The dawn of 3D games (2007) | Hacker News Reader

The dawn of 3D games (2007)

grenouille-bouillie.blogspot.com

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For those interested, you can play the first 3D game mentioned in the article "Alpha Waves" here: http://playdosgamesonline.com/alpha-waves.html

Other early 3D games of note: Test Drive, Dungeon Master (pseudo 3D), and of course Wolfenstein

Microsoft Flight Simulator

Archive.org link:

https://archive.org/details/msdos_Continuum_1990

The Colony isn't mentioned in the article and is one of the first 3D games (1987). Demo part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1XENlUUOhA Demo part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3k3qrt76Ddk

You can play The Colony here: http://retroweb.maclab.org/articles/Macintosh-Games.html

Articfox (1986) also deserves a mention as an early 3D game with filled polygonal graphics. Demo here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPsOOYZs7Bg

I still remember Driller(1987) in the 8bit machines : https://youtu.be/QZ932_4terA?t=4m35s watching that in a C64 or a Spectrum was a wow then.

I also remember Driller - almost a surreal experience, with seconds long lags but with a good atmosphere - possibly because of the good music too.I think the game was trivial in itself, but getting there was both hard and required some patience.

The earliest 3D games I played were on my first computer, the Atari 800XL. "Rescue on Fractalus"[1] (1984) had very impressive 3D fractal[2] mountains at ~1-2 fps. It's

The graphics in "Ballblazer"[3] (1994) were a lot simpler, which was mainly sprites over a checkerboard perspective-rendered plane with no camera rotation. However, this was rendered fast with a split-screen for two players.

LucasArts was "faking" the 3D in both cases, but they achieved very impressive results in both games given the extremely limited hardware (MOS 6502 at 1.79 MHz, 64k RAM).

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kNxy6UIX_k

[2] http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=358553

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qri5xavBdh4 (first half only?)

One of the benefits of growing up in the UK around that time (late 80's) is that there was a chance your school had an Acorn Archimedes or two and you could have you mind blown with Zarch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNXypBxNGMo

Wow, that is super impressive! Done by a single person in in 3 months, back then... I need to be more productive.

Ah, by David Braben no less. The craft being flown looks a bit like the original Elite Sidewinder spaceship.

Starglider II was very impressive at the time - I was wowed by seeing it on my friend's Atari ST. You could fly around a solar system and through a network of tunnels inside the planets, refuel yourself by flying along power lines, shoot lots of baddies and even see space whales! It also felt extremely fluid. It was interesting in that there was a proper mission beyond killing everything.

Starglider I was also a lot of fun on my Amstrad 8 bit machine, although the graphics were wireframe.

I, Robot (1983) -- in the arcades, no less

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmvWxG2zvs8

F29 Retaliator by Ocean. What an amazing game that was. Ran on a 286 with 1 Mb, in EGA. AI, moving targets, everything.

I have a feeling that back then developers were more interested in what could be accomplished with computers than in text editors, programming languages or desktop environments... (Nor had scrum been invented yet.)

I played Continuum on the PC. I got it bundled with the book "Garage Virtual Reality". (I never did complete the mod for Power Glove to connect to my PC, but I did blow up a keyboard controller on my motherboard in the process of trying. Fun times!)

Also worth mentioning Bruce Artwick's Flight Simulator - 1982 on PC, 1979 !! (albeit vector only) on AppleII.

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