Skip forward to 2013 and Atari announced that it would sell off much of its household IP at auction, and Chris and I were there. And without Battlezone and that sense of wonder and unlimited possibility, Chris and I might never have started making our own games, or formed Rebellion. The isolation from the world around you, the perception of depth and “being” in that world - even a simple one - was like nothing else at the time.
It was both rudimentary and revolutionary. Combined with the game’s pseudo 3D graphics, Battlezone is now considered by many as the first ever virtual reality game. Players looked into the game world from the perspective of a tank commander by using a periscope viewfinder built into the unit. Its famous green and black vectors and tactical tank combat weren’t what made it so special though - it was the arcade housing itself. That world was a video game made by Atari called Battlezone.
Like hundreds of thousands of gamers in 1980, my brother Chris (Kingsley, Rebellion co-founder and CTO to this day) and I went to our local arcade to be transported to another world - a virtual one. Well it has to be the ’80s then? Well, yes but only just - it was 1980, in fact. So when was the first virtual reality game?Įarly 2000s? Nope. The truth is, VR is not really new, it’s just been continually evolving - breaking in waves and troughs, until 2015 where it finally sits on the cusp of launching into the mainstream. The industry may not be as old as film, theatre, and other arts, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t respect our cultural heritage! E3 is a celebration of incredible artistry and creativity so it’s only natural that VR plays an important part at this year’s show.īut E3 is also mainly about the future of games, and sometimes we just need to take stock and look at gaming’s past. I know, that’s probably not what you were expecting - it’s E3 after all, I should be asking you to coo at our very first screenshots, right?įor a lot of you, Project Morpheus and virtual reality gaming marks a new and exciting shift in gaming tech. After all it’s not every day that you have your new (and top secret) project debut at E3, let alone seeing it running on something as exciting as Project Morpheus.īut, before I get into all that, let’s start with a little history quiz!
Well, what can I say? Rebellion may have been formed in 1992, but this will easily go down as one of the most exciting weeks in our history.
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