- Knight Lore (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23667891): that's isometric rather than 3D poligon. This is the problem with 3D though, it can be conflated to mean several different things:
. 1. 3D polygons: like Quake and later, and generally what we now think of as 3D rendering
. 2. Stereoscopy: like 3D cinema and the 8-bit 3D addons for the Master System / Sega Mark III (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9hrcd25-kU) and Famicom (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famicom_3D_System) -- as it happens I own both of those 3D systems and they're actually pretty good for 80s tech
. 3. 3D isometric: like Sonic 3D Blast (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Oon2HKYqYI) and Knight Lore.
- Sentinel (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23667789): At least this game is 3D polygons however it's not a platformer. There were plenty of 3D poligon based games before Alpha Waves. I remember playing a game called Articfox on my Amstrad CPC 464 (https://www.gamesdatabase.org/game/amstrad-cpc/arcticfox) back in the late 80s and being shocked that 8-bit system with 64k of RAM had the capability to draw polygons. Even before that there were 3D maze games; going back to the CPC, Sultans Maze (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3x4b4k1pPRE) was released in 1983, often came bundled with the micro computer and that's not even remotely first of it's kind. None of the aforementioned are platformers however.
- I, robot (https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=rsaarelm): While that's got platform elements, it's really more of a shooter. Games similar would be Space Harrier and Starfox. Where this game stands out is the puzzle platformer elements but they're more a mechanic of specific levels than the defining quality of the game.
So it's fair to say Alpha Waves is the first "3D platformer" but where '3D' means 'polygon' and 'platformer' is the game genre; but other '3D' games existed before.