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Early 3D games that still look good

Oemenia

Banned
Need For Speed: Porsche Unleashed PC, 2000

3kUJPOh.jpg
What a game, got completely buried in the series when it had some of the best handling and graphics in any game at the time. HP2 that came out later was step down in every way.
 
Daytona is the best example of this every time

Stunt race looks great and some of the things control well and I'd like to see something just like this as long as the tracks were good and good control

tumblr_mqk0phmsEM1r0ralmo1_500.gif


personally love the way wave race looks

Wave-Race-64.jpg
 

Brockxz

Member
The Operative: No One Lives Forever Year 2000
One of the best looking games at the time. Lithtech engine was great.

gfs_45071_2_16.jpg
 

SpotAnime

Member
Porsche Challenge on the PS1 was quite a looker if I remember rightly, was 97 though so not even 20 years old yet...

Most definitely. This was the first time I was truly floored looking at a PS1 game. The shading was incredible.

Also, my vote for VF2 on the Saturn. 640x480 and 60 fps, it was magical and still os to this day.
 
PSO-Dark_Falz-01.jpg

If dreamcast games still count as early, PSO has to be up there it is a technical marvel given the time it came out.
Dark falz is one of the biggest bosses I can think of from the early 2000s.
I've only played the GCN version but I could never figure out wtf that model was supposed to be. Never really impressed me TBH.

Porsche Challenge on the PS1 was quite a looker if I remember rightly, was 97 though so not even 20 years old yet...

Porsche%20Challenge1.jpg


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFA324I_1ws

Man I think I missed out owning a n64 that gen. The textures are so much better...
 

JoeNut

Member
Soul calibr was sick, although i think that was quite late in the day really.

same time was Sega Rally, anything on the Saturn looked good as i remember it, i may be mistaken though looking back haha
 

oneida

Cock Strain, Lifetime Warranty
BTW those are all from the arcade board, not from emulation. The game looks fucking good
 

RK128

Member
The original Spyro trilogy looked great and still holds up really well today :).

Cgq3VxL.jpg

37595-Spyro_the_Dragon_3_-_Year_of_the_Dragon_[NTSC-U]-3.jpg

37594-Spyro_the_Dragon_2_-_Ripto's_Rage_[NTSC-U]-2.jpg


They might a bit sparse on how much is in the levels, but they have some of the best colors of the PS1 era and give off such a 'mystical' feel that makes them look timeless :).

Insomniac knew how to flex the PS1 well, and that shows with their Spyro titles :D.
 
same time was Sega Rally, anything on the Saturn looked good as i remember it, i may be mistaken though looking back haha

You aren't ;)
Saturn's Sega Rally looks godly and plays very well today

VF3 occupies this weird space where I view it as "early" in terms of when it was released, but not at all in terms of 3D technology.

Yeah. I feel in a similar way. All merits to AM2 for that incredible tech achievements but when we talk about early 3D games, I consider Virtua Fighter 2 still is the best example to talk about
 

oneida

Cock Strain, Lifetime Warranty
VF2 -> VF3 was a much more significant graphical leap than VF1 -> VF2, imo.

And VF3 is older than almost every game in this thread!
 

Synth

Member
VF2 -> VF3 was a much more significant graphical leap than VF1 -> VF2, imo.

And VF3 is older than almost every game in this thread!

Yea, I agree that VF2 -> VF3 is a bigger jump than VF1 -> VF2. In fact, I personally consider VF3 the single largest graphical jump ever, relative to anything existing prior to it. My post wasn't intended to make VF3's accomplishments appear less significant. Quite the opposite actually.

It's just that to me VF3 was so ridiculously ahead of its time that it kinda crossed the line on what I'd consider "early 3D", even if nothing else at the time was at the same point. When I look back at Model 2 games, I see games that are aesthetically pleasing in spite of the limitations placed upon them. When I look at VF3, I see the first game where the graphics are sufficient to convincingly portray what they are supposed to be. Leather looks like leather... metal looks like metal etc. The characters and stages look like people and places, rather than collections of geometry. VF3 is basically intermediate 3D transported back into the past by a few years in my eyes. The year matches up, but the tech doesn't.... which is pretty amazing. VF3 kinda is the line imo. There's pre and post VF3.
 

Shai-Tan

Banned
It's kind of cheating because of fixed perspective static 3d but the Little Big Adventure series. The first game looked amazing in 1994
 

jett

D-Member
Tobal 2 (and No. 1, of course)

1897430-tobal2_h1.png

You can't really appreciate T2 without looking at it in motion. The smooth animation plus the use of gourad shading on the characters results in something that flows extraordinarily well.

LPm6YWb.gif


CQzVR96.gif


v6Otude.gif


And it could've been the first game to use motion capture:

tobal2dance9kxyy.gif
 

garyBig

Member
I still can't get over Rayman 2. Plays so good, the artstyle holds up extremely well, that music complements the art and tone so perfectly. You really feel that it's the same guy who made Beyond Good & Evil.

And it looked great on so many platforms
 
You kids are crazy with what you consider "early."

I think some of the sprite-based Build Engine stuff still holds up well. It definitely looks better now than the original Quake and other 3D games of the time. Some people consider it "2.5D" or whatever, but you're still exploring a fully 3D space...so it counts dammit!

Duke Nukem 3D, January 1996

fehd1oNgjXXq.840x0.Vdef9Kkm.jpg
 

Chastten

Banned
Voting for Super Mario 64 and Wave Race 64 as well. While these were two of the earliest games to come out on N64, their graphics have held up quite well. Way better then some of the later games on the platform.
 

balohna

Member
I love the grizzled look of MGS, mostly due to the smart camera angles and amazing low res texturing.
Yeah I played MGS1 like a month ago and it still looks good. I mean, obviously it's a bit lo-fi, but it's aesthetically attractive. Great texture work and overall art direction.
 
You kids are crazy with what you consider "early."

I think some of the sprite-based Build Engine stuff still holds up well. It definitely looks better now than the original Quake and other 3D games of the time. Some people consider it "2.5D" or whatever, but you're still exploring a fully 3D space...so it counts dammit!

Duke Nukem 3D, January 1996

fehd1oNgjXXq.840x0.Vdef9Kkm.jpg


That's not really an accurate representation of what Duke 3D looked like in 1996 though. The above image is from the Eduke 32 port and has advanced OpenGL lighting that wasn't in the original game. This is much closer to what it really looked like:

lQOjOSf.png


Though the above was taken from DOSbox on my PC. Even this is running in 800x600 VESA SVGA and would've been considered ultra settings. Most people were lucky to play this game at 320x400 or even 640x480 on their PC's in 1996.
 

Docpan

Member
.....You guys aren't posting early 3d.

Early 3d is like 93 to 95, max.

Im gonna have to vote for Virtua Fighter (2), and Daytona (was that 96?)

M2 was big on 60hz. The smooth motion and simple clean look to their titles still look good
 

kswiston

Member
So many cleaned up emulator shots that look nothing like the games running on original hardware...

Most of the games that I think still hold up from the PS1/N64 era are games that cheated by combining polygons and sprites. That definitely wasn't the best looking era in gaming history.

Also, posting Dreamcast and Gamecube games as early 3D games is sort of like calling Grand Theft Auto 5 an early HD game.
 
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