first-person shooter
n. A type of computer game in which the player assumes the perspective of a gunman.
Examples
1999
The media-savvy retired Lt.-Col. David Grossman made headlines with remarks about video games being "murder simulators" that train kids to kill, spawning a potential generation of mini-Rambos.

He focused particularly on … the much-maligned first-person shooter genre of PC games—Doom, Quake and their many descendants.
—Steve Tilley, “Learning to Kill?,” The Toronto Sun, September 17, 1999
1999
Id Software, the Mesquite, Texas, game developer, has built a powerful reputation with its "first-person shooter" games. Since its 1991 founding, the company has released Wolfenstein 3-D, Doom, Doom II, Quake and Quake II.
—Marc Spiegler, “Pretty pretty bang bang,” Salon.com, September 08, 1999
1994 (earliest)
One of the newest action titles on the Sega CD system is Psygnosis' sci-fi title, Microcosm. In this semi-innovative game, a whole army of shrunk-down enemies has been injected into the bloodstream of an important executive, and you must stop their assassination attempt from the inside.

You control a small fighter armed with an assortment of guns in a bland, first-person shooter that takes place inside the executive's blood vessels and bones.
—Jim Prange, “Microcosm almost a star,” The Grand Rapids Press, April 19, 1994
Notes
This phrase first appeared online, and there are a number of newsgroup citations from 1993 (the earliest being an April 9, 1993 post).
Filed Under