Camera design is one of those things that is frequently forgotten by novice game designers. Up to this point, we have had what is called a fixed position camera. There is a single screen with no change in perspective. In the 1970s, almost all of the early arcade games were designed this way. The oldest game that I have found with any sort of camera was Atari's Lunar Lander, which was released in August 1979. Lunar Lander was an early vector-based game that would zoom the camera in as the lander neared the surface of the moon, and would then pan the camera out to follow your lander as it approached the surface.
In the early 1980s, more games began experimenting with the idea of a game world that was larger than a single game screen would allow. Rally X was a Pac-Man-like maze game released in 1980 by Namco, where the maze was larger than a single display...
