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The roots of open-world gaming. -
The first open-world game was Jet Rocket, a video projection arcade game released by SEGA -
The game combined action gameplay with an open-world adventure environment. -
Interceptor was an early first-person shooter and combat flight simulator that involved piloting a jet fighter, using an eight-way joystick to aim with a crosshair and shoot at enemy aircraft that move in formations of two. -
Heiankyo Alien was the first video game with an overworld that came out on Gameboy. -
The first game to feature on-foot, outdoor exploration in a fully-scaled, continuous open world. -
It was the first game to use 3D polygon graphics to render their open-world environments. -
Star Cruiser was an early example of an action role-playing game with fully 3D polygon graphics, combined with early first-person shooter gameplay. -
The Metal Max series is a post-apocalyptic role-playing game that featured truly open-ended, non-linear gameplay. They lack a predetermined story path, but the player is instead given the choice of what missions to follow in whichever order while being able to visit any place in the game world at any time. -
GTA III also had elements from earlier games. For example, open-ended missions based on operating a taxi cab in a sandbox environment were the basis for SEGA's Crazy Taxi in 1999 -
Breath of the Wild introduced an innovative sandbox approach to open-world design, where the player has full freedom to interact with the open-world environment, with intuition, an advanced physics engine, and a new chemistry engine.