THE HISTORY OF VIDEOGAMES PART 3 - March 1999
| Until this point, the history of videogames has comprised
weird old things, basically museum pieces that are kind of interesting, but bear no
relation to the games we play today. Everything changed, though, in 1976 when Atari came
up with Night Driver. The first game to use a 3D graphics style, and the first game to
give the player a first-person perspective view of the action (ie you were seeing things
through the eyes of the actual car driver, rather than as if you were in a helicopter
hovering above the action), Night Driver is very clearly the grandad of modern games like
Sega Rally and Gran Turismo. It also boasted a feature that's still quite elusive today - absolutely blinding speed. Because the graphics were so simple, the game could move them astonishingly quickly, so it took advantage by coming up with a design where if you avoided crashing (and the little white posts were the only thing you could crash into), you just kept on getting faster and faster, with no upper limit on your speed. If you got really good, the game ended up in an insane, terrifying blur which made even the likes of F-Zero X look like an old-age pensioner driving to the shops on a foggy day. Sheer videogame thrills don't come much purer than this. |
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