Early Video Games and Quadrilaterals: From Simple Shapes to 3D Polygons

Early Games Used Basic Quadrilaterals Implicitly

Early hardware limited graphics to simple shapes. Quadrilaterals (squares, rectangles) appeared as:

• Arcade Sprites: Pac-Man (1980), Space Invaders (1978) – characters and objects drawn with rectangular pixel blocks.
• Text Adventures: Zork (1980), Adventure (1979) – described rooms, doors, walls as rectangular spaces.

Deliberate Polygon Use Came Later

True 3D quadrilaterals (polygons) arrived with:

• Wolfenstein 3D (1992) – ray-casting engine, walls as vertical quads.
• Doom (1993) – sector-based geometry, floors/ceilings as horizontal quads.
• Virtua Fighter (1993) – first 3D fighting game with polygonal characters.

So while early games didn't "use different quadrilaterals" as a design focus, they laid the groundwork for the polygon-based 3D revolution.