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Old games you recall that had great graphics at the time

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Wing Commander 3 and Myst stick out right now. Half Life 2 and Crysis more recently, although Half Life 2 was more the physics than the graphics.
 
Shit I remember watching a friend's brother play the first Doom on a PC when I was like 16 or 17. That was impressive. But since then I remember Half-Life but Far Cry was the game that really made my jaw drop. My friend and I would take turns playing it on my PC in wonderment.
 
brianmanahan said:
betrayal at krondor was pretty amazing on PC
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A man after my own heart. One of my favorite games of all time.

Hard to not say Far Cry, Doom, Quake 2.

As for one I haven't seen yet, Morrowind was pretty breathtaking, stepping off that boat for the first time. I also have a special place for Privateer 1/2, but I think 1 at least was just the wing commander engine.

On the topic of space stuff, may as well throw x-wing alliance on the list, that shit looked excellent when it came out.

I'll give a special mention to Total Annihilation. That was a well designed engine to be able to handle so many units at once. It was impressive to watch.

I'll also go with an underdog, Outcast. While everyone else was still futzing around with isometrics, animation, and indoor 3d environments with loading screens, those crazy bastards were creating multi square mile outdoor environments created from ray casting, voxels, AA, angle-relative water translucence, weather effects, and an advanced AI to top it all off. It was a stupendous achievement at the time.
 
The first Mortal Kombat in the arcades was pretty bad ass, same with Killer Instinct. Those 3D arenas and panning waaaaaay out on some fight grounds was awesome.
 
sdifox said:
Descent
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Descent III Freespace was one of my all-time favorite games and was truly revolutionary when it came out. (I still have it on CD somewhere)

It was the first REALLY 3-dimensional PC game and the first time a cap-switch on a joystick was actually useful! I can clearly recall feeling genuinely sea-sick the first few times playing it!

Good luck, Material-Defender! .... 😀




Ajay said:
Beat me to it. First game that actual looked 3D to me, even though it was software rendered (IIRC).

Starsiege Tribes and Unreal Tournament were amazing after adding a Voodoo 2 to my Matrox G400. Real 3D rendering. I was hooked!
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I had not one but two hardware-accelerated versions, a 3DFX version that looked and ran great, and an S3 Virge (lol) "decelerated" version that came bundled with a Diamond PCI card gave pretty shaky frame-rates. (but oddly was even prettier then the 3DFX one)
 
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Myst, Tie Fighter, Grim Fandango, Planescape: Torment, HL2, Homeworld 2, Max Payne, Thief, Myth: Soulblighter, Rise of Nations and a bunch I’ve forgotten
 
Captante said:
Descent III Freespace was one of my all-time favorite games and was truly revolutionary when it came out. (I still have it on CD somewhere)

It was the first REALLY 3-dimensional PC game and the first time a cap-switch on a joystick was actually useful! I can clearly recall feeling genuinely sea-sick the first few times playing it!

Good luck, Material-Defender! .... 😀
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descent games were amazing

me and my buddy would use our modems to connect directly via phone, then play 1v1 or co-op in favorite levels (like descent 1 level 7)

or occasionally we would play hide-and-seek in huge levels haha

descent and warcraft used up so much of our time in the summers
 
brianmanahan said:
descent games were amazing

me and my buddy would use our modems to connect directly via phone, then play 1v1 or co-op in favorite levels (like descent 1 level 7)

or occasionally we would play hide-and-seek in huge levels haha

descent and warcraft used up so much of our time in the summers
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We had lan parties with 10Base2 network...
 
It's funny to see everyone raving over how Voodoo cards made games look so much better... folks forget those Rendition Verite V1000 boards that came out before 3dfx's offerings!

I was playing 3D-accelerated Quake on a Creative 3D Blaster PCI before GLQuake even existed. And then there were games like Hyper-Blade and Monster Truck Madness that looked so nice. Don't get me wrong, 3dfx was ultimately the main driver for 3D-accelerated graphics in the 1990s, but some of us remember the very early days when 3dfx wasn't even on the radar.
 
Commodus said:
I was playing 3D-accelerated Quake on a Creative 3D Blaster PCI before GLQuake even existed. And then there were games like Hyper-Blade and Monster Truck Madness that looked so nice. Don't get me wrong, 3dfx was ultimately the main driver for 3D-accelerated graphics in the 1990s, but some of us remember the very early days when 3dfx wasn't even on the radar.
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oh man, i never owned monster truck madness but i played the CRAP out of the demo version

same thing with the motocross madness demo!
 
Off the top of my head, NHL95. "It looks almost like a real game!" after upgrading from Blades of Steel. lol. Then same thing when upgrading to NHL99.


Man talk about nostalgia.

Actually I still have my NHL 95 cartridge I should check if all my game saves are still there. My dad was probably more into it than I am, as far as making sure all the player trades matched the NHL etc but man we spent so much time playing that together. We used to play entire seasons then start a new one and do it over again. Things sometimes got heated when I would do really cheap goals. Game had some weird quirks like being able to score from a faceoff really easily lol.

I'd say this goes for most games really, at the time you really feel the graphics are great but then you go back and it's like "wait really?". Though some games were really ahead of their time as far as graphics go. Like even the golf one in OP actually looks half decent considering the age. That probably looked awesome on a CRT at the time.
 
The glowing chalice & Easter egg room with the glowing letters blew me away. Coolest thing ever at the time.

While not graphics per say the look was cool at the time and the size of the game levels was mind boggling at the time. Plus you could fall & swim!

 
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