/vr/ - Retro Games

Unless you were alive at the time and a gamer in that era, it is hard to describe just how impressive the mid 90s 3d graphics really were.

The movie "lawnmower man" had a surprising amount of cultural impact as far as 3d visuals were concerned, even though the film itself was shit. We were told "some day soon, video games could look as good as lawnmower man did". It was indeed high praise over the next few years to hear people comment "Holy shit! This is like something out of lawnmower man!"

Those fuckhuge polygons in the early days made people stop in their tracks and do a double take. I remember vividly the crowd of normies who gathered around the first virtual fighter machine at the mall, and those same people would walk past street fighter alpha or dark stalkers without blinking. The jump to 3d was a much bigger generation leap than the jump from 8 to 16 bit, at least in terms of visual impact and mainstream appeal.

Looking back now at the crude polygons and low frame rates I can see why modern gamers are unimpressed. As cliched as it sounds you really had to be there.