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First enjoyable 3D gaming experience?


GPX

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Let’s go back to the mid-to-late 90s when the PS1, Saturn and N64 were giving us first glimpses of 3D gaming. Everything was so new and exciting but mixed with genuine disappointments, as although 3D gameplay was being more incorporated, the camera angles and visuals were perhaps being compromised. 

Looking back now I think I wasn’t really all that fussed about 3D gaming, as I still stuck to the 2D platformers, 2D shooters and 2D to 2.5D fighting games. First Person Shooters were never really my genre of choice so the 3D games never fully appealed to me early on in the mid-90s.

To cut to the chase, it wasn’t until Mario 64 that I found genuine satisfaction with a 3D game. There were minor camera issues, but by and large the game was genuine bliss! 

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Doom for me if we can count it (some say it is 2.5D). That game blew my mind when a friend showed it to me.

The next was definitely Mario 64. I remember they had a demo unit at a Target near me before it was released and I’d ride my bike there just to play the first level over and over. Still the best Mario game to this day!

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5 minutes ago, a3quit4s said:

Could be Ocarina of Time but my brain could also be bias because of my love for the series. I just remember being forever changed walking onto Hyrule field for the first time

I'm pretty sure that's the first 3D game I saw on a console. A guy in my freshman dorm at college had it. He was in the Deku Tree and showed me how to get through the spider web 🤯 

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This is a tough one for me but I think it might have been Race Drivin’ in the arcade.  Man, those polys might have been huge, and I think the FPS might have been around 15 but having an immersive cock-pit that you sat in and even having a looping track blew me away.

For an at-home experience, it was probably followed up by Wolfenstein 3-D. It’s a good game and my Dad had the demo and my brother and I played that a lot.

And an honorable mention would possibly be Myst.  I know, I know, it’s really a point-and-click adventure puzzle, but it was a 3D designed world and it felt super-immersive at the time and I still love it too this day.

 

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I’d probably be on team Mario 64 if that was the first like open world type game I had played. I didn’t play ocarina of time until later because it was released later in the cycle but I remember playing games like goldeneye (at my friends) and hexen (this was the first game I owned with duke nukem, everything else was sold out so dad bought these). I remember the games were fun hands down but not graphically impressive. And still linear games. The first time I really felt blown away was OoT. I didn’t get to play Mario 64 until later after OoT

edit: actually Hexen was ass, duke nukem was fun as hell though

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I remember playing a lot of pc games in 3D around Mario 64. Don’t really remember whether they were before or after Mario but Mario 64 was really when we embraced 3D gaming.

Some games that stick out in my memory is Rocket Jockey, Doom, Hexen, Jedi Knight, Terminal Velocity, Tribes

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Pretty sure it was Star Fox for me.  I had a lot of fun with that one.  The first 3D game I remember being really, really impressed with though was Red Alarm for Virtual Boy.  The 3D effect was great and having your vision blocked outside the game really helped with the immersion.

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If we're considering Doom a "3D" game (which I personally do, even though its tech wasn't quite what would later become the standard 3D rendering method), then yeah...that game blew my balls off. I still play it regularly to this day.

I'm not sure which game I technically played first but Star Fox was also right around that same time and I found that game both impressive and quite fun. It's still one of my favorite SNES games, even with the choppy framerate.

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1 hour ago, Link said:

Does F-Zero count as 3-D?

I love F-Zero and the SNES' Mode 7 tech was such an impressive thing to me at the time (and I still have a lot of nostalgia for it). That said, I guess since the line needs to be drawn somewhere, I have to draw it there. The effect is cool but I think it skirts the edge of being something one could consider "3D".

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20 minutes ago, Webhead123 said:

 

Sorry. Haven't figured out how to directly imbed YT videos here.

Just put the link then a space and it does it automagically, with an offer to display as link instead. 

C8D4D14A-24E8-4902-8D07-8FEE7702A18A.jpeg

Edited by Link
then not "tgen"
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