In 2000, Raven released Soldier of Fortune for the PC which also featured its own lean-and-hide cover system which gave multiplayer combat far more depth. Winback, released by Koei for the Nintendo 64 in 1999, did not allow players to run-and-gun, but instead forced them to stop and shoot, with crates and corners providing cover for the player character to pop out from and fire his weapon. Time Crisis, however, was able to use cover effectively due to being a rail shooter, where the path is already determined and there is no camera control. While Time Crisis was a first-person perspective shooter, cover would later be largely bound to third-person shooter titles, due to cover freeing up the camera and for it being easier to judge space when the character is visible on screen. This cover mechanic helped Time Crisis distinguish itself from rival light gun shooters, like Sega's Virtua Cop, and took advantage of the players' hand-foot coordination to create a new arcade game experience. Namco's 1995 3D light gun shooter arcade game Time Crisis introduced a dedicated cover button, specifically an "action" foot pedal, that could be used to take cover behind in-game objects.
In 1994, a cover mechanic was used in the game Blackthorne, which allowed the player to take cover by pressing against walls to avoid enemy fire. In 1988, Konami's Devastators, an early third-person shooter, featured a cover mechanic where destructible objects, such as sandbags and debris littered across the battlefield, could be used to take cover from enemy fire. Rolling Thunder 2 (1990) and Rolling Thunder 3 (1993) also allowed the player to enter doors to hide from enemies and dodge their gunfire. The mechanic of taking cover behind crates and jumping over them was later borrowed by Sega's arcade hit Shinobi (1987). Ryan Lambie, writing for Den of Geek, considers Namco's run-and-gun shooter arcade game Rolling Thunder (1986) to be "the precursor to the modern cover shooter" due to how the player can hide behind crates, doors and other obstacles to avoid enemy fire. In 1985, Data East's target shooting game Shootout had enemies who take cover behind objects or buildings and pop out from cover to fire back at the player. An even earlier example of the concept was Taito's 1975 shooter game Gun Fight, where the player characters could take cover behind destructible objects. Elements of the user interface generally inform the player when cover is in effect, both when positioning player-controlled units, and when firing on enemies that are in coverīrian Ashcraft of Kotaku argues the idea of taking cover in video games is nearly as old as the shoot 'em up genre itself, originating from Taito's seminal 1978 arcade shooter Space Invaders, where the player's laser cannon could take cover behind destructible defense bunkers to avoid enemy fire. Tactical role-playing games such as X-COM enable the player-controlled characters to take advantage of walls and other objects in the environment to provide cover for their units, providing the effect of reducing the chance for that unit to be hit, or reducing the damage taken when hit by incoming fire. Other titles outside of first- and third-person shooters also offer implementations of a cover system.
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This excludes the exclusive use of portable shields as a cover system, though they may often be used to supplement a stationary source of cover, as seen in video games like Army of Two, and Gears of War 2. In addition, the player character must have the ability to move in and out of the covering objects' proximity, leaving the player with moments of vulnerability, partially exposing themselves when they wish to fire on the enemy. Some first-person shooters such as Soldier of Fortune bridged the gap somewhat, by allowing players to lean to the sides, allowing the player's avatar to lean out from behind objects to survey the environment or open fire on the enemy, without fully exposing the entirety of the player's own body to the enemy. This means moving to stand in a position behind an object, as in traditional shooter games, while strictly speaking would be classified as "taking cover", does not qualify as an actual cover system in terms of video game mechanics. To be considered a cover system, there must be some physical interaction with the source of cover and the avatar. In gaming, a cover system lets a player character use stationary or moving obstacles to avoid damage.