MS-DOS Games with 3D Graphics (HD/60fps)

[@lozD83]

Ignition is the most fun racing game I've played, as a casual gamer

[@manmonkee]

God yeah, my whole office played it all the time, I can't remember if it was networked ,,,,

[@perholmstrom7050]

@@manmonkee It was, or is, IPX networking . If you buy it from Steam or GOG you can patch it. I don't remember if you have to enable IPX over IP in windows to make it work.

[@rul644]

I had it

[@knoopx]

i completely forgot about that game until i saw the gameplay and then i had a brainfuck. i dont remember in which life but i played this game before.

[@AlbertKefka77]

I used to play MDK so much, I loved it, as a child I was impressed by the graphics of some of the models, (not the particles, they always looked like triangles to me). good memories, thanks.

[@Evgen13Great]

I never played this or something like the game but I had a dream a month ago about this kind of game...

[@AlbertKefka77]

@@Evgen13Great I wish I had your dreams my friend, and I don't consider myself someone nostalgic.

[@hooldenord]

This video is not the same as previous one. I fixed too fast game in Hi-Octane and re-recorded some gameplays, also added 3 new games. IMHO it's better now, enjoy! :)

[@amigaworkbench720]

Ignition, Swiv 3D, and Hi-Octane look great, and I can see potential for those games even today if they were turned into voxel format. Voxel graphics are key for indie game success, I suppose, as kids tend to enjoy Minecraft-like games because they resemble Lego bricks.

[@celuiquipeut6527]

Descent 1 and 2 were such fun games! So innovative too!

[@BattleSaberj]

I remember some games: - Network Q Rally: Loved how detailed was: Managing time to what to repair first and how damaged parts turns down car performance. - Amok - Blam Machinehead.

[@MrSaturn7085]

Everyone talking about the MDK, MW2, Descent 2... I played almost every one of these and honestly logged more time on Virtual Snooker than any of the rest, haha. I was too young to even understand the rules - couldn't believe this one made the list!

[@123supporter]

MDK was the most special of all listed. I'd love a reboot of this series.

[@manmonkee]

It's pretty good on the PS1 :)

[@DaRealJohnDaGamer64]

That game was amazing. I love that there was an Earthworm Jim weapon that made it rain cows on your enemies. Speaking of EWJ, he was an exclusive playable character in the PC version of Battle Arena Toshinden.

[@20windfisch11]

I remember Ignition running very smoothly even at my then 486DX4/100, so was GTA1 in the 256 colour VGA version. When I see these games on other people's 486 they build today, they run much more slowly. Is my memory deceiving me? That 486 was a PCI machine though, with the PCI variant of the Tseng ET4000/W32, which was quite a powerful graphics card in that era and modern 486 builds often use some kind of Trident card.

[@smoogy2164]

Yes, that PCI revision of the ET4000 was an extremely ballin' 2D/3D card, probably the best among 2MB boards. OEMs stuck with competing cards, mostly from S3, for far too long given their wretched 3D performance. My Pentium 200MMX from 1997 had an S3 Virge. I could run many games of the era at good resolutions in software but Direct 3D was out of the question. So a "period correct", stock 486 was more likely than not equipped with trash 3D chips such as this.

[@20windfisch11]

@ Mine only had 1MB but the 3D games only ran at 320x200x256 anyway on the 486. And the monitor only was 14 inches anyway, so I could use Windows in 800x600 with 16bit HiColor which was quite feasible even for the web.

[@XzessTool]

In those days, a 386 sometimes performed 2x a nother 386 there was a lot aof different architectures for example IBM wich was much much faster even with lower CPU. When I had a Nvidia Riva TNT 16mb (winfast with a fan) performed way way better than a Riva TNT2 32MB in the same PC, the motherboards also where a lot faster My old IWill motherboard was really top again beating the ass of other suposed better CPUs.

[@Suicoo]

funny thing: GTA 1 & 2 also were 3D-games!

[@StriderVM]

Yes, because PCI cards are generally much faster than ISA cards by at least three times. Whereas VLB video cards are for high end PC's at that time.

[@smoogy2164]

Ignition uses the classic "PS1 Perspective" where the camera is pointing down and locked to a 2D plane due to severe draw distance/poly count restrictions, an adaptation a lot of early-ish 3D developers relied on from 1994-1997

[@hooldenord]

Thanks for the explanation. :)

[@janskacel2772]

MechWarrior seems to have aged extremly well visually

[@isaiaslafon9329]

Terminal Velocity was another awesome game with 3D graphics!, and Terminator Future Shock and Skynet!

[@YouOpaOpa]

Holy shit FX Fighter! I forgot all about that one!

The chunky rough non antialiased pixelated look of the custom software 3D renderers built into these games are so nostalgic. :) And I love that most of these also have a 3DFx port, giving them a vastly different look, giving essentially a replay value.

[@amirhm6459]

I always think I'm old. But I never saw any games there except tomb raider. All looks magical

[@chrisducati26]

I played all of them when i was teenager what a memories

[@Trako26]

By putting Ignition as the first game to show, to me you've already won! Other games for dos are Time Warriors and Carmageddon

[@roberto1519]

The three Screamer games for DOS are great fun! Toshinden requires you to adjust the CPU cycles, otherwise it will run too fast, like in this video. Tomb Raider classics from I through V run internally at 30FPS.

[@hooldenord]

I thought that Battle Arena Toshinden is just a very fast game. :) Thanks, I'll check my DOSBox settings.

[@BrentKilboy]

Ultima Underworld was ahead of its time. Came out before Wolfenstein yet had slopes, bridges you could walk under or over, etc.

[@FredM80]

Very clever games programmed from scratch before 3d graphic cards. All 3d routines had to be programmed. Awesome.

[@hooldenord]

3D games from 1995-1997 period required an incredible amount of work from innovative game devs, true gems!

[@FredM80]

@hooldenord A lot of these games reprogrammed a standard polygone rendering (later implemented inside graphic card pipelines), but some game were very ingenious : - Commanche implemented a progressive Voxel engine - Estatica a sphere based rendering - and... and... wonderful Doom implemented a trapézoïd render that simulate 3D, but it is not. Wonderful.

[@kylezo]

Descent was always underrated

[@shdon]

Wow, the overhead camera angle and high speed make Ignition feel so claustrophobic. It almost made me a bit queasy not being able to see much of the road ahead. Seems like a fun game regardless. I must say that the DOS era 3D games had a far more distinctive feel to them than at the start of the 3D accelerated era. I always felt that things started looking a bit too samey at that time, something that imho only really went away when vertex and pxel shaders started being used in earnest, giving developers much more ability to put their own spin on things and thus freedom to express their creativity.

[@MrToontastic]

Zone Raiders is another game with 3-D Graphics that uses MS-DOS. I used to LOVE playing that game back in the day.

[@lilabass]

I was there when they released the Games.

[@hooldenord]

Listed games were released between year 1995 and 1997. :)

[@KhalMika]

Ignition will always have a special place in my heart

[@DaRealJohnDaGamer64]

It's rather interesting that the PC version of Battle Arena Toshinden has Earthworm Jim as an exclusive playable character.

[@ADHGaming]

one of the first PC games i got and i loved it! Especially loved the music. Replayed it earlier this year!

[@las10plagas]

duuuude the very first game! Bleifuss Fun! I loved it! =D Bleifuß is german for lead foot, pedal to the metal, full throttle...

[@pedro3115]

I remember some 3d gems: 4D Boxing Magic Carpet Little Big Adventure Nascar Racing Destruction Derby Slipstream 5000

[@hooldenord]

Thanks for your recommendations. :)

[@saricubra2867]

Little Big Adventure 1 is not pure 3D, the 2nd game is (outside of buildings).

[@supergauchito]

I remember playing Ignition on my new pc-multimedia in a demo

[@thejazzo3595]

Ignition is one of my favourite racing games.

[@inceptional]

Ignition actually looks like a fun racing game.

[@DigoR81]

I remembered more: Time Commando, Moto Racer, The Need For Speed, Nascar Racing (Papyrus), Quake, Terminal Velocity, Alone in the Dark...

[@hooldenord]

...also Dungeon Keeper has camera rotation, so it's 3D. Moto Racer was fun, but it's a Windows game. Thanks for ideas for part 2 :)

[@baccy81]

Hi Octane is one of my favourite games ever, I could only play it in lowest graphic settings and despite that I had tons of fun

[@nimeni86]

Player Ignition with my brother split screen. Fun times

[@hooldenord]

Split screen mode in Ignition is great fun for 2 players. :)

[@marcsm2008]

Twinsen's Odyssey could be on the list. I mean, the indoor areas are 2D, but the outdoor areas are all 3D. So are all the characters.

[@verstrahlt1907]

wow, Hi-Octane is a 'mix' of F-ZERO and Death Rally

[@MultiYiff]

I noticed that Battle Arena Toshinden, it does have more resolution than PS1 version but missing 3D-details in the background and characters movement is more stiff and doesn’t have the ”breathing” animations.

[@jeremysart]

I remember most of these. Hi octane was like poor man’s Wipeout. Once I had a pc that could run 3D polygonal games it’s all I wanted!

[@tamas_k]

Extreme Assault and Sandwarriors are my faves, i still play them time to time.

[@cash5627]

Oh my gosh, Decent. The computer lab at my high school had networked 486 computers. We had a lan party after school, and we would give our selves Simpsons names. "Who's 'Disco Stu'?" "Disco Stu don't advertise!" Lmao

[@Funtasters]

How to play MS-DOS games on modern devices or modern machines, especially on Windows 11? Is using an MS-DOS emulator, like DOSBOX?

[@hooldenord]

Some people still use DOSBox 0.74-3, but for systems newer than Windows 7 I'd recommend DOSBox Staging. It's a bit tricky to learn if you never used MS-DOS, but it's very rewarding when you run your 1st game. There are many tutorials on this topic on KZbin. You can also just buy old games on GOG, these include preconfigured DOSBox, so you can launch DOS games from desktop shortcut. Good luck! :) P.S. DOSBox 0.74-3 is quite old and needs a special setting: find .conf file, open it with Notepad and replace "output=overlay" with "output=openglnb". In Windows 10/11 "overlay" output may cause game crashes. DOSBox Staging uses "output=opengl" as default, so it's one thing less to worry about.

[@EmanueleVaccari]

Screamer 2 was popular in PC gaming magazines in Italy because of it being made by an Italian developer studio: I remember it being compared to Sega Rally 2 (that I still preferred even even if I played it on a keyboard!). Was it popular overseas too?

[@hooldenord]

Screamer 2 was very popular in Poland, I'm not sure about overseas though. :)

[@2342-d8o]

I would love it if there was a software that the games could be loaded into that could update resolution, texture, view distance, etc... Like the recompilations of N64 games. I don't know how these things work, but i would assume it's impossible with these games due to the fact that they are coded so differently from each other, while the N64 games all are made in a similar way in order to work on a specific console. Moto Racer, Big Red Racing, and Screamers would be so incredibly great, still today, with increased view distance and 60fps

[@saricubra2867]

I can't believe the massive difference between these games and the first Unreal game to this day.

[@TheBypasser]

No Comanche series?! Gah, I know some games age well - but C3 actually stays the real eye-candy even today!

[@hooldenord]

Comanche 3 looks really good, thanks for your recommendation. :)

[@jased8727]

Descent was the first game that got me motion sickness true 3d goodness needs a remake or a new sequel.

[@zalves2000]

Amazing game. There is a recent game called overload made be the creators of descent

[@jased8727]

@@zalves2000 this overload game is isane why did they not market this, i'm sure even after 6 years they can re-release untouched.

[@Alex.mueller.781]

I Love descent still today. Play it Sometimes in psx via Emulator.

[@PacoBarba]

Que recuerdos ... y lo que me costó la Voodoo 3DFX para poder moverlos.

[@BusyMEOW]

For me these games are giving off that Nokia N95 Java vibe, also early Android like Samsung Galaxy S3 feels. 😊

[@herpyderpyderp]

holy derp, fx fighter

[@dcikaruga]

These games were Pentium recommended. I ran FX Fighter on my 5x86, and the frame rate was nothing like that video. 😁

[@hooldenord]

That's why I love DOSBox, being able to play all these games without real retro PC is amazing. :)

[@bombjack1984]

So these are DOS games that could use 3D accelerator cards? Of course there are many software 3D DOS games before these.

[@hooldenord]

Some from listed games are SVGA, other used 3dfx acceleration. For SVGA games DOSBox 0.74-3 is sufficient, for 3dfx games I used DOSBox Staging.

[@JohanPomppas]

good old MDK, I still have the cd.

[@matt92hun]

I liked Ignition but I was really bad at it.

[@Devilot91]

there's also Quake 2! is an unofficial port but i have it and runs on software or 3dfx and is amazing, on REAL dos

[@l3alamiya]

How about big red racing ?

[@rustylasagna]

Back when the game WAS the game.

[@crazyfrogmix]

and EA sports was IN the game

[@santitabnavascues8673]

Many people didn't have a 3d accelerator back then... (dat tomb raider....) also, no Quake?!

[@hooldenord]

I decided that Quake is a bit too brutal for this list. You know, starting with Ignition and then showing Quake... It's a great MS-DOS 3D game though.

[@santitabnavascues8673]

@@hooldenord that's okay 😅

[@SPTX.]

Ignition (Fun Tracks) was such a good game. Do the puddles spell 98 to anyone else?

[@albertodiez4215]

Mdk is a great game. Much better than psx version

[@andressanzcorrea1168]

Virtual snooker. Juegazo

[@iSS95ECU_001]

no doom?

[@suiken3149]

Battle Arena Toshiden have 60 FPS on PC?

[@benr8906]

No Quake?

[@hooldenord]

I've included Quake in Part 2, link is in the video description.

[@shade221]

the original wipeout is for DOS and 3D

[@CaptainVKanth]

I thought Screamer 2 and Rally are win95 games.

[@hooldenord]

It was quite popular among game developers to provide both DOS and Windows versions.

[@CaptainVKanth]

@hooldenord ah, ok. Didn't know they included both DOS and Win95 executable.

[@ad7799]

Todavía me cuesta creer que el forro de mi hermano cambió el juegazo de Indycar Racing 2 por esa mi*rda de Swiv 3D que ni a él le gustó encima... Ay dios.

[@mirabilis]

Big Red Racing. Stunts 4D Racing.

[@leighbyford635]

I paid almost $4000 AUD on a pentium 90, 16 mb ram etc etc in ? early 1994???. I remember playing Fx Fighter and my god it sucked, ran slow too. Then 6 months later $600 for a PS1 and it wiped the floor with the PC, not even close. Pc is master race now but it sure as fuck wasn't back then.

[@mittemot4949]

I missing Quake.

[@ivanyiattila3547]

Doom, Quake.

[@page6atr]

Please, if you can add the date of release of every game

[@davidpfol]

and what about...DOOM?

[@hooldenord]

Doom is as 3D as Wolfenstein 3D. On the other hand Quake used true 3D engine - walls and monsters were polygonal.

[@kunka592]

@@hooldenord This is false. Doom has proper height calculations for projectiles. The world is definitely in 3D, but it has a lot of limitations so most people don't consider it a true 3D game. Wolfenstein 3D is indeed not 3D though.

[@hooldenord]

@kunka592 You're right. Thanks for the explanation.

[@bhw2279]

Looks like a psx games

[@ENNEN420]

Wonder how many zoomlings and gen alpha kids had their preconceptions of DOS being just CGA green and purple vomit smashed cause of this video. I know you guys are reading this, too.

[@raviponso3887]

Least snobbish retro game enthusiast

[@mbobby99]

Didn't like these 3d graphics back then in most of these. MDK, Toshinden, Extreme Assault, Tomb Rider were awesoem - I fell in love. Swiv 3d, FX Fightes, Syndicate Wars was a crap.

[@olivermarkovic432]

Soul

[@lozD83]

What a terribly boring piece of footage for Tomb Raider

[@hooldenord]

I know... It's the very beginning of the game, it's more interesting later on.

[@singleproppilot]

I always thought Tomb Raider was just a terribly boring game.

[@davidcordova9155]

ohhh Hi-octane. the BEST!