The First Real First-Person Shooter and First Digital Gaming Computer (PCGH-Retro May 5)

…1951: Nimrod – anyone who suspects the hunter from the Nordic world of legends is not quite right in this case. Because Nimrod was a computer that, unlike its contemporaries, was not supposed to calculate ballistic trajectories for artillery shells and the like. No, according to Internet wisdom, it was the first digital computer that was only built for playing – and, since it was shown both at the technology exhibition as part of the Britain Festival and later in West Berlin, probably also, around present the technology behind it to a wider audience. The game that Nimrod “could” was Nim.

…1992: The game, which will be released for PC this May 5th, is not the first first-person shooter. But it is the game that perfects this game principle and establishes it as a genre – and thus sets an important trend that changes the gaming landscape forever.

The first successful 3D shooter from id Software is set in a Nazi stronghold during World War II, through which the protagonist has to fight his way with various firearms – a simple but incredibly addictive principle with pseudo-3D graphics that were revolutionary at the time. The game was confiscated in Germany because of the unavoidable Nazi symbolism, but that didn’t change the fact that the limited but free shareware version in particular found its way onto many PCs in Germany. Because in addition to the first-person shooter, id Software is doing something else that is socially acceptable today: the distribution of free game demos via BBS servers, an early form of online sales.

…2006: Optics and acoustics had largely mastered PC games and were able to achieve a convincing stimulation of these two senses for gaming purposes. But one thing was still problematic in many games: the sense of authenticity in terms of physical processes and interactions. A small startup wanted to make a difference with a programmable VLIW processor and some associated physics libraries. The company was called Ageia and their technology was called Physx. On this May 5th, the company is launching the next processor unit after the CPU, GPU and SPU on the (retail) market: the PPU, as Physx Processing Unit is abbreviated. But their life does not last long – although or precisely because the debut game (more of a demo) called Cellfactor knew how to deal effectively with physics. Adjusted levels for UT3 and the mod Warmonger followed until Nvidia secured the technology by buying out the entire company and adapted the libraries to run on their Geforce 8 series cards and newer.