
The dawn of 3D games (2007) - bane
http://grenouille-bouillie.blogspot.com/2007/10/dawn-of-3d-games.html
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ccvannorman
For those interested, you can play the first 3D game mentioned in the article
"Alpha Waves" here: [http://playdosgamesonline.com/alpha-
waves.html](http://playdosgamesonline.com/alpha-waves.html)

Other early 3D games of note: Test Drive, Dungeon Master (pseudo 3D), and of
course Wolfenstein

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teddyh
Archive.org link:

[https://archive.org/details/msdos_Continuum_1990](https://archive.org/details/msdos_Continuum_1990)

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robertkrahn01
The Colony isn't mentioned in the article and is one of the first 3D games
(1987). Demo part 1:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1XENlUUOhA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1XENlUUOhA)
Demo part 2:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3k3qrt76Ddk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3k3qrt76Ddk)

~~~
robertkrahn01
You can play The Colony here: [http://retroweb.maclab.org/articles/Macintosh-
Games.html](http://retroweb.maclab.org/articles/Macintosh-Games.html)

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a_e_k
Articfox (1986) also deserves a mention as an early 3D game with filled
polygonal graphics. Demo here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPsOOYZs7Bg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPsOOYZs7Bg)

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ghostDancer
I still remember Driller(1987) in the 8bit machines :
[https://youtu.be/QZ932_4terA?t=4m35s](https://youtu.be/QZ932_4terA?t=4m35s)
watching that in a C64 or a Spectrum was a wow then.

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kpil
I also remember Driller - almost a surreal experience, with seconds long lags
but with a good atmosphere - possibly because of the good music too.I think
the game was trivial in itself, but getting there was both hard and required
some patience.

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pdkl95
The earliest 3D games I played were on my first computer, the Atari 800XL.
"Rescue on Fractalus"[1] (1984) had _very_ impressive 3D fractal[2] mountains
at ~1-2 fps. It's

The graphics in "Ballblazer"[3] (1994) were a lot simpler, which was mainly
sprites over a checkerboard perspective-rendered plane with no camera
rotation. However, this was rendered _fast_ with a split-screen for two
players.

LucasArts was "faking" the 3D in both cases, but they achieved very impressive
results in both games given the extremely limited hardware (MOS 6502 at 1.79
MHz, 64k RAM).

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kNxy6UIX_k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kNxy6UIX_k)

[2]
[http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=358553](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=358553)

[3]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qri5xavBdh4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qri5xavBdh4)
(first half only?)

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mnem
One of the benefits of growing up in the UK around that time (late 80's) is
that there was a chance your school had an Acorn Archimedes or two and you
could have you mind blown with Zarch:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNXypBxNGMo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNXypBxNGMo)

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Kenji
Wow, that is super impressive! Done by a single person in in 3 months, back
then... I need to be more productive.

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xioxox
Starglider II was very impressive at the time - I was wowed by seeing it on my
friend's Atari ST. You could fly around a solar system and through a network
of tunnels inside the planets, refuel yourself by flying along power lines,
shoot lots of baddies and even see space whales! It also felt extremely fluid.
It was interesting in that there was a proper mission beyond killing
everything.

Starglider I was also a lot of fun on my Amstrad 8 bit machine, although the
graphics were wireframe.

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beschizza
I, Robot (1983) -- in the arcades, no less

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmvWxG2zvs8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmvWxG2zvs8)

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Koshkin
_F29 Retaliator_ by Ocean. What an amazing game that was. Ran on a 286 with 1
Mb, in EGA. AI, moving targets, everything.

I have a feeling that back then developers were more interested in what could
be accomplished with computers than in text editors, programming languages or
desktop environments... (Nor had scrum been invented yet.)

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EvanAnderson
I played Continuum on the PC. I got it bundled with the book "Garage Virtual
Reality". (I never did complete the mod for Power Glove to connect to my PC,
but I did blow up a keyboard controller on my motherboard in the process of
trying. Fun times!)

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samlittlewood
Also worth mentioning Bruce Artwick's Flight Simulator - 1982 on PC, 1979 !!
(albeit vector only) on AppleII.

