Phantom Slayer

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Phantom Slayer was a computer game released by Med Systems in 1982 for the TRS-80 Color Computer and Dragon 32/64.

Screenshot: A red-robed Phantom closes in on the player.

Written by Ken Kalish, Phantom Slayer was one of the forerunners of the modern First-person shooter genre.

The player moves around a randomly-generated maze, attempting to kill the eponymous phantoms by shooting them. As each level is cleared, a new maze is created, and the phantoms became harder (requiring more shots) to kill.

The game combined a relatively sedate pace and a then-rare first-person point of view (using simple fixed-perspective graphics) to produce high levels of dramatic tension for a game on such primitive hardware. The player would move around the maze, and their only indication that a Phantom was encroaching on their position was an ominous sound, would be played when the Phantom was a few squares away from the player's position.