’s talk about that other computer game genre, the FPS (that first person shooter, not frames per second).

My very first FPS was undoubtedly the very first one released, Wolf 3D. I even played the sequel (more like extra levels, really) called Spear of Destiny. And of course, following Wolf 3D was the big one, Doom. I’ve you can’t imagine how it’s like, it’s worlds away from the realism of Counter-Strike and Halo 2.

Doom was such a hit game that until today, all FPS are called Doom-clones. What made Doom a refreshing new approach to games was the ability freely move around in 360 degrees, not to mention up and down. But of course, the graphics were still in VGA and if you wall close up to another character or the wall you can see the huge ugly pixels. Some of my friends complained they got nauseous from playing it too much, what do you expect if you’ve been playing static screen games like Lode Runner and Aztec all these years?

Before Doom and Wolf 3D, home computers weren’t powerful enough to render 3D sprites in real time, some games used were static step-by-step movement. Doom also introduce the BFG, a kickass weapon (yeah, guess what it stands for).

Soon after the two games came the hanger-ons, like Duke Nukem, Quake, Unreal, each subsequent getting more realistic by taking advantage of the quantum leap in PC processor speed and graphic accelerator cards.

These days, the latest FPS games (like GoldenEye, Call of Duty) are really nifty, almost like Hollywood movies. But really, it’ll still probably take a few more years before gamers and strap on VR goggles, load up a Wii-mote like controller, and play a FULL 3D FPS, like on the Holodeck of the Enterprise…

Technorati Tags: PC, games, FPS, doom, wolf 3d

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