Trigger Happy
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But along the way, videogames have rehearsed
other histories of pictorial representation, and come up
with imaginative and original visual strategies
themselves. Moreover, as has been made abundantly
clear in the mid- to late 1990s by the industry’s
numerous abortive attempts to convert old
twodimensional game paradigms into 3D space,
videogame possibilities often depend totally on the
form of representation chosen. It is hard to imagine a
workable true-3D Asteroids or Defender. The critical
problem is this: you can’t see behind you. Of course,
you can’t in real life either, but then in real life you
don’t often find yourself piloting an arrow-shaped
spaceship and blasting big rocks. The latest reiteration
of Asteroids (1998), in fact, finally recognizes this
problem. The ships and rocks are reimagined as “solid,”
multifaceted objects, but the playing area is a good old
two-dimensional plane.
So what is the story of videogames’ visual
refinement? What shapes of world have sprouted from
the silicon, and what might the future still hold?
Pushing the boundaries
The very earliest videogames, such as Spacewar
and Pong, represented objects on a flat plane, the
boundaries of which were those of the screen. The
