I was just reading an article regarding the history of Mario 64 when the camera controls were mentioned as one of the game’s many innovations. Cleverly, the game actually had a virtual camera man (or Lakitu, as it were) to explain how the camera worked.
This got me to thinking: What was the first video game to use the term “camera” to refer to the perspective that the game is viewed at?
I would expect this to be the first 3D game. When defining a scene (e.g. the game world) you have to define a camera and a point of interest. Without a camera (which technically could have been labelled the “user viewpoint” but camera has stuck) you wouldn’t be able to see anything.
So, a bit of google-fu seems to support Spasim.
If you are referring to either the in-game documentation, or the product design spec to refer to camera, well thats gonna be a whole lot harder to find.