Philips Magnavox Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution Trigger Happy - Manual (Page 142)

Trigger Happy
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view to enhance the feeling of speed. The same genres
also offer a “cockpit cam,” which puts the player in the
hotseat, right at the virtual controls. G-Police (1997), a
helicopter gunship sci-fi shoot-’em-up, makes available
an “aerial cam” that looks perpendicularly down on
proceedings from a great height. Threedimensional
exploration games, meanwhile, generally offer elevated
cams at each point of the compass that may be switched
at will. They will also offer the player either a
temporary first-person viewpoint—as in Mario 64,
where you can look through Mario’s eyes to line up a
tricky narrow path—or a “shoulder cam,” as in Tomb
Raider. The latter is a curious invention that provides a
viewpoint that is very near to the character’s own, yet is
still an external one, peeping impishly through the eyes
of a virtual stalker over Lara’s shapely trapezium.
Why is it important for modern 3D videogames to
provide this multiplicity of viewing angles? There are
two answers: one functional and one aesthetic.
Consider a real-life experience—say, watching a tennis
match. If you watch it from the side and near the
ground, you will see different aspects of the game from
someone watching higher up at one end of the court.
The spectator watching from the latter viewpoint, the