/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.4897140]

Why do so many people keep shitting on early 3D games?

[Anonymous No.4897159]

>>4897140
Severe autism

[Anonymous No.4897223]

>>4897140
Because most of them were uninspired blocky pieces of shit not worth buying or playing. An entire era of gaming was built around the notion that since the tech had finally evolved to the point where some rudimentary "3D" shitsmears were possible, this obviously meant that every single title from that point forward needed to use them. Fuck whether or not the game was actually good, or even arguably a game at all, gotta be 3D cause that's the future, radical bros.

[Anonymous No.4897226]

It was an experimental time with good and bad results

[Anonymous No.4897237]

Only millennials do so. And sometimes they pretend they are older in order for their shitty opinions to have more credence.

[Anonymous No.4897248]

>>4897237
Fuck off and die already you retarded boomer.

[Anonymous No.4897257]

Good question. How could anyone think something like this is ugly or poorly done?

[Anonymous No.4897260]

>>4897237
>Only Jews do so
Wow, nazi.

[Anonymous No.4897262]

>>4897237
Love the Millennial shilling on this board when Generation X were the biggest sellouts of all time

[Anonymous No.4897264]

>>4897257
People have been spoiled by higher quality graphics, so looking at something that polygonal would probably make them say it's ugly

[Anonymous No.4897270]

>>4897140
Back then the complaints were poor controls and awkward camera mostly. Don't think anyone said anything bad about MGS if the pic is related.

[Anonymous No.4897271]

>>4897257
>team inexperienced with 3D trying to save on VRAM by using untextured goraud shaded polygons and trying to replicate Shibuya's style for the field models

Surely, the worst.

[Anonymous No.4897278]

This reminds me of "every woman is beautiful" except with videogames.

[Anonymous No.4897280]

>>4897140
A lot of them are just ugly by modern standards due to low polygone counts. This is true even games that were clearly designed for 3D and pretty fun to play, like Twisted Metal or Hogs of War. Even the original Ocarina of Time looks kind of bad. Many 3D games used tank controls, and even OoT (which didn't) still had issues with figuring out how to balance "walking around in a 3D environment" with compelling level design.

[Anonymous No.4897283]

>early 3D
>Metal Gear Solid
>1998

That was basically the end of the 'early' era, OP.

The period of shit 3D games was very short, but extremely, intensely tranformative, lasting from 1993 to 1997, but primarily centering around first two years of the Playstation's life cycle, and effectively ending with the proliferation of 3D graphics cards on the PC.

[Anonymous No.4897284]

>>4897271
>Have no experience
>Release shitty product
>Actually, since the reason for being shitty is my lack of competence, this somehow makes it not shitty
???????

[Anonymous No.4897290]

>>4897257
That's an example of really good design within the constraints of the era. The spiky hair became iconic and works well in the low-poly model. The blocky hands made the animations really distinct and easy to follow.

But, still, I would agree it's not perfect and there are still rough edges.

[Anonymous No.4897301]

>>4897257
To be fair, it's just the arms. Everything else looks fine but the arms look unrealistic and stick out in the model, if they works on them or at least had a workaround that look good at 240p it would be fine.

[Anonymous No.4897313]

>>4897301
You don't even notice that as much during the game. The blocky hands look a bit silly but make sense given that they're the focal point for body language and gesturing, which is what the model was designed for. (There's a separate model for battles)

[Anonymous No.4897315]

>>4897140
>>4897140
>>4897140

I'm genuinely fascinated by early 3D technology and rendering. On one hand you have a lot of very interesting mechanics built into some of the early 3D titles, Metal Gear Solid, Tekken 3, etc.. but on the other hand you have to understand that these games will never look better- ever. The reason for this was that hardware limitations made them what they were, and in that respect they are all quite unique.

[Anonymous No.4897317]

>>4897313
Even in that scene you can see Cloud doing a bit of manspreading with his feet apart, while Aeris's legs are together and closed modestly.

[Anonymous No.4897318]

>>4897140
They've got bad taste
Starfox is game kino

[Anonymous No.4897319]

>>4897140
Another great question would be, "Why on earth do people keep shitting all over Ocarina of Time," on the N64. It was a revolutionary game, their was nothing else like it. To this day I still can't think of a game that transformed what we take for granted for today.

[Anonymous No.4897323]

>>4897284
Where do you think the industry was going to hire experienced 3D graphics programmers in 1996?

It was a field that had barely existed outside tiny niches until a just a couple of years prior, and suddenly there were hundreds of companies trying to hire people to do jobs that basically nobody knew how to do and that there were almost no established practices for.

This was pioneering shit. Of course it was going to be a bumpy ride.

[Anonymous No.4897324]

>>4897313
Yeah it's understandable, but I'm sure they could've had work around, such as cutting the hand to be more like a "claw" than just a block.

Although I'm sure at the time they probably attempted multiple different renders and this was the best to them.

[Anonymous No.4897326]

>>4897319
People point out legitimate flaws or express a different taste, and millennial babies who played it when they were children lose their shit, flabbergasted that anyone might not agree with them that Ocarina is a perfect 10 and the best game of all time.

[Anonymous No.4897330]

While crude I really wouldn't say that 5th gen games are ugly

[Anonymous No.4897337]

>>4897326

I'm not arguing that is doesn't have flaws, but as far as as the game is concerned, its still quite good. I feel like mechanically it isn't too different from a lot of 3D games now, it just was limited by the hardware. I think its safe to say that the 3DS version basically puts a new coat of paint and fixes some of the issues in the original release. That being said, I think their both very playable even today, but for different reasons.

[Anonymous No.4897339]

>>4897278
claiming girl F

[Anonymous No.4897341]

>>4897330
Distant LOD Mario is cute!

[Anonymous No.4897342]

>>4897330
I'd say the way the bends in his arms, legs, and torso merge together are ugly.

[Anonymous No.4897356]

>>4897223
>>4897226
>>4897271
>>4897280
>>4897283
I wish we got one more gen of 2D games before the PS2 era kicked in and 3D games stayed a rare novelty like Starfox and Virtua Racer.

All of the "this looks like an incredibly elaborate SNES game" titles held up so well

[Anonymous No.4897358]

>>4897339
Yes: B, E, T
Maybe: U, I
No: A, F
Hell No: U, L

[Anonymous No.4897375]

>>4897326
OoT deserved its praise and hype for the time. A second Joystick on the controller would have helped with the camera on Mario 64, Zelda, and Goldeneye a lot but the fact is it worked and it wasnt as bad back then as people claim now. Its just harder to go back to the primitive controls after being introduced to a better camera handling option for several console generations. All of those games deserve their scores back then, shit millenials think otherwise.

[Anonymous No.4897384]

>>4897223
But 6th gen onward games were mostly 3D too. That's not a reason to criticize exclusively the 5th gen.
>>4897257
The battle models look good though.

[Anonymous No.4898751]

I never understood that either
I find them really charming

[Anonymous No.4898767]

>>4897223

This x100000000

[Anonymous No.4898834]

>>4897257
The arms are fucking autistic

>>4897223
>>4897140
Le woke up millenial who likes sprites only
Early 3d is human

[Anonymous No.4898940]

>>4897140
Prior to 3D, the tech evolved much more gradually with Atari, Spectrum, Amiga and expecially Arcade games graphical capabilities evolving at a slower pace without very few rapid jumps in quality.

3D however evolved much quicker to the point where games released just a year before were looking like shite compared to the new ones. There were just 2 years of difference between Doom 2 and Quake. There was another 2 years between Quake 1 and Half-Life. And then next year we got Quake 3.
2 years to go from "blocky shit with solid colors" seen in Virtua Fighter to "Something actually resembling humans and monsters, fully textured too" in Q1
2 years from "Blocky humans" to "Quite good human models" of Half-Life
1 more year for "almost realistic graphics" of Q3 (and then realistics of MoH and CoD using same engine with minimal change).


Another thing: in order to look good, Low-poly needs to have a distinct style, and everything in the game has to follow same guidelines of said style. Developers however, having 3D at their disposal often attempted realism, throwing style out of the window which led to their games looking shitty in hindsight.

[Anonymous No.4898950]

>>4897278
F is the only good one

[Anonymous No.4899112]

>>4898940
Even those games that tried to look realistic have a unique style to themselves by now

[Anonymous No.4899117]

>>4897278
Since F is taken, I'm claiming T as mine. Also, fixed.

[Anonymous No.4899145]

>>4898940
>Low-poly needs to have a distinct style, and everything in the game has to follow same guidelines of said style.

Q1 looks better than Half-Life for this reason imo.

[Anonymous No.4899147]

[Anonymous No.4899172]

Because they're who weren't even when those games were made.

[Anonymous No.4899568]

>>4899172
Thank's your input

[Anonymous No.4899625]

>>4897140
I didn't even like them at the time. You can bet I don't care for them now.

[Anonymous No.4899654]

>>4897257
The FF7 field models are charming in their own way. If you want truly ugly early PS1 3D post some Tekken or Toshinden

[Anonymous No.4899669]

>>4897140

[Anonymous No.4899893]

>>4897384

The main reason games after fifth gen are 3D is because there's nobody left who knows how to make a good looking 2D game.

People still think SotN is some kind of pinnacle of 2D animation when in reality it looks pretty dated compared to 2D animation you can find in some indy games. Imagine if people were still making professional 2D games.

[Anonymous No.4899902]

>>4899893
>Imagine if people were still making professional 2D games.
Street Fighter V is basically a 2D game.

[Anonymous No.4899904]

>>4899902
Although I guess you mean frame-based animation style rather than gameplay.

[Anonymous No.4899906]

>>4899902

Dumb nigger.

[Anonymous No.4899908]

>>4897140
They're angry that people still love games they either didn't enjoy or didn't grow up with. Usually there's also some salt that their favorite iteration in a long running series isn't the fan favorite.

[Anonymous No.4899939]

>>4899902

You are a retard, that's a perfect example of what I'm talking about.

SFV has 3D graphics because nobody at Capcom knows how to make 2D sprites anymore. The people that actually produce the assets and code the game are virtually all trained only in 3D graphics.

[Anonymous No.4900196]

>>4897140
They are ugly as fuck, it probably took until Doom 3 that 3D games didn't looked weird and shitty and even that aged "bad", but you can still show somebody the graphics of Doom 3 without fearing that the person would laugh his ass off or starts vomiting.

[Anonymous No.4900228]

Because you're more busy fighting the camera than enemies.

[Anonymous No.4900252]

>>4897278
pfff such a disingenuous message when all the girls here are like 8/10 at worst

[Anonymous No.4900274]

>>4899117
u is the cutest what the hell

also f looks like a 10 year old

[Anonymous No.4900283]

>>4899893
There are still quite a few professional artists making 2d sprites. For exemple in the fgc there's Blazblue and Guilty Gear. If you actually search for them you'll see that there's more than a few recent sprite based games.

[Anonymous No.4900302]

To be QUITE honest, I still think modern 3D games are rather ugly in general.
The uncanny valley will never go away no matter what, and 3D art styles are not pleasant to the eye, especially when they try to go for a "realistic" direction.
So, in that regard, I don't care if a game is "early 3D" or "current 3D", it's still not pleasant like 2D is. So whatever.
There's many 3D games from 5th gen that still never got better successors.
Wave Race 64 is still better than Bluestorm, Star Fox 64 is still better than whatever Star Fox games came after.

[Anonymous No.4901251]

I would rather play games with these graphics, than any of the shit movies, that try to be games. Thats for sure.

[Anonymous No.4901310]

It's mostly butthurt Nintoddlers since their supposedly more powerful console was incapable of anything more than gouraud shaded models with barely any textures, and none of the N64's games have aged well at all due to their hilarious blurry textures.

[Anonymous No.4901325]

>>4897140
It's just 2D autist lashing out that we didn't get another console generation of 2D games. Personally, I think 2D games more than worn out their welcome and I'm glad 3D gaming came when it did. If the recession of '91 never happened we might have had 3D gaming a year or two earlier than we did. In fact I think another generation of 2D gaming would have severely hurt the health of the industry as games were becoming extremely derivative of each other.

What I found most astonishing is these 2D autist genuinely believe that if consoles stayed 2D for another generation then PC gaming would stuck to 2D as well. The reality is 3D would have taken off the same way it did because no matter how under-powered consoles are they can't hold back the advancement of PC hardware. I personally don't see how having an even greater rift between PC and console gaming would be a good thing but autism is a hell of a thing.

[Anonymous No.4901430]

Even if these games look ancient by today standards

They just have this unique style to them that makes them really interesting to experience

Tbh I would rather play games that look like that than what we get these days

[Anonymous No.4902209]

>>4901325
That truck is beautiful. From which game is it?

[Anonymous No.4902926]

>>4897140
Because early 3d is ugly.
We could've had some great looking 2d games if people went with the saturn. But instead they were memed into buying a mediocre console with mediocre graphics. 3D became good in the ps2 era

[Anonymous No.4902961]

>>4897278
I'll order E, thank you very much.

[Anonymous No.4902983]

>>4897278
>not pictured: fat girl with no tits

[Anonymous No.4902993]

>>4900274
u has a jew nose

[Anonymous No.4903020]

>>4897140
they're a bit ugly and a lot of them have ridiculously poor cameras

>>4897257
For a model that's as small as it is most of the time, it's not too bad. Once you scale it up, it's fucking terrible.

>>4898940
Man, Virtua Fighter alone is a wonderful example of the evolution of graphics. Every one of the games was on expensive-ass high-end 3D boards at release.
>1993
purely flat shaded, vaguely high poly but not really, 30fps
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDbn9lF7k8Y

>1994
textured (and moderately high res textures, too), decent poly count, double the framerate
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rrje0yVPlJY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7OYlmdhOZY

>1996
HOLY SHIT
these graphics are arguably 4 whole years ahead of their time, although the DC's chipset does come close, which is why they abandoned the expensive-ass Model 3 for it (the NAOMI is a good bit faster than all but the last of the Model 3 revisions IIRC, but the Model 3 still had more advanced video hardware)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTBeGAhk79I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxpnLDbrIlc

tried to find a real hardware video of something about each game and then a clearer video if I needed
but god damn, these were the monster leaps and bounds that you could see within three years

[Anonymous No.4903027]

>>4897283
>>4897140

ps1 is not early 3d and was considered state of the art at the time.

Early 3d includes battlezone, microsoft flight simulator, grand prix 1 and games without textures. At the time textured polys were considered the new gen and filled polys were considered very outdated.

[Anonymous No.4903047]

>>4897317
Nobody actually complains about manspreading. Thr real complaint is that when there's no seats left and you're taking up two.

[Anonymous No.4903069]

>>4903027
When flight.sim 4.5 or whatever finally.came out andyou.got that new 747 cockpick for the first time ever

[Anonymous No.4903076]

>>4897140
Coz idiots try to play them on emulators without shaders or a CRT and they truly look terrible that way.

[Anonymous No.4903085]

>>4897356
>All of the "this looks like an incredibly elaborate SNES game" titles held up so well
One of my favorite examples of that was Tales of Destiny.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PCJtdF-AAA
It looks like a super-SNES game and even runs at the same resolution, but has more color and better special effects and bigger sprites in battle.

it's not so much that it seems like a generational leap, but the game just looks like something that's solidly, consistently better than what you could do on the SNES without cutting back while still retaining the general look

[Anonymous No.4903093]

>>4897140
Because they usually control terribly

[Anonymous No.4904034]

>>4897313
Remember that when you actually played this in the 90s, it also looked better because crt. Game was beautiful and art style was fantastic.

[Anonymous No.4904038]

>>4897342
I don't know if it's my nostalgia talking or what but I like the Mario 64 model, I think it's cute

[Anonymous No.4905940]

Because we are spoiled as shit from the games of today

[Anonymous No.4906051]

>>4897237
/thread
this applies to all jrpg summerfag retards

[Anonymous No.4906541]

Because people are obsessed with their 2D games

[Anonymous No.4906578]

>>4898950
B is better in every way you pathetic manlet.

[Anonymous No.4906662]

>>4902983
Fat girls with no tits were made for breeding, because it's natural tit enhancement

[Anonymous No.4906686]

>>4906662
nope

[Anonymous No.4906704]

>>4897223

N64 was the worst for that. Why that system gets do much praise is beyond me.

[Anonymous No.4906708]

>>4901325
Nice truck, garbage opinion.

[Anonymous No.4906719]

>>4899939

Sf4 And 5 are cost reduction. 3d is far cheaper.

Snk almost went out of business making the last kof (which looked beautiful).

[Anonymous No.4906736]

Garbage framerates, incredibly inconsistent performance, janky hitboxes/collision, empty depressing dead environments, wobbly polygons, clumsy control schemes and they damn near killed 2D games because the average retard prefers novelty over quality.

[Anonymous No.4906748]

>>4906736
Oh and very stiff shitty animations, almost forgot about that

[Anonymous No.4906762]

>>4897140
How is that a question?
Because 3D graphics were obviously at their worst when they were first attempted.
It's not like you're going to introduce a radically different new approach to technology and also make the most impressive instance of it on the first try.
I really don't understand how this isn't extremely obvious.

[Anonymous No.4906764]

>>4906662
>Fat girls with no tits were made for breeding, because it's natural tit enhancement

No. Pregnancy tits don't look nice.

[Anonymous No.4906878]

>>4906736
3D > 2D
And don't ever forget it, faggot. The earliest 3D games had more to offer and still do, which is why they're so much more prevalent. It's also much easier and cheaper to make a game with 2D style gameplay with 3D graphics while also looking better. Everyone here underestimates the labor needed to produce a ton of 2D sprites and animations for them.

[Anonymous No.4906890]

>>4906878
More to offer being what? Casualized cinematic gameplay with all the flaws I listed? Your second point is true but it's only better now that hardware's good, in the ps1 days you had games like R-Type Delta that ran like total shit despite being custom built for the console

[Anonymous No.4906929]

>>4899902
You could say that about a lot of modern fighters but definitely not SF. It plays 2D but sure as hell doesn't look 2D.

[Anonymous No.4908276]

It was a novelty at the time
now its just bad to look at and play

[Anonymous No.4910558]

>>4903047
Uh yeah that was a bit of humor. Point is that the masculine and feminine dichotomy between Cloud and Aeris is clearly recognizeable due to their body language. People who actually complain about manspreading are cunts who probably already pissed off because they couldn't afford an Uber.

[Anonymous No.4910560]

>>4906929
Yeah I realized I'd made a mistake and made a follow up post immediately. That didn't stop everyone from piling on though.

[Anonymous No.4910716]

>>4906764
>>Fat girls with no tits were made for breeding, because it's natural tit enhancement

>No. Pregnancy tits don't look nice.

They can look fucking nice, man.

[Anonymous No.4910746]

Because we that are old enough to have lived through the shift know how shitty it felt to go from the height of 2D to the infancy of 3D. Late 2D was beautiful, and early 3D looked like, and often controlled like, complete shit (even at the time).

[Anonymous No.4910750]

>>4897278

Would fuck B,E,T,F, possibly marry F

[Anonymous No.4910818]

>>4897140
Literally just zoomers who can't handle things from the past.

[Anonymous No.4910951]

>>4897257
Look, these aren't the best models. However when people mod FF7 to replace these with the battle models they look much more terrible. The animations and environments do not accomodate the more realistic models.

[Anonymous No.4911082]

>>4910818
but they play minecraft and fortnite

[Anonymous No.4911093]

The fixed-angle and 2.5D stuff is usually pretty good but there's a ton of trash early 3D games.

[Anonymous No.4911136]

>>4897226
i wish people were as level headed and reasonable as this man

[Anonymous No.4911345]

>>4897140

Anyone have screenshots of MGS1 in 1080p?

[Anonymous No.4911679]

>>4911345
Some anon had 1080p screens from Mednafen's software hi-res mode, they looked amazing.

[Anonymous No.4913160]

Fuck it I love these old graphics

[Anonymous No.4913164]

>>4897140
i don't know about that, its also the most popular "retro" generation

[Anonymous No.4914614]

Shits ancient

[Anonymous No.4914729]

>>4899893
There literally are, just not selling them for $60

Cuphead has hand-drawn sprites, and Splasher is gorgeous. Did you miss the 2D platformer renaissance that started around the beginning of this decade?

[Anonymous No.4914731]

>>4899902
Skullgirls and Rivals of Aether are gud 2D fighting games :-)

[Anonymous No.4916449]

>>4897140
>Why do so many people keep shitting on early 3D games?
Because it's an easy target.

Without being stylized, it can often fall in the uncanny valley and generally just look "off".
Stylized too much, it looks sloppy and nonsensical.

3D at lower resolutions will almost never look better than or even as good as sprites filling the same purpose, and higher resolutions showcase the low-res textures and filtering or lack thereof. There's always a catch.
Meanwhile sprites generally look great at their native resolutions, and can be scaled to higher resolutions without losing the original appeal.

There's also the performance hit associated with running 3D visuals on platforms barely powerful enough to handle them. Which of course is often the reason behind the issues above.

All of that aside, there are some early 3D games that look absolutely phenomenal, even today. Developers, knowing that they couldn't push the most REALISTIC visuals, had to get creative.
Games like Rockman DASH, Metal Gear Solid, Dr. Slump, Bomberman Fantasy Race, Tail Concerto, Shadow Tower (fuck you I like it), and countless others look great despite limitations, and it's almost always because they tried something different.