Absolute firsts in video games

Star fire might have been the first game you could enter your initials for a high score.
First one I can remember anyway.
 
I dream that you guys will put together all of these firsts, and then dissect modern games, showing where their gameplay originally comes from. So, something like CoD would include, first FPS, first jumping, first health pack, first deployable health pack, etc. Like DNA or a family tree of some kind. Surely someone could visualize this well.

Once all the heavy lifting was done, you could produce the entire genome of each game that comes out, based entirely on various game play elements.

This would be absolutely awesome. It would certainly end (and start) some 'XYZ is just a ABC clone!' arguments. I can't even begin to imagine how much time I'd lose just browsing through it.
 
Rogue (1980) first randomly generated levels

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Nope.

Beneath Apple Manor (1978) came first: http://www.mobygames.com/game/beneath-apple-manor
 
Spasim (1974) is the first 3D multiplayer game and most probably the first FPS in terms of showing the action from a first person perspective, not the actual mechanics and tropes that are synonymous to modern FPSs (such as being in the role of a person or walking on ground). The graphics and gameplay updated about once every 1 second so it was slow as hell, but the principle was there. It also supported 32 players, divided into groups of 8 "per solar system", I suppose that means per match/server.

I dream that you guys will put together all of these firsts, and then dissect modern games, showing where their gameplay originally comes from. So, something like CoD would include, first FPS, first jumping, first health pack, first deployable health pack, etc. Like DNA or a family tree of some kind. Surely someone could visualize this well.

Once all the heavy lifting was done, you could produce the entire genome of each game that comes out, based entirely on various game play elements.

I started building a comprehensive list, limited to FPS games, arranged by year and broader genres, trying to chronologically connect at least some sort of legacy but it turned into somewhat of a mess so I gave up on it for now, might come back to it eventually. Might be helpful to someone in the state it's in, at least as a chronological list.

 
FFX - First RPG with voice acting

Wait for it... WAIT FOR IT...!
 
First 8bit home console - NES
First 16bit home console - TurboGrafx-16
First 32bit home console - Amiga CD 32
 
I remember what I first saw I robot in the arcades and thought-There's no way home computers will ever be able to do graphics like that.( I was young and naive)
 
Didn't the first Call of Juarez use something similar? I know 2009's Bound in Blood did. Plus Far Cry 2 did as well IIRC.

Technically they did but IIRC they were very loose and pretty much just amounted to a slight camera/gun movement when you were close to an edge, KZ2's was a little more substantial. KZ3's was perfect imo
 
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- First 3D game (with polygons) developed by Nintendo (February 21st, 1993)


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- First game released that was developed in-house by Sony Computer Entertainment (December 16th, 1994)
 
I,Robot looks awesome!
I would have thought that the first game with filled polygons would've been a lot uglier than that. And shaded polygons at that! Impressive.
 
First adult game or game to contain nudity: Custer's Revenge

Any ideas on first game to have blood and gore?

The earliest one I know of is Chiller (1986) although I'm not sure if there's some home computer game that had at least some depiction of blood or gore. Perhaps some text adventures, but that probably doesn't count.
 
Wizardry (1981) first computer RPG to feature parties of multiple characters instead of a lone hero/adventurer, and it was a cracking game, really tough but fun.
 
I believe Planetfall (1983) may feature the first in-narrative death of a sympathetic character in a game.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetfall

I cannot say this for sure, though, and it really depends on how "sympathetic character" is defined anyway. There had been several murder mystery adventure games earlier (i.e. Mystery House from 1980), but I'm not sure if murder victims automatically count as sympathetic.
 
I dream that you guys will put together all of these firsts, and then dissect modern games, showing where their gameplay originally comes from. So, something like CoD would include, first FPS, first jumping, first health pack, first deployable health pack, etc. Like DNA or a family tree of some kind. Surely someone could visualize this well.

Once all the heavy lifting was done, you could produce the entire genome of each game that comes out, based entirely on various game play elements.

There was a large-ish thread which was doing this for the family tree of FPS games recently. Was great, and various people were adding to the openly editable graphics.

A continuation of that concept for individual gameplay elements would be a fun discussion.
 
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