FPS
Arguably Maze War, in 1974, was the first FPS games; but the tradtion, and thus the genre as such, begins with Wolfenstein 3D in 1992.
I've never been a big fan of first person shooters in general, but they have their distinct place in the history of gaming. Nearly all the games listed here can still be bought, and the source code of most of them has been released, so that they could be ported to operating systems like Linux or Amiga OS.
| Wolfenstein 3D |  |
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92 |  |
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| Spear of Destiny | |
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| Blake Stone | |
93 | |
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| Doom | |
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Pre-Alpha Slide Show | |
| In Extremis | |
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| Heretic | |
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94 | |
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| Rise of the Triad | |
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| The Hidden Below | |
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The first German 3D shooter | |||||
| System Shock | |
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VGA+ | |||||
| Marathon | |
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| Descent | |
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95 | |
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| Hexen | |
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Pre-release screenshots | ||
| William Shatner's TekWar | |
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Build Engine | |||||
| Witchaven | |
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Actually, an RPG/FPS hybrid | |||||
| Bad Toys | |
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Pavel and Libor Valach | |||||
| Alien Breed 3D | |
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AGA only | |||||
| Gloom | |
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| Alien Breed 3D II | |
96 | |
AGA only | ||||
| Nemac IV | |
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| Duke Nukem 3D | |
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Build Engine | |||||
| Quake | |
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The first FPS that used 3D actors | ||
| Testament | |
97 | |
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| Running |  |
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| Chasm: The Rift | |
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| Shadow Warrior | |
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Build Engine | ||||
| Quake II | |
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Quake II was the first shooter available for Windows only. From 1998, Windows will be the default platform for first person shooter games, and hardware 3D accelerators become essential.
| Half-Life | |
98 | |
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| Unreal | |
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| Descent³ | |
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99 | |
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| Mortyr: 2093–1944 | |
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Mirage | |||
| Return to Castle Wolfenstein | |
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01 | |
Surround Gaming | |
| Serious Sam | |
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| Torrente | |
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| Carnivores: Cityscape | |
02 | |
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| Metroid Prime | GameCube |  |
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| Doom 3 | |
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04 | |
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| Vivisector | |
05 | |
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The following is a table showing the uses of the terms
Doom Clone
, 3D Shooter
, First Person Shooter
,
and Ego Shooter
on Usenet
in the years 1993–2000.
| Term/Year | 1993 | 1994 | 1995 | 1996 | 1997 | 1998 | 1999 | 2000 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Doom Clone |
3 | 531 | 1230 | 1640 | 1290 | 880 | 447 | 261 |
3D Shooter |
21 | 40 | 240 | 635 | 1340 | 2670 | 3410 | 3100 |
First Person Shooter |
11 | 23 | 89 | 282 | 874 | 2580 | 3610 | 5660 |
Ego Shooter |
1 | 46 | 156 | 344 | 721 | 665 | ||
| Total | 35 | 594 | 1560 | 2603 | 3660 | 6474 | 8188 | 9446 |
This table displays a bit awkward in Firefox, because this browser for
some reason does not support the colgroup tag properly; the
numbers should align to the right, of course. It works in both Opera and
Internet Explorer.—Below is a graphic to the same topic, created by
someone else, which is at the same time more precise, since it analyzes
months and not years, and less relevant, since it ignores the term
3D shooter
which was rather popular for a while:
