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What is the most technically impressive game?


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So let's give Star Raiders the "Most Impressive Game of 1979" badge ;)

 

I'd also second Ballblazer for both looks and playability and "Seven Cities of Gold" was certainly top notch when it came out.

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So let's give Star Raiders the "Most Impressive Game of 1979" badge ;)

 

I'd also second Ballblazer for both looks and playability and "Seven Cities of Gold" was certainly top notch when it came out.

FWIW, 'Ballblazer', 'Seven Cities of Gold' and 'Rescue on Fractalis' came out in 1984, 'Koronis Rift' and 'The Eidolon' came out in 1985.

I think 'Star Raiders' at least held the title a few years. :)

Some people mentioned some of the arcade ports but they weren't technically that advanced for the most part.

I suppose some people would lump Star Raiders into that category as well but at least it has some math behind the 3D flight. Nothing like Elite but it's certainly more complex than just moving sprites. I'm not saying they aren't impressive, maybe just technically a little more like stuff that had been around since before the Atari 8 bit.

 

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. I guess lucasfilm was lucky at those days...

 

They got top technology in the ILM department combined with the narrative and cinematic experience at Lucasfilm plus talent. They got main frames to develope in "modern" way?

 

Would there be these 4 games without Carpenter being there? I mean the man behind the Genesis fx of Star Trek 2 and expert on Fractals in CGI?

 

They got musicians and animation people. I guess similar situation to ID software and Carmack/Romero.

 

Or Thalion on ST or factor 5 on Amiga.

 

Correct me if I am wrong, but didn't get LucasArts 1 million dollar?

I am not sure if any games company earned that anmount of money with Atari games.

On a side note, if you are interested what I (and other coders and artists on here) can do for 1 million dollar, feel free... :)

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Dropzone delivered what Defender did not - for me. I couldn't understand anyone liking Defender - but then, my programmer friend Andrew. B actually liked it - but he never played the coin-op game. Defender was jerky and slow - which Dropzone was not - and it was as fast and as frantic as the coin-op.

 

Ballblazer was technically and visually impressive - but I didn't find it fun to play. Maybe because I didn't do well in playing and didn't understand the dynamics of the game? At that time - I wasn't into (real) sports - but since then, have picked up playing Volleyball and Table Tennis - and what's important/fun about these sports games (and others) is how spin makes the difference. Now if Ballblazer had spin on the ball - that would do it for me.

 

Technically impressive for me - would be any game that is doing a lot of different stuff, particularly graphics going on - that is fast, smooth, responsive - and the game is fun. If it sets a new (or 'the') standard - then it would stand out - showing how it can be done.

 

Harvey

Edited by kiwilove
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Whilst you cannot put spin on the plasmorb there are some techniques beyond the basic play - for me it was all about the angle shots, skooch the rotofoil one way, the ball lags on screen and then hit fire and the orb shoots away at an angle - I've bounced many a shot off the wall into the goal or past an opponent that way.

 

sTeVE

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Anyone think of dropzone?

 

James

Ofcourse... some posts above ;)

When it arrived back in the 80s it had no competitor.

But, having a timespan from 1979 to 2015, history changes points of view.

In 1979 there was nothing compareable to Starraiders.

Dropzone was a leader until ...

 

Well, the genre Drop Zone belongs to, is still leaded by the game.

Technically it is beaten by "RGB" , but this is a platformer.... watching for some of the same "of its own" league ;)

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Ofcourse... some posts above ;)

When it arrived back in the 80s it had no competitor.

But, having a timespan from 1979 to 2015, history changes points of view.

In 1979 there was nothing compareable to Starraiders.

Dropzone was a leader until ...

 

 

 

Basically, as mentioned by others earlier, there are multiple answer. And different periods of time have to be considered.

Maybe not on a year basisi, but definatly "the beginning (1979-198?), the commercial time (198?-198?) and the hobbiest time (1992-now).

The hobbiest period could be divided into pre-Internet and Internet-time.

 

Just an idea, if other time periods are more suitable its fine with me. But comparing Starraiders to Yoomp!, Crownland and RGB is not fair IMO.

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Correct me if I am wrong, but didn't get LucasArts 1 million dollar?

I am not sure if any games company earned that anmount of money with Atari games.

Back in the early 80s it was much more than today. Probably 30 Million dollars today. For that, they did a rather lazy job.

Coding on super computers and reduce the code to fit to the A8 .

At least , the Atari showed something impressive, and all optimizations on the C64 didn't help ... ;)

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Basically, as mentioned by others earlier, there are multiple answer. And different periods of time have to be considered.

Maybe not on a year basisi, but definatly "the beginning (1979-198?), the commercial time (198?-198?) and the hobbiest time (1992-now).

The hobbiest period could be divided into pre-Internet and Internet-time.

 

Just an idea, if other time periods are more suitable its fine with me. But comparing Starraiders to Yoomp!, Crownland and RGB is not fair IMO.

It's kinda tough for games that took a few short weeks and written by one person to stack up against later titles that may have been developed by multiple people or took much longer to develop. The original development tools were also primitive by today's standards.

 

When you consider Star Raiders was a launch title and (from the wiki) "In 2007, it was included as #2 in a list of the 10 most important video games of all time, as compiled by Stanford University's History of Science and Technology Collections", it does deserve some respect. It does lack the polish and tricks of the more recent homebrew games though.

 

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I think for "technically impressive" we need some criteria:

 

. efficient use of (limited) available resources, e.g. 8K Rom assuming 8K Ram for Star Raiders.

. programming cleverness, e.g. massively unrolled code in Yoomp! or achieving 3D effects in Star Raiders, 3D/fractal usage in the Lucasfilm games.

. pushing hardware towards or beyond accepted limits, e.g. lots of arbitrary colour placement in Koronis Rift, lots of screen motion without use of scrolling in Yoomp!

. standout among similar games within the same genre, e.g. Dropzone as a H-scrolling shooter, International Karate as a fighting game.

 

Probably a few more that could be added to that lot.

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Don't forget: The Question is asked "today".

 

Overall time, including all genres .. etc.

 

Actually , the Wolf 3D clone playing digital music while the levels get loaded from Disk, and using additional space of a megacart for the filled polygons isn't there ;)

Edited by emkay
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  • 4 weeks later...

The majority of classic fun games don't rank as technically impressive - because they simply get on with the simple straightforward play mechanics and deliver.

 

One that is technically impressive - should bring a 'Wow' factor present - that overloads your senses with the amount of animation/movement/etc that is going on - that not only does it deliver on the fast and smooth (or close to it) gameplay mechanics - but that there is so much else going on - that you can start listing the attention to detail that is present. It won't be a long list, but it'll be some kind of list nonetheless - some of these features do affect/enhance the gameplay - whereas others don't at all but still add to the overall experience.

 

And how many games are like this at all? You'll know it when you see it.

 

Harvey

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  • 5 months later...
  • 4 weeks later...

To me it's still Necromancer:

 

- great music

- genius sound effects

- perfect animation (which other game has glittering and walking trees?)

- super high speed game play, but still beatable (sometimes)

- and of course a totally new concept of game, not a copy of any other game mechanics

 

Bill Williams should have written some Pokey tutorials. His effects were spot on.

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