How have early 3D games aged in your opinion?

[Keatah]

I'Robot looks good yesterday and today, emulation or real hardware, either way. I'Robot was also ahead of its time. The average arcade goer didn't quite understand the game. It was too different. That's why only about 1000 were made and less sold. The unsold ones were reportedly dumped into the ocean.

 

Too bad we can't bring some of that "too different" talent to today's games.

[JaguarVision]

Hmm did flojo just say, I praised 3DOnfs? I only recall saying it was the best version among the consoles of that era. Seems people are getting awfully jelly over StarFox. It's just opinions guys.

 

Granted nfs runs better than StarFox,though I don't recall praising nfs frame rate, that seems to be some delusion that was created.

Edited November 1, 2017 by JaguarVision

[JaguarVision]

It was also expensive to produce and to buy reportedly so if anything it would have still been limited if popular.

 

I-robit nailed the neonish flat color look which never ages when done right. I think the shading plays a part in that as well.

[Tanooki]

Stunts was and is in a throwback way godly on computer as far as taking that Hard Drivin' model and doing it far better plus track editor. If you think Hard Drivin on the Genesis sucks, try Gameboy or the unreleased NES proto.

 

Jin I get it, there is a specific art style to it and you can love it or hate it, much like the weird stuff Dali or Picasso would paint in that medium. It's not normal but has a style you can take or leave it.

[Keatah]

In terms of time trials, Stunts is highly playable.

[spacecadet]

I, Robot was released back in 1984. I think that was one of the first ones, if not the very first one. I played Hard Drivin' a few years ago in an arcade, and it was still playable. The 4-speed manual transmission rules!

 

I remember the wheel being the best force feedback wheel I've ever used, even up through today. That's what really impressed me at the time, being able to go around a curve and feel that exact moment where you're just on the edge of losing grip. I've never played any other game that simulated that correctly (or at all), and that's really the most important feeling a force feedback wheel in a racing game could give you. It really lets you drive as fast as you actually can without having to guess when the car's going to spin out.

 

I think that the wheel also had a *lot* of motorized resistance. Most force feedback wheels give you a very light and unrealistic touch, even when they're at maximum resistance. But I remember the wheel in Hard Drivin' really requiring effort to turn, which accentuated the contrast between the car gripping the road and not. So you'd really have to use your muscles to turn, then you could really feel it when the wheel started giving way in a skid.

 

At least that's how I remember it.

 

Think it kinda does have something to do with the graphics too because like the best arcade simulations, it really engaged all your senses. That made the graphics less important since you weren't concentrating just on them, and it was easier to fool yourself into thinking you were really driving because your whole body was involved. I just remember going up those loops trying to keep the car centered and really having to pull on that wheel to keep from going off the edge, but not so hard that I'd feel it break loose. I remember that a lot more than what it looked like.

 

Also one big reason why I feel like the game didn't translate to home consoles.

[Skippy B. Coyote]

Jin I get it, there is a specific art style to it and you can love it or hate it, much like the weird stuff Dali or Picasso would paint in that medium. It's not normal but has a style you can take or leave it.

 

For me I think a lot of it just has to do with growing up in the 90's and having my first formative experiences with 3D games being either sprite based corridor shooters or games with big chunky untextured polygons. At the time I was absolutely entranced by these early 3D graphics and thought they were just about the coolest thing ever, so now that I'm older I still appreciate those kind of graphics when I look back on them. I imagine that if I grew up in the 80's or the 2000's those primitive polygon graphics wouldn't seem quite so visually appealing to me, but as luck would have it those kind of graphics came into popularity at a time in my life when I was a young kid just starting to get into playing video games as a hobby; so to me they represent the best of my childhood gaming graphically speaking.

 

Speaking of which, can we get some love for...

 

Edited November 2, 2017 by Jin

[Tanooki]

We're in the same group of general interest then. I put some good time on Descent, but you know what got me a bit more which also was outside/inside -- Terminal Velocity. That game is insanely good stuff and a damn fine soundtrack to it as well that felt kind of motivational.

 

3D Realms known for Duke Nukem 3D had a hand in this one:

[Skippy B. Coyote]

We're in the same group of general interest then. I put some good time on Descent, but you know what got me a bit more which also was outside/inside -- Terminal Velocity. That game is insanely good stuff and a damn fine soundtrack to it as well that felt kind of motivational.

 

3D Realms known for Duke Nukem 3D had a hand in this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLyrXTL683g

Holy cow!! I spent so much time playing Terminal Velocity on my grandpa's computer when I was 10 or 11 years old and never remembered it in all the years I've been doing retro gaming until just now when you mentioned it. The music and title screen alone just brought back a whole flood of happy memories that I haven't thought about in probably 20 years.

[JaguarVision]

The issue with the ports computer/console a like, of Hard Drivin' was the same issue that occurred when Pit Fighter was ported.

 

None of the machines could run the games so they either ran horrible or they basically tried redoing the game in areas to run on which ever system.

 

The console versions of pit fighter and HD we're at times completely different games.

Edited November 2, 2017 by JaguarVision

[Tanooki]

Jin you're welcome. That was one of my early sorta 3D flight games I loved the most post-Wing Commander 1+2 and those TIE and X-Wing games. Terminal Velocity was my game for quite a stretch with flight as there just weren't that many awesome games in those years outside those franchises. It wasn't for a bit of time that WC3 appeared and then some others like Starlancer and further star wars stuff.

[Video]

Depends on the 3d games. I love the look of flat polygons, and as stills, many still look good today. What ages them the most is more the frame rate, which was often sub 10fps, which compared to newer 3d games, or even 2d games of the era was just horrible. Someone mentions hard driven? The SNES ran the smoothest of the ones I played, and it still chugs at like 5fps. Even with aid, a lot of early 3d games were slow and clunky. Comparing them to early games made them much better, but as new systems came out, they got left behind. Jaguar did reasonably good on 3d games, but even many of those are clunky.

 

2d3d games ran much better (wolf, doom, etc) but where they were helped with the illusion of 3d, rather than having to push Poly's, they often suffer from low resolution graphics and often look rather fugly.

 

Not sure how early I'd place textured polygonal games, like need for speed, but they tended to be on more robust hardware by that point, and ran relatively smooth, and have decent textures. They really are leading more to the modern era, but are Morea case of, did you like it, than , can you deal with the ugly textures and/or low framerate.

[JaguarVision]

Well no early 90's console was strong enough to match arcade hardrivin. Just like none were strong enough to run pitfighter.

 

Now the Amiga wasn't a bad attempt iirc

[Nebulon]

Well, I still recall being blown away when I saw the big-screen launch version of Virtua Fighter in Las Vegas.

 

Today when I look at that game, it looks really really primitive (especially compared to Soul Calibur on the Dreamcast).

 

I also have a tough time looking at games on the N64. Again, they don't seem to have aged well at all.

 

Yet when I look at a 2D game like Strider or R-Type, I still find that they look pretty awesome.

[JaguarVision]

Well, I still recall being blown away when I saw the big-screen launch version of Virtua Fighter in Las Vegas.

 

Today when I look at that game, it looks really really primitive (especially compared to Soul Calibur on the Dreamcast).

 

I also have a tough time looking at games on the N64. Again, they don't seem to have aged well at all.

 

Yet when I look at a 2D game like Strider or R-Type, I still find that they look pretty awesome.

 

I'm assuming you're referring tot he arcade version of VF?

[Kismet]

Probably an unpopular opinion, but all early 3D games, particularly those on the PC, were horrid.

 

Compare FF7 and FF8 on the PC to the PSX version. The PC version was better except that FF7 needed an AWE32 and a FF8 needed a Yamaha XG synth to sound at least as good as the PSX. FF9 (remaster) for the PC simply has the OST sound track built into it at a loss of some dynamic musical cues, but is a far better experience than the PSX version.

 

The reasons for being horrible had a lot more to do with the reliance on having a software renderer as a compromise in case the player didn't have a 3D accelerator board. Thus you have special versions of games made for 3DFX and S3 Virge boards that didn't have the software fallback which looked nicer, but the extra depth was defeated by how everything looks flat (eg textures painted onto flat surfaces instead of having depth.)

[JaguarVision]

I wouldn't use FF7 for any example of 3D quality, even on PC it was legos

[Tanooki]

Well not entirely the PC version had higher resolution, far better shading on the polygons, ran a bit smoother, even the audio was great if you ran that yamaha sound synthesizer (yes FF7 used it too I had it.) It still was a jaggy mess but for a jaggy mess it looked notably nicer than the PSX release. But if you want to get into comparing quality within the same realm, don't do FF8 pick FF9 which blew that away.

 

By the way earlier this year I did some poking about and found a way to get that sound synthesizer again and working in modern Windows too using a couple tools. The times I have something that fires up MIDI audio it's a stunning improvement.

[Nebulon]

 

I'm assuming you're referring tot he arcade version of VF?

Yes.

 

The SEGA arcade at the Luxor (1993).

 

More info here:

http://segaretro.org/Sega_VirtuaLand

Edited November 10, 2017 by Nebulon

[JaguarVision]

Well not entirely the PC version had higher resolution, far better shading on the polygons, ran a bit smoother, even the audio was great if you ran that yamaha sound synthesizer (yes FF7 used it too I had it.) It still was a jaggy mess but for a jaggy mess it looked notably nicer than the PSX release. But if you want to get into comparing quality within the same realm, don't do FF8 pick FF9 which blew that away.

 

By the way earlier this year I did some poking about and found a way to get that sound synthesizer again and working in modern Windows too using a couple tools. The times I have something that fires up MIDI audio it's a stunning improvement.

 

Didn't the original FF7 PC version crash and have lots of bugs? because I remembere reviewers bashing the PC version over the PSX version of FF7.

[Tanooki]

I don't remember really and I didn't get it until a year after it came out probably so I would have had patches applied or already on the build on the discs. I got it back when it came out in that odd poiygonal shaped box and I ran it on an old Pentium 100 I think I had then which had a Matrox Mystique card and a SB 16 Pro in there. It was jaggy like the PSX release, but was less ugly because they did not flat color monotone polygons but gouraud shaded them which gave the visuals a bit more depth plus I ran it at either 800x600 or 1024x768 (I forget) but it was crisp and clean. I don't remember it ever crashing but I also never finished it as it's not as good as the hype says as I got bored somewhere around one of the visits to cosmo canyon if I remember right.

 

Most the complaining I ever saw was that the movies are damned ugly as they didn't resample or filter them from the PSX version so you had these 320x200 already somewhat grainy movies on the PSX being run at resolutions well over so they got fuzzy, grainy, blurry, just ugly as sin. And then there was a lot of whining over the CD audio being removed and replaced with MIDI, but it seemed to be those who didn't know it was on the disc or didn't want to load it, but if you ran the Yamaha SoundSynth program as your wavetable emulator the audio was equal if not superior to the PSX version. There are youtube examples of it and it's pretty amazing.

[Gabriel]

I'm very fond of the Genesis versions of Hard Drivin' and Race Drivin'. I still play them to this day. I'd pick either one over any of the current gen racing franchises.

That said, there's a huge chunk of nostalgia there. Setting aside whether the games were barely acceptable when they were new, they definitely haven't aged well. While I feel the gameplay still works as well as it ever did, there is no artistic expression to really save the game from its 3-4 frames per second presentation.

[Flojomojo]

I liked the MOOO when you collide with the triangular cow. The Genesis version of Hard Drivin' is way better than the Lynx port. They were interesting for the time, since the arcade game was expensive and not in my home. Fun, playable, and hopelessly out of date.

[JaguarVision]

 

I'm very fond of the Genesis versions of Hard Drivin' and Race Drivin'. I still play them to this day. I'd pick either one over any of the current gen racing franchises.

 

That said, there's a huge chunk of nostalgia there. Setting aside whether the games were barely acceptable when they were new, they definitely haven't aged well. While I feel the gameplay still works as well as it ever did, there is no artistic expression to really save the game from its 3-4 frames per second presentation.

You must not have played Forza Horizon then.

[zylon]

I liked the MOOO when you collide with the triangular cow. The Genesis version of Hard Drivin' is way better than the Lynx port. They were interesting for the time, since the arcade game was expensive and not in my home. Fun, playable, and hopelessly out of date.

 

Genesis port of Test Drive 2 was another good example, lol