Isometric projection was particularly used for developing video games in the years between the 80s and the 90s. The title which introduced this kind of perspective is Zaxxon, a shooter released as an arcade game for Sega platform in 1982. Isometric perspective got such a success that just a few months after Zaxxon’s first release another game of the same kind – Q*bert – came out, completely different from Zaxxon in its gameplay and objective, but still valuable enough to be anointed as one of the best isometric games ever made. In an era when giving depth to video games was still unthinkable due to lack of adequate technology, a point of view obtained from an isometric projection was such a great achievement that the siren call for the production of more games based on the same idea was irresistible. From 1983 on, isometric games got richer in characteristics, adding three-dimensional climbing and jumping to their features, too. Moreover, they stopped being an exclusive of the arcade market and spread also to home consoles, hitting the top with big titles like Ant Attack for the ZX Spectrum – first of the adventure games using an isometric perspective – and Populous – first of the strategy isometric genre.

With the evolution of gaming technology in the 90s, isometric view started to be first modified and then abandoned in favor of a pseudo-3D gaming environment, like in the case of Diablo (1996). In the late 90s, Isometric projection in the gaming industry mostly survived in Japanese tactical role-playing games (JRPG) such as Final Fantasy Tactics (1997), but its era was giving away to newer graphics. It was only thanks to game engines like Infinity Engine and Kickstarter that isometric perspective made it to the 2000s and become incredibly popular among JRPGs’ fans, who helped it surviving until today.

When we talk about famous Japanese games using an isometric perspective, we can’t ignore such big titles as the ones belonging to Final Fantasy saga. In particular, Final Fantasy Tactics is a tactical role-playing game developed and published by Squaresoft (now Square Enix) for the Sony PlayStation video game console. Final Fantasy Tactics is set in a fictional medieval kingdom called Ivalice. The story follows the adventures of Ramza Beoulve, a cadet who finds himself thrust into the middle of a military conflict called The Lion War, where two opposing noble factions are fighting for the control of the monarchy. While the conflict furthers, Ramza and his allies are more and more aware that there is a darker plot behind the fighting than simple will for dominance.

Having been released when isometric view had already been experimented by many other games companies, Final Fantasy Tactics makes use of all the features which made of isometric the great innovation it was, but mixing it with the newer elements introduced in the late Nineties. Indeed, in contrast with previous games with the same graphics, Final Fantasy Tactics uses a 3D, isometric, rotatable playing field with two-dimensional bitmap (or bitmap sprite) characters. The great harmony of its layout, together with its amazing plot and high playability, made of Final Fantasy Tactics an immortal legend able to attract also new generation games’ fans.

A common mistake made by inexperienced players is to confuse every game with a diagonal projection for a title using an isometric perspective. After all, projection means displaying a three-dimensional object on a 2D plane, thus it is inappropriate to define “isometric” any type of game using a diagonal projection. In fact, there are more kinds of projections that were and are still largely used by game developers, that are trimetric, oblique, and perspective. Projection resulting into a trimetric view is pretty much similar to isometric, but it is based on a freer concept. The axes composing the geometric layout measure different sizes, in fact, resulting in a more stylized polygon which is actually very hard to distinguish from isometric one with the naked eye. Good examples of games with trimetric perspective are Fallout (1997) and SimCity 4 (2003).

Oblique perspective is instead based on a graphical projection used for producing two-dimensional images of three-dimensional objects, with the result that objects are not put in a homogenous perspective and the overall image appears distorted. Popular examples of games using an oblique perspective are Divine Divinity (2002) and Ultima Online (1997), but oblique projection hasn’t actually been that successful. On the contrary, games using perspective projection achieved a great success. Differently from the above-mentioned views, perspective projection is based on a realistic concept which tries to mimic how objects look to the human eye, and relies on the concept of a focal point – it works at the same way as cameras do, to put it simply. Torchlight (2009), Divinity: Original Sin (2014), and also the earlier titles belonging to the Resident Evil are just some of the games which use that realistic perspective view which will become the ancestor of today’s 3D graphics.