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Night Driver: The
First 3D Game
It was difficult to come
to a decision on this one. The first 3D game? Many sources pointed
us toward the 1977 release of Basketball for the Atari 2600. (This
is how the marketing departments at game developers named sports
games before they started forking out greenbacks for endorsements
from superstar athletes.) Basketball featured a trapezoidal court,
which allowed the two onscreen players to move between all four
baselines. Although this might be the first 3D perspective on a home
console, it wasn't the first 3D perspective in a video game.
In October 1976, Atari released the arcade version of Night
Driver, a black-and-white game featuring a steering wheel, shifter,
and pedal. Players tried to keep their car on a winding road that
kept getting thinner and more difficult to navigate. Two rows of
white dots, which represented the road boundaries, constantly moved
toward the player. The rows were closer together at the top of the
screen than at the bottom, which gave the game its 3D perspective.
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Players tried to keep their car on a
winding road that kept getting thinner and more difficult to
navigate.
| The game was definitely 3D
in this respect, but as a free bonus, we're going to call it the
first first-person-perspective game as well. Many people associate
first-person perspective with some form of hallway game, such as the
dungeon scenes in Akalabeth or Wizardry. However, the open skies of
Night Driver came to the big screen a couple of years earlier.
Those who disagree with our assessment should consider Midway's
Datsun 280 Zzzap, which was released in December 1976. Zzzap was
basically the same game as Night Driver. To add fuel to the fire,
Atari's 1980 version of Night Driver for the 2600 home console
altered the white block so that it included the front wheels.
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