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by kylemaxwell26 days ago |
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upvoteby walrus0126 days ago|
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Early 90s DOS games were certainly quite creative. I mentally draw a dividing line between approximately the start of the era when the first Soundblaster became a common thing to find in affordable home x86 PCs, and early CD-ROM based games were also available (1991-1992), and the December 1993 release of DOOM and everything that came after. Very interesting era in the time frame in between there.
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upvoteby jasonfarnon26 days ago|
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Don't I remember doom developing pretty organically from wolfenstein and a few other (what would now be called) first person shooters around that time? The name "hexen" is coming to mind too. I would put that whole era as the start of something new, so different from the strategy games and side-scrollers that preceded it. Those first person games were the first time I thought computer games were actually more fun than the console systems, which didn't really have anything similar.
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upvoteby walrus0126 days ago|
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I think the big difference for me, after playing a lot of Wolfenstein 3D, was two things... The system I had it on didn't have the CPU to run wolf3d in something like a full screen size, it was something like a 386SX/20. By the time DOOM came around I had a much more capable desktop. Secondly, wolfenstein 3d was everything on a flat two dimensional plane of grey floor. There was one size of wall or door tile and everything had the same ceiling height and same wall height.

DOOM having stairs and up/down movement, and vertical elements to the level design was really revolutionary at the time.

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upvoteby HerbManic26 days ago|
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Yep, Wolf3D is a fairly simple ray casting system (see if in visible cone, scale with distance) and Doom is Binary space partitioned that could allow complex geometry, something that is still used til this day.
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upvoteby aidenn026 days ago|
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Warcraft II and Doom are both examples of, while not being the first in their genres, defining their genres and inspiring every studio to stop what they are doing and make something in that genre.
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upvoteby RetroTechie26 days ago|
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> ..and inspiring every studio to stop what they are doing and make something in that genre.

This. After Doom, there were maaany releases where a studio had X out there, and then released [3D version of X]. Or also throw themselves onto the fps genre. Almost to the point of killing innovation.

Don't get me wrong: that, and the 'infinite' storage of CD-ROMs got us many nice games.

But neither did much to sharpen game developer's creativity skills. Many "me too! (meh..)" releases in that era.

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upvoteby FireBeyond26 days ago|
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Yeah, I remember our high school IT teacher buying a 486sx25 with 8MB and a CDROM ostensibly to explore multimedia in education but mostly to play Myst.
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upvoteby conception26 days ago|
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I feel like Mario 64 was another one of those and AAA never really left Doom or Mario 64.
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upvoteby alterom26 days ago|
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We played Tank Wars by Kenny Morse, it's from 1990 and preceded Scorched Earth:

https://archive.org/details/TankWars_274

More unhinged fun IMO

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upvoteby ndr4226 days ago|
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I just want to let this Atari ST classic here: Ballerburg (1987) is massive fun.
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upvoteby mpyne26 days ago|
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Yeah, this is the one that ruled my homeroom during last bit of elementary school.
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upvoteby Cpoll26 days ago|
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They had a shared ancestor in Tanx. I also remember Tank Wars fondly.
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upvoteby alterom26 days ago|
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Nah, Ken Morse's Tank Wars really was the mother of all artillery games.

Tank Wars came out in 1990, Tanks came out in 1991.

There were artillery games before Tank Wars, of course. But none, to my knowledge, had AI players and insane weapon purchases, which is what made the game really fun, and which Scorched Earth inherited.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artillery_game#Artillery_games...

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upvoteby sonar_un26 days ago|
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I was gonna say, this is totally tank wars!
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upvoteby api26 days ago|
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It was fun. Was a bit younger but played it like crazy too on my 286.

Rollers! Lava! It’s like the author started with a simple tank war game and then just threw in every weird little effect they could code as a creative weapon.

There were all kinds of neat hacks.

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upvoteby The_Blade26 days ago|
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same, it was a step up from dopewars, but not quite leisure suit larry which one of our friends had

years later i defeated the high score of Stephen Meek and realized with horror Oregon Trail was intended to teach patience not just dysentery damn you MECC!!

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upvoteby el_duderino26 days ago|
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Same! I remember playing this during my Borland C++ for DOS class in school. Good times.
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