PS1 / N64 / Saturn / Pentium generation: Have the 3D graphics aged SO BADLY?

[IntelliMission]

Every few days I read the same comment: 3D games of 32/64 bit machines have "aged badly", while the 2D games from the same era or SNES/Genesis/other 16 bits systems look impressive even today.

 

I don't think this is the case. I think it's a matter of context, you have to learn to appreciate those pixelated or blurry textures. Of course, you should play those games on the original low resolution for both screen and textures, as "improved" resolutions make the stages look empty and the characters dull, but that's another debate (assuming the original screen ratio is used).

 

I am curious about the general feeling about this on this forum, let's see how the poll goes.

Edited January 15, 2020 by IntelliMission

[Cobra Kai]

Fact: Tomb Raider looks like shit.

 

2D has faced the hurdle that it is old tech and therefore not as good as 3D. This has born out to not be true as we all know, and hence the crazy amount of 2D revival indy games available that people buy. Nobody is clamoring for 1st generation 3D to make a comeback.

[BydoEmpire]

I think they've aged pretty terribly, but I don't think they should have done something differently. I'm not a big fan of cell-shading, personally, except for very specific titles.

[CatPix]

I do'nt think they have aged that much. If anything, I think theyare less horrible than the 2000's era PC graphics where the big thing was to slap high detailed textures on low-poly 3D models, which made things looking weird, and characters especially creepy, right into the uncanny valley (see Max Payne for a good example).

 

They thing is : they graphics did not aged. They weren't a fad or something that age. They are looking EXACTLY like they looked back in the mid 90's.

What changed is us and the games we're used to.

 

[zzip]

I never thought the early-3D games looked good.   For a long time I thought 2D looked superior because we finally removed the color and resolution restrictions that plagued early 2D.

 

I couldn't understand why everyone was abandoning beautiful 2D and Isometric engines at the time in favor of 3D engines that gave us blobby-looking graphics and terrible performance.   Especially in genres that made no sense.   Like the LucasArts adventure games.    Monkey Island 3 was beautiful and stylish and finally broke the 320x240 resolution limit of earlier games, so of course that engine had to go in favor of something that gave us blob graphics...  why?

 

[dj_convoy]

I don't think they have aged particularly well, but I wasn't really a big fan of nascent 3D even in it's day.

[Gamemoose]

6 hours ago, Kobra Kai said:

Fact: Tomb Raider looks like shit.

 

2D has faced the hurdle that it is old tech and therefore not as good as 3D. This has born out to not be true as we all know, and hence the crazy amount of 2D revival indy games available that people buy. Nobody is clamoring for 1st generation 3D to make a comeback.

I agree about Tomb Raider. Even then it looked like a donkey's rear.

 

However, in regards to your second point, the graphics of Roblox and Minecraft say "hello". Yeah, yeah, the tech that powers those games would be impossible on that old technology but no one seems to care about how they LOOK.

[Magmavision2000]

Most of the 90s 3D era games look like el garbo today. Heck, even some 3D games from the mid-2000s look spicy (I'm looking at you GTA trilogy). The technology wasn't there to make realistic graphics even though many developers tried. Thankfully, some developers decided that making realistic games was worthless and made more cartoonish looking games.

Edited January 16, 2020 by Magmavision2000

[Tanooki]

They've relatively aged poorly to a good point, but nothing as dramatic as the pre-1983 Coleco/Famicom area stuff which just looks and sounds awful to the point anyone saying have an imagination is making excuses.  The early 3D stuff at least had some good audio along with it, and some could make a fair argument on a game to game basis the basic style looks artistically nice depending on the subject matter being played.

[phoenixdownita]

I beg to disagree wrt Tomb Raider, play it on a Pentium and a 3dfx Voodoo 1 (yeah the first one) and it still is quite nice

(they did screw up the "edge of transparent textures", so the trees look somewhat funny).

 

I think also Quake on PC still looks fine to me.

 

Wrt to PS1 I think Tobal n1 is still gorgeous (no textures), Saturn VF2, the 2 Virtua Cop, PS1 Time Crisis, PS1 GT2, MS-DOS Screamer also still decent.

There's a whole lot more that are still fine.

 

But I do agree the vast majority were meh to begin with and have lost appeal due to 3D overload of later gen gaming.

Funny enough the 3D offered by the very next gen (DC, PS2, GC, Xbox OG) is actually quite good.

 

I guess the first gen of 3D consoles is like a little bit the 8bits consoles, we remember them by mistake as the defining ones when in reality the one right after it really got it going (SNES/MD/TG16 really take it home for the "8bit" games we think we remember [the actual 8bit were just not powerful/colorful enough], same for DC/PS2/XBox/GC much better all around).

Something similar in the PC market with the advent of Pentium MMX or even better Pentium II and Voodoo2 (and a little later the NVidia boards like GeForce256) and it's all <= 2001 technology.

 

 

As mentioned earlier for 2D you needed to break the color barrier somewhat (16bits gen and 32bits gen even more) to really shine, for 3D it seems you need somehwat higher res (480i/480p min, XBox OG did have nice 720p support over component cable in the US btw) with good support for textures/lights/transparencies (the lack of perspective correction on the PS1 HW does look pretty bad these days)

[Punisher5.0]

Im ok with how the N64 and Saturn aged. The Playstation though not so much. The textures for the most part are head turning in the wrong direction. Its tolerable with smoothing on with a PS2 or PS3 though.

[Austin]

It varies from game to game for me. Games with ugly textures and lower/sluggish framerates, which is a lot of the PS1 library now, don't do so well in my eyes. Games that do better in these areas on the other hand, hold up better in my opinion. Stuff like N2O, Wipeout 3, Ridge Racer Type 4, Tekken 3, Crash Bandicoot, etc.

 

Some Nintendo 64 titles really have the edge here and have held up pretty well. Mario 64, Star Fox 64, etc. Pretty easy on the eyes with clean textures, smooth edges and high, consistent framerates (mostly).

[high voltage]

The N64 graphics 'aged badly' straight from the beginning

Edited January 16, 2020 by high voltage

[homerhomer]

Yeah, definitely the awkward teenage years for 3d.  

Edited January 16, 2020 by homerhomer
Re-read the forum question, lol

[Lost Dragon]

It's all about keeping them in context.

 

I bought a Dreamcast on day one here in the UK as it offered such sharp imagery compared to what my trusty PlayStation, even being pushed to it's limits, was offering up, but it was always the nature of 3D back then.

 

There was this 3D Arms Race in effect with games being looked at based on how many texture-mapped polygons a second the engine could push and with what lighting effects.

 

I bought a Jaguar purely based on seeing the early footage of AVP running on Gameamaster TV (version before the A.I routines added and frame rate killed), it looked generations ahead of the 2D AVP and Aliens games available in the arcades or on console. 

 

But i could never stomach it or Alien Res on PlayStation now as 3D has rapidly moved on

 

SD tv's hid an awful lot of sins as well back then, but it wouldn't just be the messy graphics and poor frame rates i would have issues with playing a PlayStation 3D title now..

 

It would be the clunky tank controls in titles like Resident Evil, poor A.I in RTS and FPS titles..

[IntelliMission]

Tank controls could make for another interesting topic... I think they are underrated. Some of my favorite games use them and I don't have any issues with them: Tomb Raider, Silent Hill... Even some less-than-stellar games like Croc, Ecstatica or Bioforge work great with tank controls.

 

Tomb Raider, in particular, uses tank controls to create some great puzzles.

 

But yeah, back to the graphics, I loved both 2D games such as Abe's Oddysee and 3D games such as Gran Turismo, Metal Gear Solid, Blood or Jedi Knight at the time. However, I agree with the user who said that 3D killed graphic adventures. Horrible, that forced jump to 3D/animation/SVGA was horrible for graphic adventures around 1995. They should have stayed in VGA forever. Don't touch what works well.

Edited January 16, 2020 by IntelliMission

[pablum]

Depends upon the game. I think many racing games from that era still look good. The Wipeout games with their stylized visuals work really well with lower poly counts, IMO. Ridge Racer games are also great. 

 

Trouble comes when human characters or anything else that is otherwise organic start getting added. The Resident Evil games, Zelda TOoT, 3D fighting games. None are particularly good looking. 

[TDIRunner]

Most games from that era look bad today, but that doesn't mean they aren't fun to play.  Yes, Tomb Raider looks terrible today, but it's still one of my favorite games of all time and I still play through it about once per year. 

[TDIRunner]

3 hours ago, IntelliMission said:

Tank controls could make for another interesting topic... I think they are underrated. Some of my favorite games use them and I don't have any issues with them: Tomb Raider, Silent Hill... Even some less-than-stellar games like Croc, Ecstatica or Bioforge work great with tank controls.

 

Tomb Raider, in particular, uses tank controls to create some great puzzles.

I don't understand the hate for tank controls.  Games with fixed camera angles like Resident Evil would be impossible to play without tank controls.  

 

Other games like Tomb Raider could go either way.  Sure the tank controls are clunky, but they are also very precise.  The character always does exactly what you want it to do (it might just take a while to line it up right).  Unlike the later Tomb Raider games such as Legend or Anniversary.  Those controls were much smoother, but at the cost of overall control.  The number of times I've died in those games simply because Laura jumped in the opposite direction that I pushed the analogue stick drove me crazy.   

[Lost Dragon]

4 hours ago, IntelliMission said:

Tank controls could make for another interesting topic... I think they are underrated. Some of my favorite games use them and I don't have any issues with them: Tomb Raider, Silent Hill... Even some less-than-stellar games like Croc, Ecstatica or Bioforge work great with tank controls.

 

Tomb Raider, in particular, uses tank controls to create some great puzzles.

 

But yeah, back to the graphics, I loved both 2D games such as Abe's Oddysee and 3D games such as Gran Turismo, Metal Gear Solid, Blood or Jedi Knight at the time. However, I agree with the user who said that 3D killed graphic adventures. Horrible, that forced jump to 3D/animation/SVGA was horrible for graphic adventures around 1995. They should have stayed in VGA forever. Don't touch what works well.

I had no problem with tank controls at the time with PlayStation Resident Evil 1-3 and Silent Hill, but couldn't stand Resident Evil Remake on PlayStation 3 because of them, bought the game new, gave up on it within hours.

 

Never got on with Core Design era Tomb Raider controls, only the Crystal Dynamics era Tomb Raider titles.

 

 

[BassGuitari]

To be honest, there were quite a few 3D titles in the '90s that didn't look that great even at the time.

 

Anecdote: one of the first games I got for my PSX was Twisted Metal 2, which I loved (still do!). I hadn't seen the first Twisted Metal before and when I finally did at a friend's house, I remember thinking how bad it looked by comparison. Jet Moto was another one where the sequel was my real introduction to the series, and the first one looked like a muddled blocky mess.

 

I'll cop out and say it depends on the game. I think PC was much stronger at 3D overall, for obvious reasons--games like X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, Quake, and Half-Life look very of-their-era but still hold up IMO. Consoles are more of a crapshoot but there's still some good(ish) 3D going on. The Nintendo 64 seems to be the whipping boy for '90s Console 3D these days, but I still think games like Super Mario 64, Shadows of The Empire, Rogue Squadron, Turok 2, and Perfect Dark look pretty good, albeit with that signature N64 fuzziness. Goldeneye is fine, provided you're playing on a CRT no larger than 27." (Which I would say is probably best practice for any console released before 2005 anyway.)

[derFunkenstein]

All three of those systems had huge flaws that didn't revolve around the low resolution and low detail models of the time:

 

• The PS1 lacks perspective correction, so first-person perspective (whether it's a racing game like Need for Speed or a sports game like NFL Blitz) looks warbly and warpy
• The Saturn's quadrangles always looked like a jumble of blocks to me. 
• The N64 stuck with cartridges, so there wasn't the storage capacity for textures and audio that there should have been, and AA on the N64 is best turned off

 

There are games that defy those limitations and look pretty good despite the hardware's flaws. Quake on the N64 is an outstanding conversion. Metal Gear Solid looked amazing. The re-releases of Virtua Fighter Remix and Daytona CE are excellent.

 

Developers were kind of new to 3D real-time graphics, and the hardware was extremely raw. The next generation of games (Dreamcast, PS2, GameCube, and especially Xbox) have aged far better IMO even though those systems are all approaching 20 years old. 

Edited January 19, 2020 by derFunkenstein

[cybercylon]

I would say early 3D games have not aged well when talking about graphics (yes- the PS versions of the early Tomb Raider do not look good, but I could name countless others as well). Some argument could be made that these games were not all that good to look at to begin with.

 

For sure, games like Metal Gear Solid, Daytona CE are standouts, but if I recall, these games were released somewhat later in their respective console's life. I cannot comment on Quake for the N64 as I haven't played it.

 

I guess another question to think about with 3D games from the Phone, Saturn, N64 era is even if the graphics have not aged well, do they affect playability? I will still pull out some of those games as long as it controlled well, and where appropriate, a decent story and good character development.

 

The original Tomb Raider is not an example of something I would go back to (in it's form back then anyway) as the control scheme is horrific. Bad camera angles, clipping, etc don't help things either.

 

I did not have a computer at the time that could play 3D games of any sort, so my comments are directed at consoles.

[Austin]

Playability varies from game to game. Quake 64 is a nice looking game, but I don't think it ever controlled particularly well, at least not compared to the PC original. Not to mention the framerate tanks at fairly inopportune times which really has a negative effect on a fast-paced twitch shooter like that. Goldeneye on the other hand, I think anyone could pick up and play that decently in this day and age, even with some of its performance issues. Pretty different engine and feel from Quake though and the game was designed with the N64's controller in mind (whereas Quake was originally designed around a keyboard and mouse combination).

 

So yeah. It just depends. Some games play great and I think they hold up the best. Others, not so much. I personally don't care about how well the visuals have held up as long as a game controls well, runs fairly smooth and is fun to play. The original Daytona on Saturn is a good example there for me--it looks like a mess, but I think it plays way better than CCE, so it's the one I go back to the most. It's still really fun.

Edited January 20, 2020 by Austin

[Razzie.P]

Where's the option for "they've always looked like ass, and y'all were blind for not seeing it?"

 

I hated that particular gen of gaming back then.  All my friends used to get mad at me for "being a hater" or whatever the phrase was at the time, but I hated how we went from really nice 2d sprites that were improving all the time, to ugly clunk mess of the new n' shiny.   Gameplay was king, of course, but those drove me away from console gaming and helped motivate me to pick up PC gaming.  I couldn't get interested in console gaming again until a bit into the PS2 era (didn't stay away long, I know)

 

But yeah, they looked like crap then, and haven't aged a day.