Biggest jump in Gaming?

There was a GFX card that was a direct competitor to the first 3dfx cards, called PowerVR it cost me £250 and these two cards where the first ever 3d accelerators on the market. My card came with mechwarrior 2 accelerated with added textures. It could also run Quake at 1024x768, perfectly smoothly. And could even run it 1280x1024 but only at about 10fps. It was way more powerful than the 3dfx. But 3dfx were flying off the shelves and support for the PowerVR died after a couple of years later.

That to me was the biggest jump

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerVR
 
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There's sooooooooo many! I can't think of any one right now so if I focus just on the FPS genre, and single-player, and just PC, then:

Wolfenstein 3D - All your FPS are belong to Wolf3D.

Doom - This actually kicked FPS way into the mainstream. The game of choice for our current 27-35 year old PC gamers (probably).

Quake - Making the transition from sprite-based worlds to a real-time 3D evironment.

Half Life 1 - Kicked the FPS up the ass and integrated narrative to stunning effect.

Half Life 2 - Perfected what it started in HL1.

Of all the above, to me personally I would say that Quake is the standout one.
 
I think the introduction of modular game design was a huge jump. It reintroduced the public back into development, the old demo coders of the Amiga scene that had been dieing off we're once again back in it.

Without those guys hacking engines to bits we wouldnt see a lot of things we do now.
 
HL and then HL2, for me (along with the mods that stemmed from them)

I'd be happy if I'd only have ever played Valve games :)
 
Pug said:
I had one but it was called power vr - still around bur now they make mobile chips.

Main problems were lack of support and it was very CPU intensive
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You're right and i have updated my post. It was more powerful but the support for it was rubbish.

A few years later i got my self a 3dfx Voodoo 3, one of the best old school 3d cards i think. It even accelerated DVD playback and made it go smooth as slik. I wasn't impressed with any games as such until HL2, that was a real leap in my mind
 
First time I fired up Doom I was in a state of shock at how good it was...

Also the first time I went online with Unreal Tournament, still no FPS has bettered its multiplayer mode imo

I wish they would do something similar to Quake 3 with it and make it playable in a browser, might give the community another kick start and take off again...
 
robgmun said:
There was a GFX card that was a direct competitor to the first 3dfx cards, called PowerVR it cost me £250 and these two cards where the first ever 3d accelerators on the market. My card came with mechwarrior 2 accelerated with added textures. It could also run Quake at 1024x768, perfectly smoothly. And could even run it 1280x1024 but only at about 10fps. It was way more powerful than the 3dfx. But 3dfx were flying off the shelves and support for the PowerVR died after a couple of years later.

That to me was the biggest jump

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerVR
Click to expand...

PowerVR was terrible. Came with a racing game if I recall, that really wasn't that great. Bought one on release, and it didn't take me long to switch to 3DFX. Was also the last time I ever bought an issue of PC Format, who rated the PowerVR over 3DFX. Can even remember them saying something like 3DFX felt a bit dodgy because it clicked when you changed res.
 
D1ngd0ng said:
Cannot decide between

Quake and not just for OpenGL but first death match too
Unreal for jaw dropping effects (even if polygon count was too high at times)
Deus Ex (level design 2nd to none but another game where polygon count was too high for suggested hardware)
GTA yes the first one
Half-life for its exceptional attention to detail

But half-life 2 wins for me mostly thanks to physics which changed games forever
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For me I'd take out GTA, as I class it a bit like Portal and Lemmings. Not really a 'huge jump' in overall gaming terms, just a hugely addictive game that was a bit different to anything before it.

Throw in Wolf3D and Doom and I think that would be my list for epic steps forward in gaming benchmarks.

Wolfenstein3D
Doom
Quake
Unreal
Deus Ex
HL and HL2

I can remember playing every single one of them, and having moments where I was just astounded.
 
3D acceleration, as much as it made a difference, was really just graphics. Games didn't change as a result, they just looked a lot nicer.

I think online gaming was the single biggest change in the last 15 years. It enable whole new genres - mmo's, team fps's. It's almost unheard of now for a game not to have an online element.

The next big change is already happening, it's just very gradual - Steam an its imitators. You might say that this is just a delivery system, and it's not changing games either, but what it's doing is breaking the grip of the publishers, who have been stifling innovation and creativity in favour of profits for years. With Steam the small scale developer has access to the market again, and we're finally starting to see a bit of imagination trickling back into games. Stuff like The Path, Defcon and On The Rainslick Precipice of Darkness that no established publisher would risk sticking in a box.
 
Random Guy said:
Quake - Making the transition from sprite-based worlds to a real-time 3D evironment.
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Very true. I remember being amazed when i looked at a dead body and instead of it spinning around following me, it stayed in exact place all the time!

No game has even come close to the darkness and overall feel of quake. I loved the traps and level design

Is there any game with the same type of feel?

Id go as far as saying my favourite games of all time are quake and blood
 
Can't believe nobody's mentioned the console era when we went from 2d platformers (snes/megadrive) to 3d (mario 64 / banjo kazooie etc)

certainly a bigger jump than any graphic upgrades imo
 
:rolleyes: Was thinking of those first consoles whilst trying to find out the name of an old Amiga CD32 game that I loved. It hinted to me the future of games and was called "Guardian". Basically it was a 3D version of "Defender". God I loved that game and I think we only had the demo. :D (Took me a good twenty minutes to suss the title out b.t.w..:))
 
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Quake 2 from playing it in pixel mode to getting my Voodoo 2 card and seeing it in all its glory....I was blown away!
 
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