Last Survivor

Last Survivor (ラストサバイバー Rasutosabaibā) is an arcade game developed by Sega R&D1 and published by Sega for the X Board hardware in January 1989. The game is known for it's usage of then-revolutionary ray-casting graphics, and being one of the earliest free-roaming and three-dimensional shooters with a network multiplayer deathmatch mode, pre-dating id Software's DOOM, which is often credited for popularizing the genre several years later.

Gameplay
Last Survivor is a third-person shooter which involves players traversing twenty mazes in attempt to find four keys and head towards the exit, which can be obtained by killing seven other human players that run around the maze, in addition to various non-human enemies and monsters that drop gold. The game uses rotary joystick controllers that allow the player to move forwards and backwards, and to strafe left and right. One button fires the player character's weapon, while the other will allow them to rotate left and right when used with the joystick. In each maze, there is a shop where the player character can buy and upgrade their weapons, even being able to regain health, increase their moving speed and purchase armor that will absorb a few hits.

The screen is divided into halves, with two players being able to play on the same screen. Up to four cabinets can be linked up, allowing eight players altogether. If less than eight players are available, the remaining characters are controlled by the computer. Whenever one of the players is killed, their decapitated head is left on a playing field until they rejoin the action.

Trivia

 * The game was planned to be ported to the Sega Mega Drive console, but the version was cancelled. However, it was brought to the FM Towns computer in Japan by CRI, complete with a CD soundtrack.