What’s the first 3D videogame?

I thought it was Starfox Command for the SNES but I think I remember hearing it was something else.

That’s really hard to narrow down. Simple games using wireframe 3D environments first appeared in the mid-1970s. The use of 3D never just suddenly appeared. It grew steadily over a number of years.

hehe. i remember that tank shooting game. vector gfx ftw! :p

they made like a billion remakes of that very same game and you can sometimes always find a flash version in some flash gaming site. i still think its rather boring but idk. some peeps love it. :p

hehe. i remember that tank shooting game. vector gfx ftw!
That would be Battlezone (no, not that game for the PSP, this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlezone ). Surprisingly it’s been around since 1980.

Battlezone… that was probably the first game I ever played. Though I never really got into video games until grade 4 or 5 when the N64 first came out.

The only thing I know is that the first to represent humans in 3d polygonal forms is Virtua Fighters. The National Museum of American History keeps a copy of the arcade board for that very reason.

But the first ones are probably flight simulators (using vector gfx, like Tact pointed out) from back in the commodore and tandy era.

I thought it was Starfox Command for the SNES but I think I remember hearing it was something else.

Star Fox Command is a DS game.

Star Fox was the first game to use the Super FX chip on the SNES to get actual polygon graphics, but I’m fairly certain no game before the unreleased Star Fox 2 had actual 3-d gameplay on the SNES.

Certainly not the first for all video games, though, as other’s have mentioned.

[QUOTE=Wattson;951721]Star Fox Command is a DS game.[QUOTE]

Oops, don’t know how I mixed them up. I have never played the starfox for the DS so I don’t know how I mixed them up. I guess I just always thought it was that way.

Halo was the first 3D video game

Wizardry was 3D lol… but it game 5 years after Battlezone.

I believe it was the first Virtua Fighter arcade machine. That was before it came to home systems. 🙂 This is really old school for ya!!! LOL!

well well…

Are we talking about True 3D video games (real time..) or fake 3D ??
fake 3D = Doom ??
True 3D video games = Quake (the first, of course..)

Oups.. Starfox was launched before Quake.. so it must be Starfox …
I remember the arcade game Tron…

Now if someone can dig out some informations about old platforms such as Amiga or Atari ST…

you need to be more specific than "3d."

almost all games have three dimensions. mario brothers did, so did tetris. in its most simple form a "3d" game is just a game that has three dimensions– an x, y, and z access. "2d" games with backgrounds and foregrounds are "3d" technically.

the next step would be isometric 3d games. think diablo 2. it’s sprite based but presented in such a way to give the appearance of "real" three dimensions.

when most people refer to "true 3d" they mean something that has a built in, real time, 3 dimensional rendering engine. that being said, you can have a "fake 3d" game that’s indistinguishable from "real 3d."

I’m getting kind of confused now with fake 3D and a true 3D. I guess I mean a true 3D game since it seems that many games have had fake 3D before Starfox.

the distinction between "real" and "fake" are pretty arbitrary. they are just different means of achieving the same end.

Mario Kart lolz

"Real" 3D, as far as games are concerned, generally refers to being able to move along three axies, and sometimes an environment constructed in three real axies as well.

Games like Doom and Duke Nukem 3D were often refered to as 2.5D. They used a variety of tricks to seem fully 3D, but no object could really exist above another in their game engines, and they used sprites for a large number of objects.

Oups.. Starfox was launched before Quake.. so it must be Starfox …

I played Falcon 3.0 (one of the best flight sims of all time) years before Star Fox came out. In fact I think the game may pre-date the SNES console (at least in the states).

You could move in any direction, and all objects in the game (excluding the HUD) were rendered in 3D, with polygons. It used an early true 3d engine.

Anyway, I am positive that there were true 3D games in existence well before Falcon 3.0, though Falcon was the first one I personally played.

"Real" 3D, as far as games are concerned, generally refers to being able to move along three axies, and sometimes an environment constructed in three real axies as well.

eh, this would include isometric 3D [which is sprite based essentially] which most people don’t really count as "true 3d."

Very rarely is there any siginificant movement in the Z axis in those types of games.

It’s not really complicated. A real 3D game, whatever the means to achieve it, should be one that allow the gamer to see everything from every angles (at least every angles possible for the situation in which the character in the game is [i.e. on foot or plane].

Diablo is isometric, but isn’t 3D. Since you cannot decide to go check how that tree looks from an other angle.

I’m going to throw the game known as Descent into the mix.

It was the first game that actually let you use all of the axis’. Jumping doesn’t count really compared to this game. You could enter a ventilation shaft that was located on the ceiling. You could roll and what not.

This could be argued to be the first and one of the few "true" 3D games in that regard.

twisted metal 2 was the first game that made words spocken outload so we didn’t have to read them i think

hehe. i remember that tank shooting game. vector gfx ftw!

According to some TV show called "The Rise of the Video Game", that tank game was the first to be ""3-D"".

that games was sweet. pong owns all

why the hell are you people comparing doom with duke nukem 3d?

duke nukem 3d was more real 3d than doom. do i have to remind you all of JETPACK??

there’s your fucking Z axis. -_-

duke nukem forever! :p

Anyone play Marathon? That kicked the living shit out of doom. True 3d envr. with sprite based chars. Oh, and Descent was awesome!

That would be Battlezone Yep!
Its one of the games that came out in the movie Tron.

Forgive me for reviving this old thread, but the earliest use of 3D polygonal graphics as we know it today, is I, Robot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%2C_Robot_%28arcade_game%29), an old Atari game from 1983. It was a failure, and rumor has it that they dumped most of them off of a ship in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. I think only several hundred units exist today, but thanks to emulation, you can emulate the game in MAME.

There really was no reason to revive this. It’s more than run its course, and I doubt anyone seriously cares.