Conventional wisdom holds that the first true first-person shooter -- combining texture-mapped 3D graphics, a first-person perspective, and arcade-quick shooter action -- was id Software's seminal hit, Wolfenstein 3D. And, as it happens, conventional wisdom is mostly correct. Sort of. Shortly before the release of Wolfenstein 3D (which is itself based on the classic 8-bit adventure Castle Wolfenstein), id took a dry run at the same technology with 1992's Catacomb 3D, a fantasy shooter in which gamers battled enemy goblins with an arsenal of fireballs. All the pieces of the genre were already more or less in place, but Catacomb lacks the visible firearm and ammunition counter that make Wolfenstein seem so familiar to today's Call of Duty devotees. Earlier games had already established some of the genre's touchstones — 1988's The Colony and 1986's Mercenary, for example, allowed users to freely roam a 3D rendered environment — and later titles, such as 1995's. Terminator: Future Shock, which pioneered mouselook, would add essential refinements. But it's safe to say it all started with Wolfenstein. First cutscenes: Space Invaders Part II

Cinematic cutscenes are such a ubiquitous part of video games nowadays that it's hard to remember it wasn't always that way. Descended more from pinball machines and skeeball than from movies or television, the earliest games usually made storytelling a pretty low priority. Still, a few key games laid the groundwork, beginning with 1980's Space Invaders Part II. The sequel to the iconic shooter featured brief intermissions between levels in which enemy invaders would fly offscreen, broadcasting an SOS. The same year, Pac-Man featured comical interludes between stages, and the year after, Donkey Kong would open with a short scene showing the angry ape clambering up scaffolding with a helpless damsel clutched under his arm. Perhaps it's no coincidence that three of the most iconic videogames were among the first to employ digital storytelling.  via Yahoo