/vr/ - Retro Games

>>3481938
>having to play games on the Kidtendo 64, the adults were laughing at you behind your back while playing superior PC FPS

Most PC gamers had worse framerates and visuals than console N64 gamers did in the 1997 when it came to 3D games.

DOOM players early on were often in the 15-18 FPS range because everyone ran a tseng labs or trident 1mb generic video card and they their 386 or 486sx25 could not handle it. By 1996-97 they had moved on to Pentiums but most still had no 3D hardware.

I remember the first time I played DOOM on a prentium 90, and that was probably the first time in my life I had seen a game surpass 30fps. That was a $4500 PC at the time.

In the late 90s 3D compatible video cards were very expensive and most PC gamers were lucky for 20FPS. You had to buy a separate 3D accelerator to pair with your normal video card in the early days of 3D gaming. Most PC gamers did not run them until the geforece line of GPUs showed up. The "all in one video + 3D" cards made life easier for the more casual PC users and they finally started getting OK frame rates.

I ran a Riva TNT in the 90s before switching to the first geforce at the end of the decade, and only a few buddies ever used voodoo 3dfx cards or other hardware at the time. Most PC gamers with off-the-shelf PCs struggled with Quake 2. They cranked down the detail, killed the shadows, and limped along as best they could.

tl;dr

Goldeneye was better than virtually anything we had seen at that point and most PC FPS were still only 2.5D in 1997. It wasn't until the unreal engine and half life arrived in 1998 that the PC leaped far ahead of the consoles.