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Virtua Racing; when Sega went fully 3D with their first true 3D game...and other devs "first 3D game"

Futaleufu

Member
Wild Ambition arcade
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Hyper 64 was a bit iffy there.

Are you really using low quality gifs to compare games? For starters FFWA runs at 60 fps, has antialiasing and looked very sharp on a CRT.

VGEsoterica has several videos on the game, if anything his captures are darker than the real thing.
 

nkarafo

Member
Even if it came out in 96 it couldn’t compete with Model 3 and MAYBE could go toe to toe with Model 2. It was just a “too little too late” platform

From the games i have seen, the Neo-Geo 64 doesn't really come close to the Model 2 either. It's closer to something like the M2 hardware, maybe a bit better.
 

anthony2690

Member
As a child I hated this game and thought it was ugly as sin on the megadrive.

But looking at the arcade game footage (something I've never seen prior) it looks very impressive, especially for the time.
 

SaintALia

Member
I have all seven Hyper Neo Geo games in my collection. They range from good to great but graphically they were behind the curve
The comment on their quality were specifically in regard to how they were received at the time and in relation to their 2D counterparts, I've never personally played Buriki One or the Rally one. Though, I should dig up some old reviews to make sure now.
 

SaintALia

Member
Yeah, many games kept using TR's formula into the 2000's until right stick became standard and really analog in general instead of it being implemented as a gimmick.

However, I don't erggeiz was better than any of the Hyper 64 games it was pretty bad from what I remember. lol
I don't think Eghreiz was 'great'(maybe not even good, though I think I remember average or middling scores), I just had more fun with it personally, so don't that part as a real knock against the Neo-Geo games(andI didn't play all them).
 

Sentenza

Gold Member
I know it sounds ridiculous today, but when I played Virtua Racing the first time in a proper arcade cabinet it felt almost unreal.
It was borderline science fiction shit that something could look so crisp and feel so fluid. Also, force feedback on the steering wheel was a neat novelty.
 
Earth Siege.

The first fully 3D open third-person action game, the first fully 3D open first-person action game, and set the standard for third person controls and camera in a 3D space, while also having free-look in first person with tilt and zoom. It also introduced 2nd person view to a full 3D game with the same innovations.

First fully 3D game with full multilayer texturing across the floor of nearly every stage, and not some voxel or a single stretched texture. On a decent PC not even upper spec, had the farthest draw distance of any home video game at release.

Also the first 3D game in general even including the arcade, with dynamic skies.

For the home, it was the first fully 3D game to have several 3D polygonal models on screen in a battle royale with no frame rate drops, unless you had a weaker set up, but still held well.

You didn't even need to spend much for a PC that could handle the game superbly, but if you did you got an incredible experience.

All in 1994, many games got their influence from it but tried to bury that because apparently many devs had problems with Dynamix for some reason, who were until near their death the king of 3D gaming.

Just no one came close to their graphical achievements and performance. Papyrus had a basic Racing game with flat polygons and the game ran like ass.

Dynamix did 3D before but that was the first fully 3D game they made, and arguably the most important 3D game in the industry, because all of a sudden third-person games, or games that gave you that option started appearing en mass, and fps games were taking a lot of elements from it. Sniper influence basically, not publicized but clearly there outside a few developers.

Dynamix was the best, shame they declined and got shuttered.

Some of this you only saw in arcades, and often not fleshed out, some you only saw for the first time when the game released.

Incredible achievement that's getting forgotten like many older PC games. That's what happens when most gaming press are console focused and bring up the same 15 old PC games most of the time.
 
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Futaleufu

Member
Earth Siege.

The first fully 3D open third-person action game, the first fully 3D open first-person action game, and set the standard for third person controls and camera in a 3D space, while also having free-look in first person with tilt and zoom. It also introduced 2nd person view to a full 3D game with the same innovations.

First fully 3D game with full multilayer texturing across the floor of nearly every stage, and not some voxel or a single stretched texture. On a decent PC not even upper spec, had the farthest draw distance of any home video game at release.

Also the first 3D game in general even including the arcade, with dynamic skies.

For the home, it was the first fully 3D game to have several 3D polygonal models on screen in a battle royale with no frame rate drops, unless you had a weaker set up, but still held well.

You didn't even need to spend much for a PC that could handle the game superbly, but if you did you got an incredible experience.

All in 1994, many games got their influence from it but tried to bury that because apparently many devs had problems with Dynamix for some reason, who were until near their death the king of 3D gaming.

Just no one came close to their graphical achievements and performance. Papyrus had a basic Racing game with flat polygons and the game ran like ass.

Dynamix did 3D before but that was the first fully 3D game they made, and arguably the most important 3D game in the industry, because all of a sudden third-person games, or games that gave you that option started appearing en mass, and fps games were taking a lot of elements from it. Sniper influence basically, not publicized but clearly there outside a few developers.

Dynamix was the best, shame they declined and got shuttered.

Some of this you only saw in arcades, and often not fleshed out, some you only saw for the first time when the game released.

Incredible achievement that's getting forgotten like many older PC games. That's what happens when most gaming press are console focused and bring up the same 15 old PC games most of the time.

Well said. In defense of Papyrus, yes, Nascar Racing 1 ran like crap even on a Pentium but Indy Car Racing 2 and subsequent titles ran much better.
 

PeteBull

Member
But that got me thinking GAF...what devs nailed 3D out of the gate and what devs just totally tripped?
Namco did some outstanding work, tekken, soul calibur/edge series and ofc ridge racer, all beloved games and long lasting series.
 
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Well said. In defense of Papyrus, yes, Nascar Racing 1 ran like crap even on a Pentium but Indy Car Racing 2 and subsequent titles ran much better.

It's crazy how far ahead Dynamix was than everyone else.

Alone in the Dark 3(Which was basically Resident Evil and lost it's identity at that point), System Shock, WC3, lots of 3D coming in and none were even close.

Elder Scrolls Arena could have been a contender and is underrated in it's influence on its own, but it wasn't fully 3D, used some tricks, and required a beefy PC for smooth play and still had hiccups.

Magic Carpet was...different and had its own issues
 
haha Sega thought the home market was going to super amazing 2D games in the 32 bit generation. They read the room incorrectly. So they had to pivot and get something done quickly

Shamed they dragged their heels when it came to the domestic market and the Saturn, where they got caught out by Sony and for Sega they were never the same again.....

Nothing but a long-standing myth. Saturn was designed with dual processing in mind from day one in order to get a design that could do both 2d and 3d. This was following precedent from their arcade boards. Their real error was assuming console game designers would adapt, and failing to provide dev tools.
 

RAIDEN1

Member
Nothing but a long-standing myth. Saturn was designed with dual processing in mind from day one in order to get a design that could do both 2d and 3d. This was following precedent from their arcade boards. Their real error was assuming console game designers would adapt, and failing to provide dev tools.
Yeah but the console's outright flop was so bad that they never recovered from it...the Dreamcast had no margin for error due to the competition being so fierce...Sega's reputation sank so low, that when it comes to the Dreamcast you never hear it often as the Sega Dreamcast, it was as if it was it's own independent brand, detached from the Sega family, a console from an unknown developer..(if you took it at face value, and nobody gave you background info on the console when you first see it I mean)
 
VGEsoterica has several videos on the game, if anything his captures are darker than the real thing.

That gif wasn't from the arcade machine, not VGE's videos.

the Dreamcast had no margin for error due to the competition being so fierce

There didn't even need to be competition, Dreamcast never had a margin to do anything, the console itself was bailed out by richie rich. Saturn wasn't even the source of most of Sega's losses, it was Netlink and all their many many spending moves to create new revenue that all failed.

Sega's reputation sank so low, that when it comes to the Dreamcast you never hear it often as the Sega Dreamcast,

That's because that's how Sega marketed it, and in some regions apparently didn't even have their logo prominent on the box I've heard.

That wasn't about reputation as much as Sega's marketing strategy since late Genesis in some ways. Earlier commercials are the ones people remember. They also did that strategy with the Saturn in many cases.

Nothing but a long-standing myth. Saturn was designed with dual processing in mind from day one in order to get a design that could do both 2d and 3d. This was following precedent from their arcade boards. Their real error was assuming console game designers would adapt, and failing to provide dev tools.

Negative, there error was thinking that consoles wouldn't catch up to the model 1 and pass it so quickly, let alone the same year it came out, with modern effects and texturing, or that PC's would be slow to come down in price from where they were in 1992, when that ended up happening in late 1992, by the time Model 3 was out a PC clone rig at a good price could handle Myst, 7th Guest, Alone in the Dark, and Doom, and beyond that was much better.

It's the same mistake they made with the Model 3, thinking that it would take several years for PC and consoles to catch up when PC started catching up rapidly, the M2 before cancellation was heading in that direction already, and in the end they ended up knew capping their own plan themselves with the Dreamcast on the console side.

I don't think Eghreiz was 'great'(maybe not even good, though I think I remember average or middling scores), I just had more fun with it personally, so don't that part as a real knock against the Neo-Geo games(andI didn't play all them).

The only hype behind that game was there were characters for FF7 in it, and that was mostly tied to a marketing campaign in Japan, didn't work to well outside.
 

SaintALia

Member
The only hype behind that game was there were characters for FF7 in it, and that was mostly tied to a marketing campaign in Japan, didn't work to well outside.
I know why people were looking forward to, it was my friend who actually acquired the game and he was a big FF fan at the time.


I just had more fun with it(like a proto Powerstone), and would rate it higher than SNK's early 3D efforts(which doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of rating things overall, just my own preference).
 
Negative, there error was thinking that consoles wouldn't catch up to the model 1 and pass it so quickly, let alone the same year it came out, with modern effects and texturing, or that PC's would be slow to come down in price from where they were in 1992, when that ended up happening in late 1992, by the time Model 3 was out a PC clone rig at a good price could handle Myst, 7th Guest, Alone in the Dark, and Doom, and beyond that was much better.

It's the same mistake they made with the Model 3, thinking that it would take several years for PC and consoles to catch up when PC started catching up rapidly, the M2 before cancellation was heading in that direction already, and in the end they ended up knew capping their own plan themselves with the Dreamcast on the console side.
Good point. How do you think they would have handled 2d/3d with a little more foresight? IIRC you would have needed two separate cards way back in the day.
 

GenericUser

Member
Virtua Racing is really good and I think that Daytona USA is the perfect Virtua Racing. It sucks that arcade racers are dead. Fuck my life
 
Maybe separate cards was the wrong word. (Early 3d cards sucked for 2d.) I guess I meant whether a less complicated hybrid path would have been possible back then.

Issue wasn't so much the cards, but the reason 3D consoles didn't do too well for 2D in improvement was that 3D gaming didn't need as much ram for early polygonal (console) graphics and baked effects. Also no sprite hardware, which only the Saturn and Jaguar had (and CD32 if you consider that major)

As for Sega, the thing is they really were not expecting 3D to catch up that fast or PC's going down. They had most of their 3D investment in the arcades, and the Saturn was basically going to be able to handle what the Model 1 could do which they believed would be a feat unmatched so them having a console that could have those graphics (minus the poly count/size) while they had the model 2 ready would put them in a great position at home.

Then the Jaguar came out creating the first problem. The announcement and the screens coming out and demos along with the Saturn not being ready (outside Japan) had Sega push for the 32X.

Then the PlayStation and 3DO were on the scene in Japan with demo booths, with Sony being the company media was focused on because it was Sony in the 90s, and they had a 3D console with baked effects, and texturing, and less simplicity, and was already marketing hype before launch. Which forced Sega to adapt, creating a hard to develop for mess that would end up costing them money when sales were slow, that couldn't quite reach where they needed to me.

I think Sega's biggest mistake here was at the start of this chain of events. They reacted to the jaguar with the 32X to have something to hold off, but the 32X was weaker than the Jaguar. But Sega was not messing with the Saturns hardware in reaction to the Jaguar, despite it being clear they were not expecting another console to have the capabilities Atari showed (while covering up they were on the verge of bankruptcy and the soon to be realized hardware design issues Atari itself had).

This leads me to believe they though the Saturn they had would match the Jaguar or be a bit stronger than what the demos had them believe, but not to improve the hardware.

Clearly, I believe their biggest mistake, was Sega not improving the hardware after seeing the Jaguar. They could have started to work on that, and wouldn't have to worry about dev issues or additional delays, or needing to suddenly react to the PS1. No 32X would have been needed, although that still may have happened because Sega did not know Atari's situation in the background. But at least the Saturn would have been different in a good way then how it ended up.

Instead they waited, and then when they saw console even better than the Jaguar panicked and made some adjustments that weren't well implemented which caused problems.

Secondly, the model 3 which they made the same exact mistake with, thinking that that home hardware would not catch up on the console end, or the PC prices would lower enough with the right specs on the PC end, when already in 1996 PC was accelerating past consoles already without needing the most expensive rig, in 1997 MDK came out as a big graphical showcase, for SOFTWARE rendering with no accelerator card whatsoever. By 1998 PC was was catching up with model 3 the same year as Sega kneecapping themselves with the Dreamcast which was console that also caught up with hte model 3.

It seems Sega's hubris was the main issue here.

They should have improved the hardware after reacting to the jaguar instead of waiting thinking they were safe, even if they didn't know Atari's situation in the background, they had to have known that they were not as big as they were and they were at that time, still splitting resources across a handheld, a then upcoming console, and a home computer. Any company with more resources would have been able to make a stronger console than them, and they should have figured that out. They were asleep at the wheel at SOJ.

Sega could have easily had a better Saturn without the several issues that plagued it. They could have improved the 2D as well, though that wasn't AS necessary to do.
 
They already had the architecture in mind well before seeing the PS1.

Though instead of mandating SoA create a stopgap (the 32X) in response to the Jaguar, I agree they should have ballparked it a little further with the Saturn after what they saw.
 
They already had the architecture in mind well before seeing the PS1.

Though instead of mandating SoA create a stopgap (the 32X) in response to the Jaguar, I agree they should have ballparked it a little further with the Saturn after what they saw.

Yes, but they felt the need to because of the PS1 to alter the design to future proof it more which hurt them.

Their biggest mistake is that if they had prepared the hardware to be future-proof after seeing the Jaguar demos they wouldn't have needed to do that at all. Even if the kept the 32X.

Instead they ended up caught with their pants down later, and their only reaction to the jaguar was to release a stop-gap that was similar in architecture to the Saturn that was weaker than the Jaguar.

Sega for some reason kept thinking they were much farther ahead of where hardware was evolving or on PC side- prices falling) than they actually were. If it was one time I would understand, but 3? Of course, one could blame SoJ's disconnection with where the industry was going for that, but some of SoA guys encouraged that as well.

With that being said they did have another options to, keeping the Saturn as it was. Don't know how strong that Saturn was but it would have given Sega an easy path for devs to come over, less problems with development, and likely would have given the console a price reduction, both of those would have been better moves than what they ended up doing. Instead of crippling their architecture, and then surprising launching.

What's more is that surprise launch was still latter than when Sega wanted to release, a Saturn that was prepared ahead of time after the jaguar, or remaining as it was, both would have resulted in devs getting involved earlier, and an earlier launch in the US.
 
IIRC they already had 2 SH2s in mind and having only 1 VDP would have made no sense for the architecture as it was.

The issue was the changes made to the second that wouldn't have happened otherwise if they weren't reacting quickly without foresight.

I don't recall information of the original Saturn dev kits having only one, just that it was different form what ended up happening.
 
The issue was the changes made to the second that wouldn't have happened otherwise if they weren't reacting quickly without foresight.

I don't recall information of the original Saturn dev kits having only one, just that it was different form what ended up happening.
Hitachi recommended Sega go with 2 SH2 units, claiming they were ready to go in a multiprocessor setup. Sega somewhere along the line if not immediately realized 1 wouldn't be fast enough to compete.
 
Hitachi recommended Sega go with 2 SH2 units, claiming they were ready to go in a multiprocessor setup. Sega somewhere along the line if not immediately realized 1 wouldn't be fast enough to compete.

Yes, but there was a change after they decided to go with the dual-set up that cause the problems we ended up with. A change I do not think was necessary and all they needed was to do a little spec boost after the jaguar.
 
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