Some
three-dimensional games were released as early as the 1970s, but the first video games to use the distinct visual style of isometric projection in the meaning described above were
arcade games in the early 1980s.
1980s The use of isometric graphics in video games began with
Data East's arcade game
Treasure Island, released in Japan in September 1981, but it was not released internationally until June 1982. The first isometric game to be released internationally was
Sega's
Zaxxon, which was significantly more popular and influential; it was released in Japan in December 1981 and internationally in April 1982.
Warren Davis and Jeff Lee began programming the concept around April 1982. The game's production began in the summer and then released in October or November 1982.
Q*bert shows a static pyramid in an isometric perspective, with the player controlling a character which can jump around on the pyramid. It allows the player character to traverse non-scrolling isometric levels, including three-dimensional climbing and falling. The same is possible in the arcade title
Marble Madness, released in 1984. In 1983, isometric games were no longer exclusive to the arcade market and also entered home computers, with the release of
Blue Max for the
Atari 8-bit computers and
Ant Attack for the
ZX Spectrum. In
Ant Attack, the player can move forward in any direction of the scrolling game, offering complete free movement rather than fixed to one axis as with
Zaxxon. The views can also be changed around a
90 degrees axis. The ZX Spectrum magazine,
Crash, consequently awarded it 100% in the graphics category for this new technique, known as "Soft Solid 3-D". A year later, the ZX Spectrum game
Knight Lore was released. It was generally regarded as a revolutionary title that defined the subsequent genre of isometric adventure games. Following
Knight Lore, many isometric titles were seen on home computers – to an extent that it once was regarded as being the second most cloned piece of software after
WordStar, according to researcher Jan Krikke. Other examples out of those were
Highway Encounter (1985),
Batman (1986),
Head Over Heels (1987) and
La Abadía del Crimen (1987). Isometric perspective was not limited to action and adventure games. For example, the 1989 strategy game
Populous uses isometric perspective.
1990s Throughout the 1990s, a number of successful computer games used a fixed isometric perspective, such as
A-Train III (1990),
Syndicate (1993),
SimCity 2000 (1994),
Civilization II (1996),
X-COM (1994), and
Diablo (1996). But with the advent of
3D acceleration on personal computers and gaming consoles, games previously using a 2D perspective generally started switching to true 3D (and
perspective projection) instead. This can be seen in the successors to the above games: for instance
SimCity (2013),
Civilization VI (2016),
XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012) and
Diablo III (2012) all use 3D polygonal graphics; and while
Diablo II (2000) used fixed-perspective 2D perspective like its predecessor, it optionally allowed for perspective scaling of the sprites in the distance to lend it a "pseudo-3D" appearance. Also during the 1990s, isometric graphics began being used for Japanese
role-playing video games (JRPGs) on
console systems, particularly
tactical role-playing games, many of which still use isometric graphics today. Examples include
Front Mission (1995),
Tactics Ogre (1995) and
Final Fantasy Tactics (1997)—the latter of which used
3D graphics to create an environment where the player could freely rotate the camera. Other titles such as
Vandal Hearts (1996) and
Breath of Fire III (1997) carefully emulated an isometric or parallel view, but actually used perspective projection. Isometric, or similar, perspectives become popular in
role-playing video games, such as
Fallout and ''
Baldur's Gate. In some cases, these role-playing games became defined by their isometric perspective, which allows larger scale battles. and SimCity 4 (2003); games that use oblique projection, such as Ultima Online (1997) and Divine Divinity'' (2002); and games that use a combination of
perspective projection and a
bird's eye view, such as
Silent Storm (2003),
Torchlight (2009) and
Divinity: Original Sin (2014). Also, not all "isometric" video games rely solely on pre-rendered 2D sprites. There are, for instance, titles which use polygonal 3D graphics completely, but render their graphics using parallel projection instead of perspective projection, such as
Syndicate Wars (1996),
Dungeon Keeper (1997) and
Depths of Peril (2007); games which use a combination of pre-rendered 2D backgrounds and real-time rendered 3D character models, such as
The Temple of Elemental Evil (2003) and
Torment: Tides of Numenera (2017); and games which combine real-time rendered 3D backgrounds with hand-drawn 2D character sprites, such as
Final Fantasy Tactics (1997) and
Disgaea: Hour of Darkness (2003). One advantage of top-down
oblique projection over other near-isometric perspectives, is that objects fit more snugly within non-overlapping square graphical tiles, thereby potentially eliminating the need for an additional
Z-order in calculations, and requiring fewer pixels. == Mapping screen to world coordinates ==