First enjoyable 3D gaming experience?

[captmorgandrinker | 1,649]

What about stuff like Desert Falcon and Zaxxon?

[Webhead123 | 684]

16 hours ago, JamesRobot said:

Star Wars was probably my first though

Now that you mention it, I do remember playing Star Wars and Battlezone at the local arcade sometime probably between '89-'91, although my precise memory is hazy, so it could have even been a couple years later than that. Both are enjoyable, if simple, games.

 

[Link | 2,715]

4 hours ago, captmorgandrinker said:

What about stuff like Desert Falcon and Zaxxon?

Good question. I don't think of them as 3D, but the case can be made.

Those you mentioned are like beat-em-ups (TMNT, X-Men, Simpsons arcade games) that are called 2.5D. It's a klunky term. I think it does well to convey the presentation, though. 

[Tanooki | 4,943]

6 hours ago, Link said:

Or didn't even know at the time. I think I still haven't played that. Is it any good?

Honestly my overly vague recollection of it, yes.  Think of Wolf3D more or less, remove the nazis, go fantasy.  The engine is a bit more primative, think of Wolfy as engine 2.0 and this would be 1.0/1.1 of it.  More blocky but capable, nice detail, product of the limits of the time given the less colors.  I'm sure if you hit an abandonware site you'll find it dosboxed over your browser to see it, or who knows maybe it's on GoG or whatever for a buck as it's utterly forgotten by most thanks to Wolfenstein and more so Doom.  W3D would be largely forgotten if it wasn't for chumming nazi's and them finally bringing it back like in the quake3 engine era or whenever that was.

[Webhead123 | 684]

1 hour ago, Tanooki said:

I'm sure if you hit an abandonware site you'll find it dosboxed over your browser to see it, or who knows maybe it's on GoG or whatever for a buck as it's utterly forgotten by most thanks to Wolfenstein and more so Doom.

Catacombs is indeed available on GOG for just a couple dollars. It's a cute novelty. More of a "proof-of-concept" for what would eventually become Wolf 3-D. Playable but pretty janky by modern standards.

[Tanooki | 4,943]

Awesome.  I never did look, but it's nice to know @Webhead123 that they did archive it for preservation and cheap sales for anyone who wants a period piece at its finest.  As you said, proof of concept.  It's basically 1/2 of that proof with the engine, the other half being them licensing up that old overhead stealth title of the same name.  Basically that's mom and pop there that birthed Wolf3D.

 

Oh and @Link here, here's the link, seems it's $5.99 and comes with extras.
https://www.gog.com/en/game/catacombs_pack

Edited March 22, 2023 by Tanooki

[JamesRobot | 5,808]

2 hours ago, Webhead123 said:

Now that you mention it, I do remember playing Star Wars and Battlezone at the local arcade sometime probably between '89-'91, although my precise memory is hazy, so it could have even been a couple years later than that. Both are enjoyable, if simple, games.

 

Battlezone came to mind too and is definitely in the running.  Great game but I just haven't played it as much.

[twiztor | 854]

first 3d game i remember playing was Doom. It was in my school's computer lab, so while i enjoyed it, i never really spent all that much time with it. pretty crazy that we got away with playing it at all. I remember it getting uninstalled and deleted multiple times, but somebody kept reinstalling it. i'm sure the teachers were none too happy.

but, the first 3d game that i owned was Mario 64. and it blew my mind. You see, i mainly skipped over the SNES/Genesis generation at the time, so i was jumping from NES to N64. it was unbelievable. OOT was a similar experience a year or two later. i never got that same feeling from the early PS1 games. 

i knew i wouldn't be alone in this experience, but reading through the thread really made me realize what a communal experience this was. 

[GPX | 1,371]

On 3/20/2023 at 6:28 AM, Tanooki said:

What are we going to consider 3D?  Doom is a type but really isn't because it doesn't use polygons, same with like Wing Commander which goes back to 1990-91.   Earlier 3D I do remember using flat polygons with decent detail would be X-Wing and TIE Fighter games on DOS too, so that?  I can only begin the guesses at how many 100s of hours I put into those 3 games on PC.

Console side though, Starfox I guess, or with a dedicated 3D console then Super Mario 64.

Honestly, when I made this thread topic, I completely forgot about PC gaming. I’ve probably revealed myself as a console lover and never was really into PC gaming back in the 90s. 

What do I consider 3D? I guess anything that gives the player a viewpoint of going into the screen. But in a more complete answer, I’d say true 3D (which was my original thought on this topic) is a game where it lets you move in all angles in a 3D environment. Early FPS weren’t true 3D in a sense that you couldn’t go up or down, and you were limited to walking along in a set ground surface.

 

 

[Tanooki | 4,943]

53 minutes ago, GPX said:

Honestly, when I made this thread topic, I completely forgot about PC gaming. I’ve probably revealed myself as a console lover and never was really into PC gaming back in the 90s. 

What do I consider 3D? I guess anything that gives the player a viewpoint of going into the screen. But in a more complete answer, I’d say true 3D (which was my original thought on this topic) is a game where it lets you move in all angles in a 3D environment. Early FPS weren’t true 3D in a sense that you couldn’t go up or down, and you were limited to walking along in a set ground surface.

 

 

That's kind of why I wrote more than I wanted to, broke it up, and took a guess at it.  I couldn't tell if you included computer games or not, arcade games or not either.

3D though real polygons would end up being Starfox on SNES for console, while it was fairly on rails it really is, but if not  you could make a claim for Vortex or Stunt Race easily as all were out about the same time.  Yet if you were just lucky enough to buy into licensed drek, Days of Thunder was 3D (wireframe) racing on Gameboy in 1990, and Hard Drivin was within months after Starfox on there too.

[Nintegageo | 582]

Console would be Shadows of the Empire. I had played Mario 64 like 5 mins but wasn't as enthralled with it at the time as I was later on/remain.

[darkchylde28 | 1,546]

On 3/23/2023 at 8:22 AM, GPX said:

Honestly, when I made this thread topic, I completely forgot about PC gaming. I’ve probably revealed myself as a console lover and never was really into PC gaming back in the 90s. 

What do I consider 3D? I guess anything that gives the player a viewpoint of going into the screen. But in a more complete answer, I’d say true 3D (which was my original thought on this topic) is a game where it lets you move in all angles in a 3D environment. Early FPS weren’t true 3D in a sense that you couldn’t go up or down, and you were limited to walking along in a set ground surface.

If we're going that far back, I'd say probably Star Wars (5/1983) in the arcade, 3-Demon (1983) or Elite (9/1984) on PC (which one depends on if you consider a 3D framework maze with fake 3D perspective monsters in it 3D or not, Elite is 100% polygons and free roam), and Starfox (3/1993) on consoles.

I'd still say that all the Star Wars PC games had more of an impact, though, as it really turned my brother and I into aces as far as flight sims go due to the fact that nothing in the instructions told us that the top button on the joystick would rotate the ship, so we ended up completing every level of every simulator at every difficulty flying at so many extreme and ridiculous angles before we accidentally discovered you could rotate the ship vertically against the horizontal plane in the middle of a dogfight.

After having faced down multiple armed targets in the simulator while flying backwards, sideways, upside down, etc., both games became a cake walk once we had full orientational control, lol.  I remember having fun at times just emptying a Star Destroyer of fighters for kicks before actually completing my mission.  (They hold 6 squadrons, BTW, or a total of 72 fighters of various types.)

[wongojack | 217]

Battlezone totally blew me away when I first played it.  The periscope was a brilliant gimmick that really added to the immersion of that experience.

[darkchylde28 | 1,546]

6 minutes ago, wongojack said:

Battlezone totally blew me away when I first played it.  The periscope was a brilliant gimmick that really added to the immersion of that experience.

It was a great gimmick, although personally, I prefer how it was done in games like Sea Devil (and the later game it inspired, Sea Wolf).  Neither are 3D, but I've got extremely fond memories of playing both games back before such classics vanished from the arcade landscape.