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[Tazi]

Ecstatica (1994)








I loved this game back then, I guess it's kind of a survivor adventure game like Alone in the Dark with random enemy encounters, and escaping, but I unfortunately never played AitD, so I don't know for sure.
Noticable thing about the game, it doesn't even use polygons, instead everything is made of a spheres/ellipsoids, and the backrounds are pre-rendered 3D ellipsoids to.
It has a sequel, but I never played that one, unfortunately.

[happymonster]

Encounter (1983) on the Atari 800XL, ahead of its time graphically.

[halk3n]

Arihear (1986) for the Apple II.

The Sentinel (already mentioned in this thread) is probably the best example. By far one of the best games ever made.

*edit*

Armored Core.

[Player 3]

I, Robot by Atari (Arcade, 1983)


Resolution is 1:1 with the real deal.

[darkhog]

Sky Destroyer, NES. IMO beats other aerial combat games on the system despite its simplicity.

[Blink]

I also want to mention Shadow Squadron, for the 32X, from 1995. It has a flat shaded polygons aesthetic as well. Even if from the mid 90s and for a 32 bit console i think its relevant.



Its a fairly good game.

That got my attention for some reason. Thanks and thank you everyone.

I wanted to draw attention to this one as well. Might be game feel, might be juice, polish, animation, but something definitely makes it look really really good. It's got a sense of brittleness, resistance, weight to everything (especially the takeoff sequence, shooting down the big ships, and having the end-of-mission docking ship appear/docking there). I'd love to find out what it is that makes it look so good.

[Oskuro]

I'd have to say.... Anything made with the 3d Construction Kit.








3D Construction Kit Unofficial Site

Wikipedia Entry


It is what got me into game development for the first time, and, for it's time, it was pretty awesome. Been thinking of building a similar engine to create simplistic 3d games like those (maybe port the games I did as a kid)

[Uykered]

Btw there's a difference between "retro 3D games" and "old 3D games", Minecraft and Delver would be retro 3D games.

[s0]

that's pretty amazing

[J-Snake]

I would say a safe guideline is to post anything that produces some substantial gameplay in 3D by utilizing very little computation, something that could run on a snes approximately.

[Oskuro]

that's pretty amazing

The tool was pretty awesome. Despite it's limitations (for example, everything had a cube-shaped bounding box, even pyramids or spheres) it allowed for pretty neat environments, and the scripting language it included lent itself for somewhat complex details.

I was in the middle of building a massive RPG game back in '92 with this thing, had even managed to make a copy protection system! (By intentionally crashing the game if the player did not enter the correct combination  )

Fun times.

[ClockworkWolf]

This thread is so much win! Loved those old games, man, wanna play 'em again...

[ClockworkWolf]

Airstrike USA?




(And let's not forget all the great flight sims from Microprose....)

[jamesprimate]

Another "Almost 80s" game .. let's face it, it could probably run on some 80s hardware.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectre_%28video_game%29

Oh man, the aesthetics of Spectre are still amazing to me now. I feel like half of Com Truise videos have gameplay footage from that.

Would Tempest count? 1981. Pretty clearly not *really* 3d, just basic forced perspective stuff, but the effect was good. And c'mon, dat neon style was LEGIT.