A short history of game space

A short history of Game space

Video games can be built and have been built in a variety of game spaces. From their beginnings games have evolved enormously and they have gone through massive changes, evolving from a text based, imaginary game space, to 2D space and moving on to full 3D ones, where you feel totally immersed in the play.

The stages games have gone through are more or less as follows:
1.Text based games ( these are imaginary games where the space is created by describing the environment. a good example for this is Dundgeons and Dragons brought out in 1974)

Collosal Cave adventure - the original adventure game that inspired the Walking Dead  

2. Contained 2D space ( the screen limits your movement, you cannot move faster than the screen scrolls or further than the edge of the screen at any point in time). A good example fo this type of game is Space invaders where the screen is set in portrait mode to give the idea of height, and hence utilising the space to the best of its potential

Python Space invaders

3. Wrap around Space  - this gives the player more freedom of movement and creates the feeling of bigger space, as in PacMan (see image below), or it creates the feeling of infinite space, as in Asteroids( see image below).

Pac Man on Atari

Asteroids on Atari

4. Spaces that scroll around one axis (this game space used scrolling to give the impression of continuous  movement in a 2D space. Super Mario Bros used horizontal movement, while Spy Hunter privileged vertical movement 

Spy hunter on Nintendo

Super Mario Bros

5. Scrolling along 2 axes (as a player, you can now chose which direction to go across the x and y axes. Good examples from this category are again, the newer versions of Mario, Metal Slug, Sonic)

Sonic retro Casino night. There is a very interesting link here as well, if anyone would like to read more details about Sonic, seeing that it seems to have a come back. You can listen to the music as well. Casino night zone

6. Adjacent spaces ( "Games like Berzerk (1980)took place in multiple  rooms in which  users  were able to imagine that their characters  were invisible  to enemies in other rooms.  If a user's character was hidden from the enemy's view,  the user would not be seen and therefore not engaged. Thus the user would have to manoeuvre to stay hidden  and,/oraccomplish  desired tasks."Dariusz Jacob Boron - A short history of Digital Game Space)

Berzerk Berzerk Voice Enhanced is an impressive hack of Atari's Berzerk that adds speech from the original arcade game. Berzerk VE has, by far, the most speech of any Atari 2600 game, with the phrases "Intruder Alert! Intruder Alert!, "Chicken, Fight Like A Robot", and "Humanoid Must Not Escape" spoken during gameplay. Mike has also restored the original Arcade color scheme and reworked the artwork to more closely match the arcade original. Mike also created a high-quality label and manual for Berzerk VE, which was released at the 2002 Classic Gaming Expo where it quickly sold out.
atariage

7. Scrolling with multiple background layers (each layer of the background is moving at a different speed and therefore creating an impression of 3D space. This space was used in the game Double Dragon (1987) to create the impression of a deep and dense background, while at the same time, the front layer moving faster it gave the impression that it was a 3D space)

Double Dragon - King of the beat 'em ups

8. Limited 3D space (the impression of a 3D space is created here through the perspective lines, and the rules of perspective. When using a one point perspective, the player feels like he is "racing" into the distance, which is the case with "Knight rider"

Knight Rider 2 - PC game

9.Isometric 3D space (looking down on a space and by using shading and perspective, a 3D environment is simulated. Examples of games in isometric 3D space: Zaxxon and Paperboy

Zaxxon

Paperboy, released in 1991 by Tengen

10. Window to the outdoors The whole television screen was used as a window or a plane.                           Best example is Nintendo's Duck Hunt where the player's input devis was a gun and he had to shoot            ducks or clay pigeons  3D space was suggested by making the ducks/pigeons smaller and smaller as they flew away from player.

Duck Hunt, first released in Japan on April 21st 1984, for Nintento  Entertainment System (NES)

  11. Two Spaces on one screen Best example for this game space is Spy vs Spy, a multiplayer game where one has to find the enemy while searching through a labyrinth of rooms, so the payers would have to master mental mapping skills

Spy vs Spy - a two person game, based on a long running cartoon from MAD  Magazine,  it was forst released in  1984 for Atari 8bit, Commodore 64 and Apple II computers. 

  12. Video Capture Each costumed actor  was video recorded  punching,  kicking  and  so on.

The  short, flowing  animations  were then played  back in the game  at the speed  of the fast-paced action.  Rather than controlling bitmapped,  drawn  characters,  players could experience  manoeuvring a real actor. Mortal Kombat was a very popular arcade game using this space brilliantly.

Mortal Kombat II - Arcade game

Mortal Kombat 4 - First title form the series to use 3D computer graphics

  13. Mapped space - Prerendered panoramas Every animation was pre-recorded. and every viewpoint was precalculated. The computer did not need to run a game engine  that would calculate  its visuals in real time: it needed only to store the information  that was needed for each particular  scene.  This way,the animation  was smoother  and more realistic. (D J Boron). Example of a game using this space is Myst.

Myst Island game map

 Best known image for the game Myst

 14. Early 3D space - one horizontal plane In Wolfenstein 3D, the player was placed in a first person view mode and had to explore a series of dungeons in an immersive world. The ground level was on one level with the corresponding horizon, so aiming could only be done from left to right, while up/down direction could not be taken into consideration. The next stage in this category was created by Doom in 1993 where the ground had different heights, and player was engaged from above and below. This was a 2.5D game space

Wolfenstein 4 - originally released in May 1992 for DOS

Doom, released in 1993, shortly after Wolfenstein, again, for DOS, but this time,  the player will have a much larger arsenal of weapons as he will have to deal with non human enemies.

 15. Full 3D space In this game space, players are allowed full freedom of movement. Most first person shooter games that exist today are based in 3D spaces. Some examples are Far Cry, Call of Duty, Quake.

Image taken from Far Cry3. The scenery created was just amazing, and this is just a sample of the high end artistry displayed in this game.

Call of Duty Black Ops 2 - the attention to detail in this game is amazing, all scenes are very cinematic, and have got a really realistic fee to them.

Quake III, the first in the Quake series focusing on multiplayer action