The BEST Early 3D DOS Games (1981-1990)

[@JimLeonard]

Excellent shots of real CRTs here; it really helps evaluate the performance of these games when running on real hardware.

[@PCRetroTech]

Thanks Jim. I'm looking forward to your first video on these games!

[@easyerthanyouthink]

Good old pwm audio 👍😉 Awesome video thanks, good info Love the memories

[@Scalibq]

Stellar 7 is an early game with Sound Blaster support. It has the IRQ hardcoded to 7. Which is how early Sound Blasters were configured out-of-the-box. Later models used IRQ 5 instead, and this would lock up, as the game never gets an interrupt from the card. Perhaps that's your issue?

[@PCRetroTech]

Oh yes, that's probably the issue indeed. Thanks! It took four weeks to film these old CRT's so I ran out of time to debug this stuff unfortunately!

[@CantankerousDave]

I remember playing that on the Amiga.

[@LoftBits]

Oh yes, I remember: IRQ7 for 'regular' 8bit SB, IRQ5 for SB Pro/16...no wonder, Pro was released in 1991, a year after this game (1990), so they might well had assumed IRQ7 would be enough for everyone (just like 640kb was supposed to be, (C)B.Gates :0-)

[@Scalibq]

@@LoftBits The original SB Pro (the dual OPL2 one) was also shipped at IRQ7, and at least some SB Pro 2 (OPL3) cards were shipped at IRQ7, since my own was configured that way out-of-the-box when I bought it new somewhere in 1992 I believe. I know later SB Pro 2 cards did ship with IRQ5, as a friend of mine bought one like that, which also came in the new-style box with new-style manual (blue and yellow as opposed to the black with stripes). I'm not sure if any SB16s ever shipped with IRQ7, but roundabout that time would be the changeover I would gather (1992-1993ish).

[@Shmbler]

Perfect timing! I got the last of the custom peripherals for my barebone PC1512 working today. Time for some CGA gaming!

[@PCRetroTech]

Great to hear! I hope you have a very enjoyable time. Don't expect everything to go smoothly. When you find something that works well, play it for a decent while to really appreciate the retro feel.

[@shdon]

What corruption do you mean in Echelon? Echelon had a "pirate cipher", which is what those scribbles at the bottom of the screen were. The picture above would be more or less complete depending on which artifacts you collected (iirc). For Stellar 7, I think it works only when the Sound Blaster is set to IRQ 7, and it freezes on IRQ 5 (or vice versa)

[@Banzeken]

Some other early 3D DOS games I find intriguing are the games made for the *Freescape engine* that were originally for the Amstrad CPC- and Commodore 64-series of computers, namely Driller, Dark Side, Total Eclipse and Castle Master. The DOS versions were the first 16-bit conversions of these games and are a curious mix of first-person shooter and adventure/puzzle games with an emphasis on completing a “main quest” or mission of sorts in a fairly open-ended world. Total Eclipse also uses the PC Speaker to play back digitized sound effects. Midwinter (supposedly 1989 for Atari ST and 1990 for DOS) is even more open-ended and feels a lot like a prototypical “open-world” shooter like your typical Far Cry game, albeit with a lot more strategy and multi-character co-ordination involved. It’s also quite possibly the first “FPS” game with scope-based sniping in it. Very ambitious batch of games in my humble opinion.

[@PCRetroTech]

All of these are very impressive for sure. It's quite amazing how well they ported to DOS (due to Freescape I presume). I'll have to check out Total Eclipse for the PC speaker sound. I haven't heard that yet.

[@PlasticCogLiquid]

I actually played all the way through Castle Master, it's one of my favorite games. It was tough

[@PlasticCogLiquid]

There was a game called The Colony that you'd find interesting too, check it out

[@Banzeken]

@@PlasticCogLiquid Agreed, The Colony is quite fascinating and worth checking out. I would also like to make a correction; it seems Midwinter wasn’t actually available in 1989 for Atari ST, as some websites claim. Like the DOS version it was also a 1990 release, albeit around March of that year according to various scans of old magazines I’ve seen.

[@pjaro77]

Commodore 64 freescape and other 3D games are the slowest 3D i have seen in my life. Slow CPU.

[@real-babz-tv]

Helicopter simulator was the first game we had on our Tandy 1000, and for what it was trying to do on a computer that low end compared to the later models of computers in 1990's it was actually really impressive and really immersive as well

[@tahustvedt]

I was fascinated with games that played digitized sound through the PC speaker in the 80's. Mach 3 is one that comes to mind.

[@joe--cool]

I had a pc speaker digital audio driver for Windows 3. It lagged the OS quite a bit but I could play a few games before I got my Adlib Gold.

[@Blink_____]

@@joe--cool I had the same thing for a while, and was pretty excited. Then one day I had to chew my friend out because he was messing around sending rapid IM's over AOL and since it locked up the OS every time a sound played, I had to reset my machine to make it stop.

[@JohnDlugosz]

I recall some company claimed to have a patent on PCM audio. It was a hack to do it to the PC speaker; essentially toggling the enable/disable rather than using the frequency generator. The original PC could do it as part of a demoscene. The '286 could manage it as part of a game.

[@RaposaCadela]

Awesome seeing these playing in the real thing! Check out Die Hard from 1989, it's actually a third person shooter on DOS! Also Test Drive 3 from 1990, it's my favorite early 3D game cause it has a huge world rich in detail

[@markvickroy6725]

Loved Chuck Yeager's Advanced Flight Simulator as a wee lad "You really bought the farm!"

[@charonunderground8596]

Beautiful pioneering times. I love those early games, but today it's hard to believe that it was common to play at 3-5FPS :)

[@PCRetroTech]

I was quite used to that back in the day as we certainly didn't have the latest and greatest hardware. I've been quite surprised how some of these perform actually.

[@JohnDlugosz]

The first PC that I owned was a 12-MHz '286. Although I worked on some that had EGA, I got Hercules (monochrome) graphics because the sharper text was better for text-based use, like programming. Also, good amber monitors were affordable, while good color monitors were much more expensive. However, the Hercules graphics made many games suffer. The Sierra games like Chuck Yeagar used an automatic translator layer, so it did the CGA graphics on the B&W screen; but they were also squished and was especially poor for such games. It would be interesting if you could show that.

[@PCRetroTech]

I think many people had a similar feeling about monochrome and sharper text. I do have monochrome cards and monitor, but unfortunately the monitor blew up while I was preparing an episode some years back and attempts to fix it have so far failed. I do intend to return to it though.

[@paveloleynikov4715]

Stellar 7 on VGA 386 was pretty spectacular:) But to favourite true early 3D - Stunts was my favourite.

[@PCRetroTech]

True. I didn't put any VGA stuff in because it didn't become really popular until later, even though it was released in 1987 technically.

[@yakovkhalip9714]

Played Stunts a lot in mid 90's as a kid on p1/75) Even nowadays sometimes play it - now on a 286/20 or Commodore Amiga 3000)

[@yakovkhalip9714]

@@PCRetroTech but Stunts hae CGA, EGA and even Hercules support ... Anyway you made a great video, thanks !

[@PCRetroTech]

@@yakovkhalip9714 I also played Stunts a fair bit as a kid. It didn't run particularly well on my PC/XT though.

[@PCRetroTech]

@@yakovkhalip9714 Sure, I was referrings to Stellar 7 on VGA I think. Doesn't matter now. I certainly didn't include every game in the video. I'd have enough material for maybe another 3 or 4 videos on the topic. There were a LOT of 3D games before 1990.

[@GeorgesChannel]

Really interesting and well made video! Early 3d games are highly interesting for me. The 3d-games i liked most, was X-Wing on a 386 early 90's (1993 i got my fist PC). Interphase, F16 Combat Pilot and Starwars were also made for the Atari ST that time. Would also be interesting how they compared with the IBM versions.

[@PCRetroTech]

Thanks! And yes, a comparison video would be very cool. Although I have an 8 bit Atari I don't have an ST, and my Atari experience is almost nil. I'd probably screw up the comparison, but it one of my viewers wants to try that out, I think it would make a great video. (I'd certainly watch it.)

[@GeorgesChannel]

​@@PCRetroTech I think so too, but i think you would also do great in Atari ST (its a wonderful system). The game industry shifted (especially when VGA came out) towards the PC. The Amigas and Ataris had really good 3d games. Ports for the PC were also made (vice versa). Like you, i have my list with 3d games for the Atari ST (also interested in all other systems of the era, i have both a IBM AT and an Atari ST). Its a really fascinating topic.

[@fradd182]

Yeah, i dont know anyone did that yet, it would be great. Of course, ST should be compared to 286.

[@Thermion120]

Hi, what was the bottom right game during the intro and outro? I had the shareware of it back in the day and regret not buying the full version on the one occasion it was available. Thank you!! *Dark Side- I just read the comments. Unbelievable to see it again!

[@PCRetroTech]

From memory, that was Driller, aka Space Station Oblivion. It was one of the games that used the Freescape engine. I believe I covered it in one of my other DOS game videos.

[@un2mensch]

That voice actor in Echelon sounds to me like the same guy who says "Looks like he hit the tree, Jim" in World Class Leader Board (also Access Software). "Oooh, can't be too happy about that one!"

[@PCRetroTech]

I imagine some of these guys were developers and other random people around the office back in the day.

[@kuro68000]

That F19 title screen, back when 7 segment displays were high tech!

[@PCRetroTech]

Yeah I remember having a 7 segment display on an electronics kit I had back around the same time. They sure were the thing!

[@joshhiner729]

Yes in response to a previous comment: “back in the day” I was used to 3-5fps in 3d games. So my FAVORITE was Knights of the Sky and Red Baron. I still play knights of the sky today. Back in the day I played it for HOURS/days in 4 color cga on a 286 at 8mhz. All time fav. Elite/elite plus and gunship 2000 are close behind. Pcretrotech Id be interested to know if the ega games demoed glitched out on IBM ega cards? Or even knowing the chipsets that were glitching. Very curious thanks!

[@PCRetroTech]

The issues I had were with Chips & Technologies chipsets. I did actually have at least one game glitch out on an original IBM card though. I still haven't looked into precisely what was going on. Some of the glitches depended on game version. Others went away with Genoa chipset cards. Others I just didn't investigate that closely yet.

[@yakovkhalip9714]

I play sometimes both (I mean RB1 and Knyghts of the Sky) on a fast 286 (16 or 20 with Acumos or AHEAD/AVGA vieocard) nowadays. I like the history of early aviation - so play games on that topic - WW1 planes - from rb1 a 286and rb2 on a pii to the Rise of Flight on modern i7 notebook on which I wath this video)

[@Blink_____]

That intro to Echelon reminds me of an old module player I had which ran on MS-DOS and played output over the PC speaker. I've never been able to find out what the program was called though.

[@PCRetroTech]

Oh interesting. That's not something I know off the top of my head, but I bet I can find out.

[@Blink_____]

@@PCRetroTech It's probably a long shot. I don't even remember what formats it supported or what it really looked like. I just vaguely remember messing with it one night, I can't even remember if it was a TextUI or GUI or one of those primitive GUI that still looked like a text UI. not even sure if I downloaded it from AOL or the WWW. Only thing I know for certain was it was definitely run from the DOS prompt, but didn't look like any of the traditional Tracker programs of the time in terms of the interface.

[@JimLeonard]

@@Blink_____ You're probably thinking of Modedit, which had two revisions, both of which did not look like traditional tracker programs. They both ran in text mode, and the later version had a "piano roll" mechanic, if memory serves. They both used Mark Cox's MODPLAY player code which was among the very first PC players to support the PC speaker.

[@Blink_____]

@@JimLeonard I'm not sure it was Modedit, because I don't really remember it looking like that.. Time has not been kind to my memory either (this was around 1995 - 1996 when I was maybe 13 ). I don't remember if it had a note scroller, but there may have been some kind of levels or graphic EQ displayed during playback and it was definitely a "dark / black" screen. It's possible it may have been MODPLAY PRO, but I guess it's all academic at this point.

[@JimLeonard]

@@Blink_____ It could have been literally anything then: modplay, inertia player, cubic player, etc. My money is on cubic player.

[@tahustvedt]

Do you own a Roland MT-32? Many games you show here have MT-32 support and sound great.

[@PCRetroTech]

No, not at the moment. I've always been much more into graphics hardware actually.

[@tahustvedt]

@@PCRetroTech I just built a MT32-PI myself and it's great fun to replay old games with the sound I couldn't afford back then. I built the "mt32-pi-midi-hat" and added it to a Pi4

[@PCRetroTech]

@@tahustvedt That sounds like a nice alternative.

[@AntneeUK]

Silpheed was interesting. I only knew the Sega/MegaCD version, which I loved, and the graphics were incredible

[@renerebe]

nice many games I did not know from back In the day when we had a 286 and later 386 at home. As a 8 year old I so hated this 4 fps flight games though, ...

[@PCRetroTech]

Yes it's a shame machines were not just a bit more powerful by the time people wrote flight sims.

[@Big_Box_Customs]

Thank you for your awesome Video, one question .. whats the name of the game in the right lower corner? (Regulus Sector) .. this is the first game i ever played as a kid.. had no idea what was going on there and i also dont remember the name, but i would like to know :) THANK YOU!

[@PCRetroTech]

From memory, that is Dark Side. If not it is one of the games in that series.

[@Thermion120]

I just asked the same question for the same reason- unbelievable!! I had the freeware version on a x286 with CGA and always wanted to finish it. Such a unique and trippy game!!

[@sharpeye6366]

The latest game has a cool design. Thanks for the review.

[@PCRetroTech]

Thanks!

[@LoftBits]

Funny, I started my "PC journey" from 286 and now, 35 years later, I'm looking for games playable on my 5150 :-)

[@PCRetroTech]

Same, although I did have an Amstrad PC1512 before the 286.

[@tenminutetokyo2643]

Remember the Diamond Speedster card.

[@Guardian1224]

What about Starglider and Starglider 2? Looks a bit similar like Interphase, but bettter 🙂

[@PCRetroTech]

Great examples. They are on our list, but it isn't clear if the world is really rendered in 3D in Starglider, even if it is calculated in 3D. We apparently didn't figure that out. It's clearly a 3D game and the objects are certainly 3D though.

[@SkYhAwKxInD]

I think the corruptions are there, because your EGA card has probably less memory than required. Original EGA had initially 64KB of ram, but later cards supported 256KB RAM. The games are trying to access RAM beyond the 64KB and just getting garbage data.

[@PCRetroTech]

That's correct. I managed to sort this out in a later video and it was precisely that.

[@mustangrt8866]

is with an 8086+8087 better?

[@PCRetroTech]

Usually the 8087 doesn't make any difference in games because people couldn't afford to put them in, so game makers assumed the user wouldn't have one. Very often using 16 bit integer arithmetic was sufficient anyway. No need to go all the way to double precision floating point. The 8086 was faster due to the 16 bit data bus, and quite often ran at 8 MHz or so. So usually an 8086 would be better, though there were Turbo XT's that gave them a run for their money.

[@kuro68000]

Flight Sim came with my first PC, Amstrad PC1512. F19 came with my first Amiga. Played those two a lot.

[@PCRetroTech]

I certainly had Flight Sim. F19 was a new one to me. If I'd know there would be 100 3D DOS games back then I would have made more effort tracking some of them down. I really didn't see many 3D games other than MS Flight Simulator until 1991! I guess it was the same for many people.

[@kuro68000]

@@PCRetroTech I'm trying to remember what I had. I used to play Hard Drivin at about 1 fps, maybe even less than that. I think I had Stunt Car Racer for DOS too. The Amstrad, which we got second hand, came with Gunship so I used to play that quite a bit. I had Fighter/Bomber as well, which was interesting but not very realistic. You could fly through hills and with a bit of care you could get airborne and fly at 1 foot off the ground.

[@PCRetroTech]

@@kuro68000 Oh that's interesting, we don't seem to have Fighter Bomber on our list. It looks very similar to some other games though, so perhaps it had multiple names.

[@kuro68000]

@@PCRetroTech It was called "Strike Aces" in the US, and the developer previously ported Star Wars so there is probably some shared code in there.

[@PCRetroTech]

@@kuro68000 Ah yes, we have Strike Aces. Thanks for clearing that up.

[@KnutBluetooth]

I played that Star Wars game on Amstrad 1512 and I remember blowing up the death star. So I guess it needs 8086@8Mhz at least.

[@PCRetroTech]

Ha ha, yeah you can't take on the Empire with just an 8088!

[@EpicureMammon]

F-19 had pretty great sound on a Tandy (and probably a PC Jr?). I wonder how many hours I had racked up in that game :D

[@PCRetroTech]

That would have been a good system for me to compare some of these on.

[@kaviolalainen]

It would be interesting to see how well the DOS port of Stunt Car Racer performs on this hardware, considering that the original C64 version could already hit around 5-7 FPS.

[@OpenGL4ever]

I wouldn't call them the best early 3d DOS games. My list looks more like this: - F-19 ( i agree with that one) - M1 Tank Platoon - Battle of Britain Their finest hour (the aircrafts are sprites only, but the background is 3d) - Wing Commander (here everything is made of sprites, but i would still consider that as some sort of semi 3d game)

[@PCRetroTech]

Thanks for sharing your list. It's a very personal list, for sure. I'm always more impressed by true 3D and the technical side, but there are many other ways to rate the games of course.

[@drzeissler]

have to check those on my A2286/8 ET4K :)

[@PCRetroTech]

Absolutely!

[@yakovkhalip9714]

Also threre was very nice game of 286 era - in 3d "Dragonstrike" - "simulator" of a dragon rider)

[@PCRetroTech]

Thanks. We actually have that on our list, which has about 100 3D games up to 1990 now. The DOS version of Dragonstrike is 1990 it seems. I had to look up a video of the game to check it out, as I am not personally familiar with it. Looks like a really nice game. It's beautifully illustrated.

[@tbk2010]

3d gamers today: 60fps is the absolute minimum 3d gamers back then: 6fps is the absolute maximum

[@mateuscristianschannelen961]

I'm 24, my first gaming experiences was on the PS2, I have no nostagia for these games, so i don't know why, but I love the look and feel of late 80's/early 90's PC games, especially 3D games, and hope to be able to replicate these graphics in my games, as I learn to make it.

[@PlasticCogLiquid]

Silpheed isn't pre-rendered. The Sega-CD version is but not the original.

[@PCRetroTech]

It's very impressive then.

[@lurkerrekrul]

Deep Space: Operation Copernicus - I recall having a copy of this for my C64 (or maybe I borrowed a copy), and liking it. I remember being able to play it pretty well. Now of course, copies can be downloaded off the net, but I still haven't found copies of all the maps that came with the game, of the manual, so I'm a little lost trying to play it today. Stellar 7 - This is an updated version of a game of the same name that came out for the C64 and Apple II in 1983. I played the Amiga version of this and I thought it was pretty poorly programmed. It would slow to a crawl even with just a couple enemies on the screen and the digitized audio was so garbled, I could never understand what it was saying. I didn't think much of the sequel, Nova 9 either. They probably would have run better on an accelerated machine, but there were other Amiga games with more complex 3D that ran much better than those games. BTW, between the original Stellar 7 and this game, was Arcticfox, another 3D tank game by the same programmer. While the original Stellar 7 was mostly a Battle Zone clone with a few extra features, Arctifox was a more complex game. The updated Stellar 7 went back to more arcade-like gameplay, but kept some of the advanced features of Arcticfox.

[@PCRetroTech]

Game quality was definitely a function of the team that made the game. You definitely see some studios that produced smooth, technically complex games and others that had an interesting concept, yet ultimately implemented poorly. It is a shame that some of the original maps and extras seem to have disappeared for some of these games. Of course you can sometimes buy boxed copies online, but very often that stuff is just missing.

[@lurkerrekrul]

@@PCRetroTech To be honest, I never really cared for most of Sierra's games. I tried Leisure Suit Larry once, and while I liked the humor, I wasn't crazy about the game in general. Red Baron had nice graphics and sounds, but it was another game that ran like crap unless you had a really fast system. As for finding old game documentation, much of it has been preserved, but stuff for more obscure games can be hard to find. There's a sealed copy for the Apple II on eBay with a current bid (they still have auctions?) of $1.04, plus $11.15 shipping. Unfortunately, I have NO extra money at the moment. On second thought, you can scratch the word "extra" from that sentence. There are also two ridiculously priced Apple II copies. If I were going to buy a copy, I'd prefer to buy the C64 version, even though I'm sure the extra materials are probably exactly the same.

[@PCRetroTech]

@@lurkerrekrul Retro computing as a hobby can et expensive if you go down that route, especially at the moment when almost everyone is feeling the pinch. Some prices are dropping as a result at the moment, but no money is no money.

[@lurkerrekrul]

@@PCRetroTech There's expensive and then there's ridiculous. Two of the copies of Deep Space are being listed at $1,999.99 and $795.00 (plus $10-17 shipping). I've wanted to get Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee for the Xbox, but even bare discs are listed at over $30.

[@PCRetroTech]

@@lurkerrekrul Yeah those prices are utterly ridiculous for sure.

[@B24Fox]

DragonStrike [1990] is a very enjoyable early 3D game that nobody seems to mention..

[@intrinia]

LHX was an early attack helicopter sim that I liked very much. It ran with EGA and PC speaker, but I think I played it on a 386.

[@henson2k]

I had a blast playing LHX even though I'm not a big fan of helicopters

[@LoftBits]

Just tried it on my 5150, out of curiosity. Does run, but at about 1fps...

[@ned3and]

Is this is a vector graphics or polygonal 3D with flat shading?

[@mateuscristianschannelen961]

Both. As in, both methods of rendering were used at the time.

[@gremfive4246]

Wow F-19 Stealth Fighter sound is pretty bad on the IBM PC. I had that game but we had a PCJr and it sounded much better.

[@PCRetroTech]

Yes, the PCJr sound rocks. It is far superior to the PC speaker for sure.

[@ahmadmuzaffarzafriy1234]

Anyone remember this old fighter jet game, which you easily crash in early start of the game? And some cartoon of scientists in it...

[@PCRetroTech]

I asked one of the founders of Moby Games about this and he wasn't able to think of a fighter jet game with a cartoon of scientists in it. You might look on that website to see if you can spot it. If not, it remains a mystery for now!

[@ahmadmuzaffarzafriy1234]

@@PCRetroTech Do the founders know all games that was released since 10 to 20 years before?

[@PCRetroTech]

@@ahmadmuzaffarzafriy1234 Ah I thought you meant that it was a game from the 1980's or early 1990's like the games in the video. I didn't realise you were talking about a game 10 to 20 years old.

[@ahmadmuzaffarzafriy1234]

@@PCRetroTech It was around 1995 - 1996, that I saw the flight game at some convention, but I just couldn't remember the title...

[@PCRetroTech]

@@ahmadmuzaffarzafriy1234 Ah I see. That is definitely in the area my friends are very familiar with, so it is a little mysterious what it could be. Anyway, have a look on the Moby Games site because there aren't very many jet fighter games and there are screenshots from most of them. Maybe something will remind you.

[@Pickle136]

if there was ever a reason to upgrade to a 286 its this video :-)

[@PCRetroTech]

Yes indeed! At 12MHz my 286 is nearly 3x faster in clock speed, but the 286 is itself *way* faster than an 8088. It makes far more difference than most people realise!

[@kuro68000]

The performance difference is surprising. The 286 isn't that fast. Did EGA have a lot more memory bandwidth than CGA? I'm guessing that write speed was a big limiting factor on 8086/CGA.

[@PCRetroTech]

EGA was able to update 4 bitplanes simultaneously. This is the principal difference that I am aware of. There was twice the video RAM to be updated, but it could be updated 4 times as fast. EGA also came later and of course technology had moved along just that little bit more.

[@JimLeonard]

In addition to EGA improvements, the cost of MUL and DIV went from ~118 cycles on 808x to just 21 cycles on 286, so it was no longer that costly to do the matrix math needed for 3-D calcs.

[@kuro68000]

I will have to do some research. Weren't 286 ISA buses 16 bit too? Was rendering done in main RAM and the frame buffer copied, or direct into video RAM?

[@PCRetroTech]

@@kuro68000 Yes, the 286 bus was 16 bit. But all the EGA cards I know of are 8 bit. It wasn't really until SVGA came along that graphics went over to 16 bits. Even a lot of early SVGA adapters were 8 bits or had 16 bit ISA connectors which then split back to 8 bits on the card itself. The idea behind bitplanes is that the single byte of graphics information over the 8 bit bus could be written to up to four bitplanes at once, effectively (up to) quadrupling the throughput without changing the actual bus. As for rendering, it really depends on the game and the programmer. EGA was capable of fast memory to memory copy (again 4 bit planes at a time) which means it was feasible to do some effects entirely in EGA RAM. Depending on the mode, you could also do page flipping. But a lot of things would have been rendered in system memory buffers and copied into video RAM. It really depends what you were actually doing.

[@JimLeonard]

@@kuro68000 Yes to all of the above :-)

[@Lilithe]

Every single EGA game has corruption here. Have you tried swapping out the RAM chips on your card?

[@PCRetroTech]

It's because the card is an original IBM card, which didn't have as much RAM as later cards.

[@nflorentin]

Faltó Dark Side, el juego de abajo a la izquiera al principio del video.

[@Atari8man2011]

Check out Tomahawk

[@yopachi]

I like seeing 3d games in 4 colors. Guess I'm a weirdo ;P

[@Pickle136]

One i remember that looks like it makes the date cut off is Stunts: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stunts_(video_game) We had this installed on the cad pc's in school. Its not PC but the first '3d' games i recall playing were the microprose c64 simulations like gunship, f15 strike eagle.

[@PCRetroTech]

Yes, Stunts is a good one. We certainly have this on our list. The others probably have PC counterparts I would say. I think there might even be a Gunship for PC.

[@Max_Mustermann]

I was also going to mention Stunts before I saw this comment. It was a really cool game for its time, especially due to the built in track editor and the fact that the game used 3D objects for everything instead of sprites.

[@Wombletronix]

Yes! Played that one loads on my PC1512 (4D Sports Driving,) as well as 4D Sports Boxing. Pretty slow and CGA was um, 'nostalgic', but that was what I had back in the day. Pretty sure the original game boxes are hiding somewhere. Might drag the old machine out and try it again soon.

[@b213videoz]

Tau Ceti deserves to be on the list

[@PCRetroTech]

It's hard to tell if that is really 3D or just sprites getting larger as objects approach.

[@b213videoz]

@@PCRetroTech If Elite is 3D Tau Ceti is surely 3D, those are not "sprites"

[@PCRetroTech]

@@b213videoz Elite has 3D objects that rotate and is undeniably 3D. In Tau Ceti, the objects get larger as they get closer, but still look like flat 2D projections without any structure. The world is undeniably 3D, but this can be simulated without the need for true 3D, in much the same way as Grand Prix Circuit for example. Using the definition we used to classify the games, Tau Ceti would not be true 3D, at least based on the gameplay footage I've seen. Of course it's possible we've overlooked something, and if you have footage of true 3D objects in the game we've missed, do let us know.

[@pazsion]

My first 3D dos game I think was mechwarrior, nothing else was really 3D until duke nukem and quake. That I knew of. Didn’t sound like this though. Glad I skipped this stuff 😊

[@Scalibq]

Best 3D game hands-down for the 8088 is F29 Retaliator.

[@PCRetroTech]

This one misses out on my 1990 cutoff, but Jim might cover it! Thanks for the suggestion. It is on our list of course.

[@ovalteen4404]

No mention of Lightspeed :( It was mostly playable on the original PC, though as usual a 286 was recommended. kzbin.info/www/bejne/laKQhZp8mbuEfJY Mechwarrior was fun though. Note that it does have an ending, but you have to follow clues to suss it out.

[@PCRetroTech]

That's a good one. It is on our list of course.

[@stephanemignot100]

You really need an MT32 to enjoy Silpheed...

[@libremercadoencrisiseconom2118]

TempleOS vibes

[@libremercadoencrisiseconom2118]

by the way, 3:08 part is not because of virtual memory or hertz rate. it's because of a huge input improvement. I realized that, while I was thinking about network dispatcher drivers, I thought then, packages would get lost because as real-time doesn't allow moving but copying memory. on real mode kernel doesn't know whether the package is complete unless it manually saves the copy-write offset, and sometimes the process scheduler might cut off the saving transfer. what you see is basically wasted cycles in short, to prevent glitches. wow, this may actually be correct

[@_Mike_S]

Deathtrack is the best

[@kevinfishburne]

sil feed / sylph eed / see roo feed oh / Silpheed

[@wizardofboz76]

CGA made my eyes bleed.