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So one can conclude that for a short while until 1995, systems like the PSX and Saturn had the edge in 3D graphics, or at least hardware manipulation for gamers? Kind of backwards.
Or were the best PCs, even without hardware graphics, still much more powerful than anything the Saturn or PSX could do.
I'd say from about 1992 when Wolfenstein 3D was released PC gaming destroyed console gaming in terms of graphics quality and that's true even today. There's no way a PS1 or Saturn could ever compete with a high end PC of the time. A good 3D graphics card alone cost as much as a PS1. In 1996, the first full year of the PS1's release in NA, the PC saw games like Quake, Daggerfall, Realms of the Haunting, Tomb Raider, and so on. This marked the rise of PC gaming as more and more people had PCs, and North American developers were focusing more on the PC than consoles. A lot of PC games were ported to the PS1, which is where, as you say, you can really see the difference in capabilities.Quote:
Originally Posted by Blades
Yet there were no 3D accelerator cards until mid '95.Quote:
There's no way a PS1 or Saturn could ever compete with a high end PC of the time. A good 3D graphics card alone cost as much as a PS1.
From Wikipedia
Descent was released in mid '95.Quote:
Like most games of its era, Descent uses a software renderer, because mainstream 3D graphics accelerator cards did not exist at the time.
What would a high end PC have looked like then? Was the PC so powerful, and the PSX and Saturn so simple, that even without hardware 3D PCs still outperformed the Saturn and PSX at their very launches?
That wasn't always true. I don't think any 1992 PC could have pulled off Virtua Racing or Virtua Fighter.
There's really no doubt about the situation post '96.
No 3D accelerator cards doesn't mean no good graphics. Virtua Racing was released on consoles in 1994, not 1992. Here's NASCAR Racing on the PC in 1994:Quote:
Originally Posted by Blades
The main problem with the PC in the early 90s is that developers weren't making games for it. It still wasn't a viable mainstream market. When id released Commander Keen and Wolfenstein 3D, all of a sudden people were like "Wow, the PC can do action games!" and more developers started making games on the PC.
That was the crux. You can see how I would've formed that notion, playing games in the late '90s that had a beautiful hardware Voodoo mode and an ugly software renderer for the low enders. It didn't matter how powerful a PC you had, the software renderer still sucked.Quote:
Originally Posted by JumpingRyle
So yes?
Would a high end gaming 1994 PC essentially have had a sound blaster and a powerful CPU with a 2D graphics card?Quote:
even without hardware 3D PCs still outperformed the Saturn and PSX at their very launches?
A good gaming PC in 1994 would have a 486 processor at around 75MHz with 16MB of RAM. SVGA capable graphics card and good sound card too. Of course, all of this would have cost quite a lot back then and would have become obsolete quickly considering how fast the technology was growing at the time.Quote:
Originally Posted by Blades
The first Wing Commander blew a lot of minds at CES. People were saying what Christ Roberts did should have been impossible. Suddenly IBMs were being taken seriously for gaming.Quote:
Originally Posted by JumpingRyle
Wolfenstein 3D impressed everyone but John Carmack who was already frustrated with the limitations of the engine before the game was completed, and we all know what happened next.
That's nonsense! European developers weren't making many games for the PC in the early '90s, because PC gaming adoption lagged far behind the US there (it wasn't until the mid '90s that Europe really got on board with PC gaming...), but in the US there were plenty of PC games developed in the '90s, and in the '80s as well. Among American game developers, the PC was surely one of the most popular platforms to develop for from the late '80s on, no question!Quote:
Originally Posted by JumpingRyle
Which platform is the most powerful changes over time. For instance, the PC was not the most powerful platform in the '80s. The PC didn't have good audio until the Adlib (1987), and even after that, many games into the early '90s still had PC Speaker audio only. CGA graphics were also atrocious. EGA is better, but only 16 colors. VGA's good, but it wasn't until the '90s that most games seem to have used it (though some commercial games do start supporting VGA in the late '80s). And there were no smooth scrolling platformers on the PC either, not until 1990's Commander Keen! Meanwhile, the Amiga was almost certainly more powerful across the board. And then versus the SNES... well, PCs had a clock speed advantage, but not much else I think. But PC hardware slowly improved, and at some point it managed to unquestionably surpass all of the consoles. Sometimes consoles were more powerful for a little while after launch, though, sure. Like, the SNES or 3DO, those might have beat PCs for a while. Same with the PS1 and N64. But those advantages didn't last because PC hardware is constantly improving. With the N64, I'd probably say that it beat the PC for the few months between its launch and the Voodoo 1, which released in later '96. For the PS1 and Saturn, I'm not sure, that's harder... PC software 3d in 1995, versus the PS1 or Saturn... I don't know. Maybe the consoles? Maybe not? The PC definitely had a clock speed advantage, if you had a higher-end computer of course; the question is how that compares to the PS1 and Saturn's hardware 3d.Quote:
Originally Posted by Blades
As for computer power, my family got our first computer in early 1992. It was a 20Mhz 386SX with a 100MB hard drive, at most 4MB of RAM (maybe less, expanded to that) and only PC Speaker audio (VGA graphics, though). 5 1/4" and 3 1/2" floppy drives for media. We got our next computer in early 1995, which felt like ages later; it was a Pentium 90Mhz with 8MB of RAM, a CD-ROM drive (and also a 3.5" disk drive), and at least 512MB of HDD space. It was a much more powerful machine than the last one, but I don't think it cost too much more. PC power increased rapidly over that period.
Sure, PC games were being made, but it was still a niche market and sales were NOTHING compared to consoles. PC games of the late 80s and early 90s were slow, text-heavy games with very high learning curves that did not have mass appeal. Large NA developers were much more interested in arcade and console games. PC developers of the time were usually just small independent teams that hopefully signed on with a publisher for limited distribution. When Wolfenstein 3D and Doom came out, and Doom was pulling in $100,000 a day through shareware (!), all of a sudden the PC gaming landscape started to change, largely due to the market expanding because of more and more people buying PCs. Developers other than Sierra, Origin, and Lucasarts started throwing large budgets at PC games.Quote:
Originally Posted by A Black Falcon
So yes, obviously games were being made for the PC, but the shift towards large budget games of the mid 90s combined with advancing technology really brought out the graphical capabilities of the PC.
I get what you're saying. There is of course a huge library of 80's games for DOS but the IBM PC was still seen more as a work machine and not seriously as a gaming platform until the 90's. The only people who even had PCs at the time were ones who needed them for work or hobbyists with money to burn.Quote:
Originally Posted by A Black Falcon
There's a reason a lot of early DOS games had the "Boss Key" that dumped you out to a fake DOS prompt. :lol:
I guess what I'm saying is I agree that PC gaming was a thing in the 80's and set the groundwork for PC gaming in the 90's, which had grown into a very different thing. It's when the attitude about PCs changed and people bought them specifically for games and not just "oh, it also plays games." If that makes any sense.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Blades
Why are you comparing a 1992 PC to a 1995 console?
Yes, in 1992 PC's could handle most 2D games that were on par with 2D Sega Saturn games. Also the answer is no, PC's in 1992 couldn't have really pulled off anything of the 3D of Virtua Racing or Virtua Fighter calibur, PC's didn't really have the oomph to pull off SVGA VESA mode graphics all that well. SVGA VESA modes were special high resolutions modes and made many DOS games that supported it look absolutely amazing... that Nascar Racing game released in 1994 the SVGA VESA mode vs the standard SVGA mode are night and day different, almost no pixelation in the SVGA VESA mode, it required at least a 486-DX2 to attempt to pull it off for an "ok" frame rate.
PC's released in 1995 could have handled most Sega Saturn titles just fine, even more so with the 3D accelerators for PC's released in 1995-1996. In 1996 with the advent of the 3DFX Voodoo Graphics no 3D console at the time could compare, even the N64 looked extremely weak compared to a PC using a 3DFX Voodoo Graphics card. The 3DFX Voodoo Graphics cards were an absolute industry wide game changer.
A pc released in 1995 [same year as the Sega Saturn and Sony Playstation in the USA] on the high-end would have been a Pentium 100Mhz CPU, at least a Sound Blaster 16 [some but few at the time would have owned a Sound Blaster AWE32], an S3 ViRGE 2D/3D SVGA graphics card [very limited and very basic 3D support], 32mb RAM, 3.5" high density floppy drive, CD-ROM drive, and 500mb - 1gb HDD. Total cost would have been a few thousand US dollars [i'm not kidding].
A pc in 1995 on the mid-end would have been a 486DX2-66 and for some a 486DX4-100, a Sound Blaster 16, a VLB [VESA Local Bus] SVGA graphics card, 8 - 16mb RAM [some people upgraded to 32mb though], 3.5" high density floppy drive, CD-ROM drive, and a 200mb - 500mb HDD [maybe not even that capacity of HDD size]. Even a PC of this nature would have cost a little over $1,000 USD even in 1995.
Low end in 1995 would have been a minimum of a 486SX-33 and for some 486DX-33.
As for 1992 PC's.. The high end system was a 80486 @ 33Mhz, 2 floppies (1.2MB & 1.44MB), 1 MB RAM upgradeable to 16MB on motherboard, 42 MB hard drive, keyboard, 2serial- 1parallel, VLB SVGA video card, mouse and DOS 5.0 with an average cost of $1935 USD. Adjusted for inflation that PC is equilalent to $3,282.10 USD in 2014.
How would a ViRGE handle most Sega Saturn titles just fine? I'm not convinced. Even with a fast CPU.Quote:
Originally Posted by Chaniyth
Wrong! You must not have played computer games much back then, that's for sure. There were action games, etc also. But in addition to that, your assumption that somehow having text or being slower reduced mass appeal is odd and totally wrong. Computer games have always been marked by being more complex than console or arcade games, and that's one of the things that draws people to them. There's lots of mass appeal in a slower, puzzle or strategy-heavy game! Think of The Sims, or Myst. Or in the early '90s, SimCity. No, for the late '80s then the NES was just as "niche" -- yeah it sold tens of millions, but it was mostly played by children.Quote:
Originally Posted by JumpingRyle
Nope. Some made arcade games, but more made computer games.Quote:
Large NA developers were much more interested in arcade and console games.
There were many more computer game publishers than those three in the late '80s and early '90s. Many, many more. Also, what Wolf 3D and Doom did was change what genres people liked by making FPSes more popular; I don't think that they actually popularized the PC. In the US at least, the PC had been the dominant computer gaming platform for years before Doom's release, after all.Quote:
PC developers of the time were usually just small independent teams that hopefully signed on with a publisher for limited distribution. When Wolfenstein 3D and Doom came out, and Doom was pulling in $100,000 a day through shareware (!), all of a sudden the PC gaming landscape started to change, largely due to the market expanding because of more and more people buying PCs. Developers other than Sierra, Origin, and Lucasarts started throwing large budgets at PC games.
Seriously, I don't think you know what you are talking about. For the late '80s, the console games then were almost exclusively made in Japan, not the US. The number of NES or Master System games developed in the US is comparatively tiny. Who were the biggest American NES developers, Acclaim/LJN? Yeah. Almost all of the popular NES games are Japanese, not American. Meanwhile, most of the American developers were making computer games, and most American computer games had PC releases. Now, it is true that in the '80s, even American computer games often weren't PC-only. Lucasarts started on Atari computers or something, Sierra and many others on the Apple II, etc. The Apple II particularly was a popular platform through the decade, and the Commodore 64 was in the mid '80s as well. But while in Europe games didn't usually appear on the PC at all, because in the US the PC was more popular, there were usually PC versions of games.Quote:
So yes, obviously games were being made for the PC, but the shift towards large budget games of the mid 90s combined with advancing technology really brought out the graphical capabilities of the PC.
Sure, the top-selling console games can sell more than most computer games. That's been true ever since the NES took off, and was surely true back before the crash as well (though not during the crash itself, I would imagine). But after the crash, where were the developers? Console developers had been wiped out. The ones that were left made computer games. EA, Accolade, Activision, Microprose, Lucasarts, Sierra, Origin, Interplay, Broderbund, etc, etc. Almost all of the major American game publishers in the mid to late '80s mostly focused on computer games. The only exceptions were the relatively few arcade game manufacturers, most notably Atari Games and Williams/Midway. Many computer game publishers did release a few console games here and there in the '80s, but very few; Broderbund and Activision's NES and 2600/7800 libraries were much smaller than their computer game libraries. In the early '90s you saw some shift towards diversification of course, as I said earlier, as shown by EA and Accolade deciding to support the Genesis, and things went up from there, but it started at a very low level and took a long time to slowly ramp up. And even then, it wasn't until after the release of the Xbox that the most American game developers were working on consoles instead of computers, and by the beginning of the '90s "computers" meant "PC". After all, the PC was a very successful gaming platform in the '90s and there were a lot of games releasing for it, and almost all of them were American or European. Meanwhile, most console games were Japanese. Certainly in the '90s as I said there was a lot more console development in the US than there was in the post-crash '80s, but still, as significant as the console studios were, there were many more making computer games.
Oh, and sure, many developers were small... but console game teams were also mostly small! Teams were smaller then than they became later. So yeah, I really have no idea what you're talking about here, unless you're forgetting that almost all NES games are Japanese-developed. In the mid to late '80s in North America, the most mainstream form of gaming was playing Japanese arcade or NES games. Everything else was secondary, but American developers worked on arcades and computers mostly, with few on consoles until the '90s. The crash wiped out most American developer interest in videogame consoles, and many stayed away because they didn't like having to agree to the strict console license contracts. Think of how when EA, Tengen, and Accolade got in to console gaming in the late '80s and early '90s, branching out from their previous focus on computer games (Accolade and EA) or in Tengen's case arcade games, all three tried to circumvent the licensing process with unlicensed games or EA's strongarm tactics based on breaking the licensing system and then using that to get a favorable deal from Sega. Accolade and Tengen didn't do that and both got sued over the issue, and both lost or settled (Tengen to Nintendo, Accolade to Sega), but this came well after the games started releasing.
Computers are multi-use devices, of course. I don't think that what you're saying here says anything other than that developers knew that. Otherwise, see above.Quote:
Originally Posted by Obviously
Also, are you saying that it was consoles that were more supported with game releases in the '80s, or other computers? Because those are very different points. I have admitted that yes, in the '80s the PC was not nearly as dominant as it would become. PCs became the #1 platform in 1985, but between the Atari 8-bit computers, the Apple II, the Commodore 64, the Amiga, and to a lesser degree the Atari ST, they had real competition in a way that the Mac never has been.
As someone who had to use the ViRGE as my "3d" card for a year and a half, that horrendous thing is utterly worthless. Its only use is existing so that the software 3d graphics can be output to the screen.Quote:
Originally Posted by j_factor
On that note, I remember trying the Wipeout XL demo on that computer -- Pentium 233, S3 ViRGE card. The results? Single-digit framerates, as far as I can remember. I'm not sure if that was software or ViRGE hardware deceleration, though (remember, ViRGE hardware mode often ran at a slower framerate than software mode!).
A quick google search brings the funny:
Here is a quote from A Black Falcon from April of this year, on this forum:Quote:
Originally Posted by A Black Falcon
http://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthr...ers-of-the-80sQuote:
Originally Posted by A Black Falcon
Anyway, you're crazy if you think early DOS games from the 80s had any sort of mass appeal. They appealed to a very specific niche. This is commonly known and I don't know how you can argue otherwise. (Note: I love early DOS games and have no problem with slower games, but I'm not blind enough to see that they didn't have mass appeal). In the words of Sierra Online co-founder Roberta Williams (1999):
Yes, there were a lot of PC games published in the 80s, but almost all of them were essentially homebrew: developed by 1 or 2 guys in their spare time with 0 budget. Calling them "developers" is being generous. The unpolished quality of 99% of games from that era is testament to that. If they were lucky and made a good game, they might it picked up by Origin or Sierra (probably for a few thousand dollars, too). Of course, that's one of the beautiful things about the PC: anybody could make a game! However, major developers/publishers like Atari, Midway, Acclaim, Accolade, EA (after they realized the Amiga wasn't taking off) were not interested in the PC in the late 80s because of its small user base and graphical limitations.Quote:
Back when I got started, which sounds like ancient history, back then the demographics of people who were into computer games, was totally different, in my opinion, than they are today. Back then, computers were more expensive, which made them more exclusive to people who were maybe at a certain income level, or education level. So the people that played computer games 15 years ago were that type of person. They probably didn't watch television as much, and the instant gratification era hadn't quite grown the way it has lately. I think in the last 5 or 6 years, the demographics have really changed, now this is my opinion, because computers are less expensive so more people can afford them. More "average" people now feel they should own one.
Do you know how many copies Dungeon Master, released in 1987 and considered a groundbreaking game on the PC, sold in its first year? 40,000! How many did Mario sell? I have a feeling a few (million) more.
Please, name some of the amazing action games that were released on the PC in the late 80s.
By the later years they made solid games , diablo,warcraft, and I don't remeber exactly
When sonic cd and comic zone came out for pc.
I wanna say mid ninties.
And let's not forget FF7.
In my 65h grade our computer lab was all apple 2 E.
Mario bros was good on it.
So was dig dug.
Mono green though.
It was 1996 or 7 iirc.