While all the other space exploration and combat games on 16-bit home computers flail around in their own mucky diapers, Frontier: Elite II makes a mockery of everything else in its class by not only being a staggering piece of programming, but also a damn fine, playable game too.
Tag Archives: 3D graphics
Three-dimensional graphics, usually constructed of polygons. Not two-dimensional.
Simulcra, Atari ST
Simulcra is a cool third-person 3D shooter set on a complex series of colourful courses. The game was developed by legendary coding team Graftgold and is one of their least well-known releases, but also one of their best.
Tempest, Arcade
Tempest, by Dave Theurer, is one of the first ever ‘tube shooters’. It was released by Atari in 1981.
You control a spider-like yellow craft that walks along the edge of a 3D playfield, often taking the form of a cylindrical tube. You shoot bullets down the tube at enemies that are rising upwards to get you. Thus the name ‘tube shooter’.
Battle Zone, Arcade
Atari‘s 1980 hit Battle Zone was one of the first ever video games to use 3D polygonal vector graphics to represent the playfield.
It’s a tank game, and you’re basically hunting down tanks, flying saucers, and other baddies. Shooting them before they can shoot you.
Quake, PC
Doom was good, but Quake – for me – was where id Software really broke the First-Person Shooter mould, with a game far ahead of anything else at the time – even their own games…
Doom, PC
id Software‘s hit shooter, Doom, blew the roof off the gaming world when it was first released in 1993.
It was the first First-Person Shooter that moved really fast and smoothly, and gave you a real sense of ‘being there’ when you played it.
Neverwinter Nights 2, PC
The 2006 sequel to the hit RPG Neverwinter Nights was created by American developer Obsidian Entertainment and published by Atari, Inc.
In many ways Neverwinter Nights 2 improves on the original game, and uses a new game engine (actually a suped-up version of the previous engine), this one called the Electron Engine.
Neverwinter Nights, PC
BioWare‘s 2002 release, Neverwinter Nights, is a bit of a giant on the RPG scene.
Not only is it a detailed and engrossing Role-Playing Game par excellence, but it also plays host to a huge modding community. It’s also well-known as a multiplayer game too and features campaigns that can be played single or multi-player, and also features Player-versus-Player (PvP) combat.
The Thing, PC
Taking place immediately after the events of the famous John Carpenter film of the same name, The Thing is a 3D survival horror game that aims to wallow in the sheer, dark, brilliance of Universal’s 1982 cult sci-fi hit.
F.E.A.R., PC
A classic first-person survival horror game from Monolith Productions and first released in 2005.
F.E.A.R. unfortunately came out not long after Half-Life 2, so was kind of drowned-out in the attention Valve‘s release was getting. It’s not as good as Half-Life 2 – to be quite frank – but is definitely up there with the best releases of that year.