One of my quiet gaming obsessions is the concept of missing links. We all know the mainstream history of gaming (You know – the first RTS being Dune 2). Many of us will know the critical consensus-history of gaming (You know – the first RTS being the Megadrive’s Herzog Zwei). What interests me is the stuff both of those history leaves out – you know, what they’re forgetting about in order to make a simplified neater history. In that case, I dare say you can trace the RTS further back than Herzog Zwei if you like. At the least, you need to bring – say – Populous into the consideration. Sure, it doesn’t play in a way akin to how the genre gentrified… but neither, really, does Herzog Zwei.
Not in a trainspottery High-Fidelity-records-collector way. Well… at least not MOSTLY like that. But in a interest in how gloriously tangled the rainforest floor of gaming is.
Anyway – enough set up. On with 1991’s proto-First-person shooter Robocop 3’s awesome ED-209s!