Best graphics in 1994 on a technical level would probably be something like Virtua Fighter 2. But almost all early polygon games have aged like ass, unlike sprite-based ones.
Not sure I’d call that best on a technical level. It was doing something different: projecting triangles from 3d space to 2d space in real-time.
Donkey Kong country also did that but just not in real time. It was 3d graphics but pre-rendered and used as sprites. The rendering process would have been at least as technical.
Mortal Kombat was also around the same time and used sprites that were based on live action captures and involved highly technical stuff in a different direction.
Though if I had to guess, Doom was probably the most technical at the time, since it did 3d rendering in real time without relying on any 3d-specific hardware.
Iirc the 3dfx chip in some snes games handled that for games like starfox and the PlayStation had a hardware 3d renderer pipeline. Neither were particularly powerful (which is why early 3d stuff looked like cyber trucks, because polygon count needed to be kept low to hit frame deadlines), but they did offload that from the CPU.
For Doom, it was all handled on the CPU, which is why it can run on pretty much anything with a CPU and a display. Carmack figured out a lot of cool optimization tricks, like a fast square root approximation, to make it possible.
Doom was kinda 2.5d, not 3. They swapped out 2.5 d levels when you entered an area where you supposedly overlapped the map in the vertical axis. Other games that came out around the same time include worlfenstein 3d (also 2.5d, plain floor iirc), ultima underworld (not full screen) and system shock (full 3d, but always oriented to the user, with feet on the ground). Only descent went full 3d, but was disorienting to some users. Dooms tour de force was the optimization and the fps/ immersion it achieved, and we have carmack and his work on raycasting to thank for that, on (you stated) non accelerated hardware.
Descent in '95 was the technical marvel of the era for me, giving you full 3 axis 3d movement. I actually got the game to pick on a buddy of mine who tried the demo & literally threw up from motion sickness.
I always thought it was cool when you came into a room, enemies would be oriented differently than expected and you’d think “Wait, that’s supposed to be ‘down’?”
Lol. Made me wonder why the ships on sttng were always oriented upwards relative to each other.
Yeah, it’s one of those weird things that you don’t think about until someone points it out and then it bothers you…
There was a Sci Fi story I read that was based on a space station where the people who had been there awhile said that you can always spot the newbies 'cause they always line up like magnetic poles.
That’s hilarious. I have asked, with little success, how intergalactic or deep space starships navigate, given that the entire frame of reference is based on moving objects. Where is ‘up’?, and how would I say ‘meet me here’?
Now draw it with like 10% of the polygons. But of course, it’s still peak visuals today. The artwork, the vibe.
More like draw it with 0 polygons. The SNES used pixel sprites.
Ah, thought it was looking at N64 art 😊 But 1994 is a bit too soon for that.
