I don't mind it and have played a ton of them long after they released.

The really early cases like Tomb Raider or Mortal Kombat 4 leave a lot to be desired but the gameplay is still there. Unless the graphics look really bad (like in a lot of stuff that gets released these days) I have no problem with it.

I still think many old 3D games look great today but of course many old 2D games look a lot better.
While it is easy to find really horrendous 3D games like Simon the Sorcerer 3D and King's Quest 8 there is also a lot of 3D games that are still looking really good.

Some of my favorites use a mix between 2D and 3D which was a good idea back when processing power much lower than it is today.
Might and Magic 6 looks great, Doom looks great and Blood looks great. Unlike some people I don't think the number of polygons or pixels is what decides if the graphics are good. I think the artstyle, artistry, creativity and dedication is much more important.

Resident Evil still looks very good.
Quake is mostly lots of brown and grey, it does perhaps not have the most exiting environments but the graphics are still pretty good. The gritty, blocky style is very striking.

Games like Tekken 2 and Wipeout would have looked a lot better today if their resolution been higher but I still enjoy those graphics much more than some of the unoriginal uninspired cartoony stuff you see today.

Also, I've never understood the people that say that they hated 3D games back when they were new. For me the 3D revolution was really exiting. Doom, Quake, Resident Evil, Tekken 2, Wipeout was really exiting. If anybody had told me then that 3D sucked I would have thought that they were really backwards.

But at the same time I was very much into 2D games. Most of my favorite games were 2D games and I was also a little afraid that the 3D games would completely dominate and make 2D gaming almost extinct at some point.

Gosh, my brother and I love original look of NWN Diamond. I know they were square looking, but, but we find it pretty.

I think this varies highly from person to person. Some people like you have gotten higher standards for 3D games as they have grown older while some people haven't or have to a smaller degree.

I really love look of Might and Magic 6 and I have no problem getting totally immersed in this open world today. I also really like the look of Might & Magic 7 which I never played back in the day.

And NES graphics, I love those! Give me som Casltevania or Little Samson anyday over crappy looking games like Diablo 3 and League of Legends.

Bottom line is that I don't care that much about the amount of polygons and pixels but i do care a lot about art style.


Morrowind looks great today also, it's biggest problem compared to modern 3D games is how empty the world looks but is is easily forgotten when you are playing it.

But I will probably never play that game without the fog. Taking away the fog so that you can see from shore to shore would ruin a lot of my immersion.

Yes you are mostly right about this. However there will always be some exceptions. Duke Nukem 3D is a great game and while I have only played a tiny bit of the old platform games I doubt they were as good as the third game.

Mario and the Zelda franchises are also good examples of the opposite. While I personally woud say that I prefer 2D Mario to 3D Mario it's hard to argue that the series got worse.

Metal Gear is another example, but mostly you have a good point.

Not really. Tomb Raider was released in 1996, 3dfx patch was released on April 1997 (if I'm not mistaken). That year a bunch of Glide1x patches were release for various games, including Carmageddon, Quake(miniGL), Descent, even 2D games get it like Blood, Outlaws, Lands of Lore 2.

I can't say I agree. I'm the kind of person who thinks that graphics is a very important part of a game and that is exactly one of the reasons why I play many old computer, console and arcade games.

Doom is not 3D but still an exciting game, but I prefer Wolfenstein 3D over Doom, and Doom in GZDoom over Wolf3D (because of a frame cap and low res models).
Quake was exciting in every way, after January GLQuake patch it become the best thing ever.
Resident Evil is just 3D models over 2D backgrounds, not very exciting for me
Tekken 2 was exciting.
Wipeout ehh... I can understand why it was exciting but not for me.

Lemmings 3D, Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon, King's Quest: Mask of Eternity, Simon the Sorcerer 3D, Worms 3D, Earthworm Jim 3D, Castlevania (N64), Prince of Persia 3D (though I liked the demo but was unable to play full game) were NOT exciting.

I was very much into 2D games, I still think that Master of Magic and The Legend of Kyrandia 2 are beautiful games.
Wolfenstein 3D, Duke Nukem 3D are great examples of successful transition, but we are talking not about point of view but a real 3D graphics, and those were "2.5D" games.

I am pretty sure it was much earlier than that, much closer to Tomb Raider's PC release date (which was apparently Nov 14, 1996). I was a very early adopter for 3Dfx (Orchid Righteous 3D), having been following the development of the emerging 3D accelerators very keenly and searching for any PC games supporting 3Dfx.

I tried to google for it to get a confirmation but nothing concrete. From various sources, it seems one of the following games have been suggested as the very first 3Dfx games (with a 3Dfx patch):
- EF2000
- Tomb Raider
- GLQuake (this was released in January 2017, and IIRC it was after the Tomb Raider 3Dfx patch; I was eagerly waiting for this Quake patch too)
- Descent 2 (I am not quite sure if people mean the 3Dfx patch, or the special "Descent II: Destination Quartzon" that came with many early 3Dfx Voodoo 1 cards.)

As said, Mechwarrior 2 3Dfx and Fatal Racing/Whiplash 3Dfx were also very early 3Dfx Voodoo games, but you only got them with some 3Dfx cards. You couldn't buy them retail or patch your retail game with a 3Dfx patch.

Maybe. I bought 3dfx Voodoo card after 2 months since the release, mine was Diamond Monster 3D.
But I know that it the patch was definitely released in 1997.
I couldn't find the info about the patch date, but it's easy to find a legacy patch and check the file date, it's 11 Feb 1997.
Also I was able to find some old PC Game Magazine with Tomb Raider testing with 3dfx patch, it was dated 4 March 1997.

Yeah, there are so many wonderful looking 2D games of that age like Simon the Sorcerer and Heroes of Might and Magic 2. Early 3D games does not stand up to that at all of course and to answer the question of the original poster, going for an early 3D look, especially with all the limitations of that time would probably be a bad idea.

It depends on the definition of course, if the original poster only meant polygonal games I did miss the mark.
I do tend to think of games like the build engine games and Might and Magic 6 as both 3D and "2.5D" since you can move around in three directions to a certain extent. Your definition is probably the most sensible and the most used but one could also argue for a more conservative definition where only games strictly composed with polygonal graphics are 3D games (no bitmap grass and leaves) or a much more liberal definition where all those Sega scaler games like Space Harrier and vector games like the 1983 Star Wars game are also considered 3D games. And perhaps in the future the commonly held view will be that all games that does not give you a three dimensional illusion (ala stereoscopic 3D, VR and Nintendo 3DS) are by definition 2D games.

One way to differentiate the 2.5D engines from the true 3D engines is that with the latter you could actually have floors on top each other instead of the levels just being a bunch of 2D shapes on a flat surface that each had the height values for the ceiling and the floor and then you just set which of the "walls" could be passed through or teleport you to another location like some of the stairs did in Duke 3D.

In all honesty they look terrible to me, and yes, I was around when they were new. Even back then, there was something gaudy about those polygons compared to the timeless elegance of the 16-bit look. And it's no coincidence that 8- and 16-bit imitations are extremely common nowadays, whereas almost no one wants to make their game look like something you'd see on a 5th-gen console. Unless it's Symphony of the Night.

I am in the minority and love them. They have a certain charm that is hard for me to put into words. Tomb Raider, Mortal Kombat 4...yes please. I understand some people prefer the 2D 16-bit style and I love it too, but I think the early 3D games are such a cool advancement even though they are less refined in some ways. I'm actually hoping for GOG to get more releases from that era.

Burn it! Burnt it with fire!

Whoever loves the fugliness of Playstation-era 3D graphics needs to be slapped with an extra-large trout.