A Brief History of the FPS
Opening the gates
Doom
Where Wolfenstein 3D sparked an FPS revolution, id Software's next title, Doom, threw gasoline on the fire. Eventually selling more than 3.5 million copies, the Doom series paved the way for the FPS revolution. Technically advanced at the time, the Doom engine was actually a 2.5D software renderer which used efficient front-to-back parsing of Binary Space Partition (BSP) trees to render geometry only visible from the player's current point of view. Doom lacked the six-degrees-of-freedom we're accustomed to in contemporary FPS games. The player could move forward and backward and turn on the horizontal axis, but there was no looking up or down. Other limitations include the lack of sloping surfaces and one-story design (floors couldn't be stacked one top of one another). In keeping with lead programmer John Carmack's pragmatic approach, the Doom engine didn't sacrifice speed for features. While Doom lacked true 3D rendering, the design team overcame the engine's technical limitations by creating excellent levels and frightening sprite-based monster animations. The end result was an immersive environment and thoroughly fast-paced and engaging gameplay. Doom, and it's successor Doom II: Hell on Earth, would set the standard for the modern PC shooter. The mechanics and design ideas in Doom are still present in contemporary FPS games. From the good, such as a variety of weapons and power-ups and intricate level designs, to the bad – mindless hunting for keys to open locked doors and a complete lack of story; the spectre of this famous game permeates every FPS that followed it. Doom can also be thanked for another notable first: network play, over a modem or on a LAN. Dial-up bulletin board lines across the world were busy for days as gamers queued up to download Doom on its release day; many of the same people would keep those BBSs active for years by uploading and downloading the many levels and modifications created by the active user community. The game was ported to many consoles, and still lives on today in the form of open-source projects, thanks to the 1997 release of the original source code under the GNU GPL (releasing the source code is a gesture id Software would repeat for their future titles). Doom's biggest contribution to gaming, however, is that it inspired an entire generation of game designers and developers. These upstarts were no doubt inspired by the financial windfall Doom brought to id Software: when sales from your shareware title can fund your Ferrari purchases, you know that you've got a hit. To say that id Software inspired a genre is an understatement - entire books can be (and have been) written about Doom, but suffice to say the former Softdisk rebels single-handedly established an entire industry within an industry. With the genre now a proven money-maker, publishers piled on the FPS bandwagon. Raven Software, perpetual licensees of id Software's game engines, released Heretic and Hexen, two titles which put a dark magic twist on the FPS. Unremarkable Doom clones rapidly cluttered store shelves (LucasArts' Star Wars: Dark Forces comes to mind) but among the chaff were a few genre-defining titles. Proving that PC gamers weren't the only ones allowed to revel in the glory of the FPS, developer Bungie Studios released Pathways into Darkness, the first FPS for the Mac. But 1993's Marathon, Bungie's second Mac-only FPS, became a real classic. The first of an eventual trilogy, Marathon weaved a compelling and deep science-fiction storyline into an action shooter (leave it to the Mac crowd to mess up a perfectly good gore-fest with something as superfluous as story). Marathon is to be credited for bringing solid gameplay and continuity in a series to an otherwise paper-thin genre. 
System Shock
Perhaps the most heralded title from the first generation of FPSs is System Shock, released in 1994. Developed by Looking Glass Studios, System Shock won praise for its technical achievements and immersive gameplay. The 3D engine - modified from the one used in Ultima Underworld - allowed the player to look up and down and perform actions such as jumping and crouching. This advanced technology also meant that the game's level design was more advanced than other titles released at the time. The interface was unique and provided an unmatched level of interaction with the environment. At times, the story required the player to battle viruses in cyberspace – a wireframe representation of an infected computer network. Melding story and gameplay with cutting-edge graphics technology, System Shock was an atmospheric thriller ahead of its time.
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