EDIT: Sorry about the length of this, guys. Please bear with me, though; I do end with a genuine question. 
| curl-6 said: Came across this video recently of NES/SNES/Genesis/Saturn/PS1 games that really pushed the boundaries of what could be accomplished on those systems. Pretty impressive stuff. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4oxszRCXgw What other games do you guys think are worth mentioning, for any system? |
I don't know the technical specifics required to max out a Mega Drive (Genesis), but I remember playing Zero Tolerance which was an early console-based FPS. 16-bit consoles really weren't designed for 3D graphics and the fact that they were able to make a FPS on one is kind of impressive. It's not exactly the prettiest game around, but if you're looking for games that pushed their hardware, I can't imagine this was easy to do on the Mega Drive...
Actually, this made me curious about what else was around at the time, or even earlier. I know there were other FPSs on the Mega Drive but Zero Tolerance is the only one I remember playing. So, I've been looking, and depending on how you define the genre, I've found a total of five on the Mega Drive...
Zero Tolerance
Battle Frenzy/Bloodshot
Corporation/Cyber-Cop
Duke Nukem 3D
Star Cruiser
Zero Tolerance I already covered. The second game, Battle Frenzy/Bloodshot, is another FPS that was developed exclusively for Sega. As with ZT, it is hardly a "pretty" game, but it's technically impressive considering the hardware it was running on...
While researching this, I came across an interview with the designer/programmer, Jim Blackler, and he pretty much confirmed my suspicions about the difficulty of doing 3D on a system like the Mega Drive...
|
S.F: On Bloodshot; Was the game engine written from scratch for Megadrive hardware? J.B: Yes, the whole thing is written in 68000 entirely by myself. S.F: Bloodshot is one of the only 3d games for the Megadrive. How powerful was the Megadrive when it came to doing 3D games? J.B: Not at all. It is a bodge based on the character-based hardware. You had about enough characters to uniquely map about a third of the screen. The ‘polygons’ were inspired by the Wolfenstein 3D approach, they are all made from vertical strips. You might notice that the walls are effectively ‘reflected’ about the centre line using the character map. This is so only half of the walls actually needs to be drawn. I used a palette effect to disguise the reflection, and sprites for the ceiling light to further hide it. The rasterisation was done with about 750K of pre-generated code in order to reduce the cycle-time per pixel and to draw it all in time. It was quite an innovative effect in my opinion, and as you say it is fairly unique to have 3D on the Megadrive. |
If you're interested, you can read the full interview here...
http://www.segacollection.com/specials/jimbinterview.htm
Corporation/Cyber-Cop was released on the Mega Drive in 1992, predating Battle Frenzy and Zero Tolerance by two years, though BF and ZT were developed specifically for the Mega Drive whereas Corporation was a port of a 1990 Amiga game.
To put that into perspective, that was before even Wolfenstein 3D. And it shows. The environment is more or less featureless, with nothing resembling what we would think of as surface textures. So, I don't know if this really pushed the Mega Drive hardware, though it's possible that it did simply by virtue of being 3D...
Duke Nukem 3D came along considerably later, and according to the Wiki entry, the visuals of the Mega Drive port...
| ... were drastically simplified, being closer to early shooters like Wolfenstein 3D; also, it consists solely of Lunar Apocalypse, the second from the original game's three "episodes", which was heavily modified to suit the engine. |
Being a later game, I would imagine this pushed the Mega Drive quite a bit. Indeed, it sounds like it must have done since the graphics apparently had to be dialed back considerably for the port.
As for Star Cruiser, I'm not sure it strictly qualifies as a FPS but it does involve shooting from a 3D, first-person perspective so I'm including it.
I can't say I'd even heard of this one. I think it might have been a Japan-only release. Anyway, it appears to be a combination of first-person space shooter and RPG. It was ported to the Mega Drive in 1990 but is actually the oldest of the five games I found, being originally released in 1988 on the NEC PC-88, which was apparently a popular "home computer" in Japan during the 1980s. Again, I have no clue - I'm just repeating whatever info I can find.
In any case, I have to say I love the opening. Too bad I didn't get to play this back in the day. The intro is a total retrogasm for me...
If you're a gamer over 30 and that doesn't make you a little misty-eyed, you have no soul!
Being originally released in 1988, this probably wasn't the most taxing game for the Mega Drive (at least, relative to the other 3D games) but it was still a 3D game on a system that really wasn't designed for that. So, taxing or not, I can't imagine it was easy to port.
Skip to 5:00 for the shooting action...
While I was at it, I thought I'd see if I could find any FPSs on the SNES, and once again, I came up with five games...
Doom
Wolfenstein 3D
Faceball 2000
Spectre
Super Noah's Ark 3D
Wolfenstein and Doom I'm sure everyone is already familiar with. They started out as PC games (MS-DOS) and were both ported to the SNES later - Wolfenstein in 1994 and Doom in 1995/1996 (I'm finding conflicting sources on this).
Faceball 2000 was ported to the SNES in 1992 from 1991's Game Boy version of the same name, which was, itself, based on the game MIDI Maze, released originally by the same developers in 1987 for the Atari ST (another 1980s "home computer").
Faceball 2000 gameplay...
As was the case with Star Cruiser, Spectre isn't strictly what we think of as a FPS, but it's first-person, it's 3D, and it shoots, so that's close enough. Spectre was a tank shooter ported to the SNES in 1994. It was originally released for the Macintosh in 1991.
Spectre gameplay...
Super Noah's Ark 3D. Yes, you read that right. Apparently a Bible game based on the Wolfenstein 3D engine was released for DOS and the SNES (though it was not officially sanctioned by Nintendo). What's interesting about this one is that, assuming these dates are correct, unlike every other multiplat on these lists, this game was available on the SNES before the PC. According to both the Wiki entry and MobyGames, the SNES version was released in 1994 and the DOS version was released in 1995.
So, does that mean this game was actually made for the SNES? Because it seems to me that these early FPSs were generally some variety of home computer game that were later ported to consoles. The only other exceptions to this are Zero Tolerance and Battle Frenzy, which were both exclusively developed for the Mega Drive. So, was this a case of a shooter that was developed for console and then ported to PC?
I ask because 1994 would place it in the same year as Sega's two exclusive shooters, and I'm wondering if these were the first "console FPSs". To be clear, I mean FPSs that were developed specifically for console. We've already seen that there were FPSs on console prior to '94 but these were all ports of computer games.
In 1994, we had three FPSs (Zero Tolerance, Battle Frenzy, and Super Noah's Ark 3D) which appear to have been developed as console games from the get-go. Were these indeed the first? Was 1994 the year that the "console shooter" was officially born?
Does anyone know if there was anything earlier than this? And again, to be clear, I mean a FPS that was developed first and foremost as a console game, and not merely a port of an earlier computer game.
ColdFire - The man with no name.
