A brief history of the FPS

Jeremy Ford's picture
Jeremy Ford - 23 March 2009 - 10:48am

For most people, it started with Doom. Doom wasn’t the first FPS, or even the first to win fans around the world, but that doesn’t matter. Super Mario Brothers wasn’t the first platform game either and Final Fantasy VII wasn’t the fi rst Japanese RPG. In the field of steroid-pumped space marines running round mazes with a bag of weapons and the inability to jump over low ledges, it was Doom that wrote the rulebook. It created the concept of Deathmatch. Its weapon loadout remains a gaming staple – the ascension from pistol through shotgun, chaingun, rocket launcher, zappy futuristic weapon, and finally a Big Fecking Gun left largely unchanged throughout much of the 90s, and only recently sidelined in favour of more ‘realistic’ weapons.

Download this article in PDF format (first published in PC Format 220)


  • Delicious
  • Digg
  • StumbleUpon

Post new comment

  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

More information about formatting options

CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.

  • Look at that thing on the cover! What is it? A nuclear power station? A Combine base from Half-Life 2? A rejected robot from Transforminators? No, it's a PC! A hulking great compartmentalised beast of a PC. In ten years, all PCs will look like this. Even your Mum's. Adam Oxford's produced a complete guide to future tech, so you'll know exactly what to spend your cash on to build the PC of the future.

    Of course, the most important part of your PC is the CPU. There are a fair few bargains out there from AMD and Intel. Jeremy Laird has given them a run for their money, and written masses on each and every one. An essential guide for now, and the future. Jeremy also tried Intel's mobile Core i7 and Core i5 chips, which feature integrated GPUs and will be heading to a laptop near you soon.


Find out more >

Join us on Steam View our RSS feed Follow us on Twitter Join our Xfire community