
Alpha Waves was the first 3D platform game - todsacerdoti
https://fosdem.org/2020/schedule/event/retro_alpha_waves_1st_3d_platformer_ever/
======
hnlmorg
There's a few comments on here with earlier "3D platformer" games and while
there were earlier "3D" games, they're not "3D platformers":

\- Knight Lore
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23667891](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](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9hrcd25-kU))
and Famicom
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famicom_3D_System](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](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Oon2HKYqYI))
and Knight Lore.

\- Sentinel
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23667789](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](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](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](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.

~~~
kd5bjo
In terms of polygonal 3D games, the earliest example I know of is Battlezone,
from 1980. It’s definitely a first-person shooter and not a platformer,
though.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlezone_(1980_video_game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlezone_\(1980_video_game\))

~~~
hnlmorg
I have this on the 2600 and while the 2600 version doesn't use vectors, it's
still one of the best games on that platform.

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colordrops
Yes! I was looking for the name of this game years, and was just thinking of
this a couple days ago. When I saw the title of the link, I wondered, "could
it be?", and yes, it's the game of my childhood. I spent countless hours
wandering the rooms of this game. It was mindblowing to me at the time.

------
rsaarelm
Not sure how people figured out this counts as the first 3D platformer ever
and not the much older I, Robot arcade game
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmvWxG2zvs8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmvWxG2zvs8)).
Is it important that the camera has full degrees of freedom instead of being
locked on the depth axis?

------
daneel_w
Mind Walker for the Amiga, from 1986, is a type of 3D platformer, though it
employs a fixed perspective:

[http://hol.abime.net/2485](http://hol.abime.net/2485)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA1qz2QQ89E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA1qz2QQ89E)

Backlash (also for the Amiga) is also interesting, though more of a "3D
shooter":

[http://hol.abime.net/12](http://hol.abime.net/12)

------
speakeron
Wasn't Knight Lore[1] on the Sinclair Spectrum (which came out in 1984) a 3D
platform game? I certainly remember the buzz about it at the time where it
seemed to be a qualitative leap in games technology.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight_Lore](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight_Lore)

------
busterarm
Just reading this title makes me remember the music[1].

I loved this game and this might be peak Infogrames for me.

[1]:[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrdorSwShLo&list=PL8M6xAzX1w...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrdorSwShLo&list=PL8M6xAzX1w_yTSe849rxBQ58sUoGPSe4Z)

------
pengaru
Also worth a watch/listen is the talk by Frederick Raynal at GDC about Alone
in the Dark. He touches on converting Alpha Waves from Atari ST to PC:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2lgEyNaop4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2lgEyNaop4)

------
tartoran
The colony (1987) - one of the very first realtime 3D FPS/adventure games

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i1XENlUUOhA](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i1XENlUUOhA)

------
bane
I remember this game really well, it has wonderfully abstract graphics and
fantastic music. This was a really interesting game at the time that tried to
tackle a number of the problems that show up with 3d platformers:

\- Controls - Alpha Waves uses tank controls - left and right rotate the
character rather than move them. This control style continued for many years
all through the Playstation 1 period and was a fairly natural fit for digital
d-pad like controls. Super Mario 64 was the first game of this type that uses
direct control (left moves him left, right moves him right, etc.) and it
revolutionized 3d platformer control schemes. There is a clear break with
games before and after Mario 64 w/r to this style of control. I believe some
modern recreations of older games (some of the Resident Evil games) now use
the Mario scheme even though the originals used tank controls.

\- Camera - Alpha Waves slots the camera directly behind the player with very
little deviation left and right. The more dynamic camera found in later 3d
platformers doesn't really exist here. The camera does rotate up and down to
show different perspectives on the avatar, but IIR it's entirely up to the
user to move it to where they wish. This technique is today very common and is
usually mapped to the right control stick.

\- Depth Perception - One of the problems with 3d platformers is that there's
no depth perception since it's not stereoscopic. This makes landing jumps and
gauging other movements difficult. Games try to accommodate for this reality
by using several "tricks" and Alpha Wave more or less figured many of them
out. The first trick is a shadow that moves directly under the avatar. This
often doesn't make sense given various lighting conditions, but provides a
clue as to where the avatar is at any given moment. The second trick is to
dynamicall move the camera above the shoulder of the avatar which introduces a
bit of parallax and assists the creation of depth. An early game which
combined these was the Playstation game "Jumping Flash" which forced the
camera to take a top-down view _and_ has a shadow target under the player that
made landing jumps relatively easy. Alpha Waves is interesting because instead
of forcing the camera like Jumping Flash, platforms have a forced "bounce" and
the user controls the camera.

It's a beautiful game that represents some really solid innovation that's
totally worth at least 10 minutes of your time to check out.

------
codeulike
How about Driller/Space Station Oblivion (1987)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4GNNpfGeKY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4GNNpfGeKY)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driller_(video_game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driller_\(video_game\))

------
robarr
On an unrelated note autodesk’s 3ds max started its life on an Atari st too:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyber_Studio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyber_Studio)

Edit: spelling

~~~
walkingolof
Most sequencer software, including Logic, can trace it roots to the Atari ST.

------
Zenst
Interesting and I'm sure there may be earlier examples of 3D platform games.

Sentinel may well qualify on some definitions of 3D platform (1986):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9V_pgo3vgiI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9V_pgo3vgiI)

Video of ALpha Waves (1990):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwFPV855sI4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwFPV855sI4)

~~~
zimpenfish
I think Sentinel wouldn't count as a "platformer" because you don't do any
jumping (IIRC) - it's more of a tactical puzzle teleportation game. Not sure
it'd count as "true 3D" either, really, not on the Spectrum anyway - it drew
polygons onto a huge buffer you could pan around but the perspective never
changed. But it was ludicrously impressive at the time, definitely.

[edit] 'aactical' isn't a word

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teddyh
A.k.a. “Continuum” in some regions.

------
kristopolous
Mike Duncan, the history author/podcaster once said something like "I've
learned to never call something the first, last, greatest, anything like that,
you'll always be wrong and get hundreds of comments and emails. just qualify
it. One of the earliest"

I think it was in his 1830/France season of revolutions (6).

~~~
prvc
This is an effective time-saving device for an individual, certainly, but
taking this strategy to an extreme leads one to hedge your statements away
into nothingness. Some questions are worth discussing (what the first x is may
or may not be), if not always because of their intrinsic importance, then
because of details and insights that emerge from the ensuing discussion.

~~~
kristopolous
It's often distraction. If someone was talking about the Xerox star as the
first desktop computer, then someone interrupted with talking about the hp
9100a, it's kinda derailment. The point is it was one of the first to it still
had to establish a lot of things

What people mean is "before it was an established thing" "before parameters
were known" or "after it was an established thing"

Like "tallest building" what they mean is "challenging to construct vertical
structure that needed special considerations"

It's mostly used figuratively as a narrative backdrop like it is here and not
as some indisputable factoid

~~~
prvc
Guinness style (and other types of) facts can be unimportant, hence the term
"trivia", but they need not be, that's all I'm saying. Similarly, the
disputation of these facts can be pedantic quibbling or interesting and
informative.

~~~
kristopolous
I think what's much more interesting is instances before it became a "thing".

Before things get a name, culture, rules of what it is and is not, there's
many instances that are close to it. Those are interesting as a collection but
drawing the lines between the isolated elements can be a bit dubious. Ideas
are communicative but also come out of thin air.

We have an unprecedented amount of knowledge at our fingertips these days and
can cross correlate vast expanses of say, music. You can hear say some song
from 1960s in peru and then see how similar it was to something in japan in
the 1980s but actually showing that the second creators even knew of the
first, that's the part that I think is hard - it has to be demonstrated.

Just the other week I was talking with some artist from northern england who
sounded like legowelt (danny wolfers) telling him how much I really liked his
legowelt-style song - danny is a minor figure generally but pretty well known
in the subgenre of electronic music he works in. This guy honestly said "who's
legowelt" and got back to me the next day "wow, this guy's amazing, never
heard of him".

So even today, with the internet, you can have someone essentially sound like
the exact style and still have never heard of the person they're supposedly
"influenced" by.

It expunges the tidy narrative where we want everything to have a clear
delineated beginning. "Rappers Delight began the 80s rap formula" \- that one
super clear, yes, hard to argue against - but most things are not so clear.

\---

here's an example of the "legowelt imposter"
[https://bassagendarecordings.bandcamp.com/track/mind-to-
body...](https://bassagendarecordings.bandcamp.com/track/mind-to-body-part-2)
who I claim sounds like
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BZbJY28iSM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BZbJY28iSM)

