Free look (also known as mouselook) describes the ability to move a mouse, joystick, analogue stick, or D-pad to rotate the player character's view in video games.
In games whose free-look systems are controlled fluidly via a pointing device, such as a mouse or the Wii Remote's infrared pointer, the camera will change angle when the cursor moves near an edge of the screen.
Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss, released in March 1992, as well as the later System Shock (which was made on the same engine), allowed the player to manipulate the camera, looking left, right, up or down by using dedicated keys or by using the mouse to click on the edges of the screen.
Raven Software's November 1994 release CyClones featured a basic implementation of the free look; main movement was via keyboard (with turning and strafing via key combinations), but the on-screen weapon aim point was moved independently via the mouse.
Quake (1996), is widely considered to have been the turning point in making free look the standard, in part due to its Internet multiplayer feature, which allowed large numbers of mouse and keyboard players to face each other head-to-head, and proved the superiority of mouselook over keyboard-only controls.
According to creator Martin Hollis: "We ended up with innovative gameplay, in part because we had Virtua Cop features in a FPS: A gun that only holds 7 bullets and a reload button, lots of position dependent hit animations, innocents you shouldn’t kill, and an aiming mode.