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Gunbuster vs Wolfenstein 3D - How 1992 Revolutionised The FPS

RAIDEN1

Member
Courtesy of DF Retro, 1992 was one of THE most significant years in gaming history.....Mario kart released, Sega tried their hand at CD technology....(although in Japan their add-on released in 1991) ....Street Fighter 2 changed the fighting genre indefinitely and in the arcades Sega went to town in the world of 3D with Virtua Racing....amongst all that these two games mentioned in the video released which also brought gaming into a whole new perspective:

 

Laptop1991

Member
This is retroactively changing history, yes Wolfenstein 3d was first but it wasn't that well known at the time, it was their next game, Doom that changed everything, i had never heard of Wolfenstein 3d before Doom arrived and it was only mentioned in magazines like PC Zone and gamer quite a while later, and i didn't go back to play it after Quake, Heretic and Hexen etc
 

Alexios

Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
I mentioned Gunbuster in my recent lightgun games thread, it's ace. Use a Wii remote + nunchuck in the emulator and it plays like any Wii FPS, sans looking up/down. I use FinalBurn Neo instead of MAME for most stuff, it doesn't support as many arcade systems/games but is easier to configure, especially in RetroArch. Although some of the trickier games might also not have as accurate emulation yet, I noticed various visual glitches in Super Chase for example, though I don't think they were present in Gunbuster, or I just didn't get far enough to encounter them last time I played the game.
Stuff like Dragon Gun (which looks so cool but I can't get the hang of it, I feel like I should be always shooting as in other rapid fire games but that does pitiful damage, you have to stop and wait to charge up but that seems too slow for the game's speed with how many enemies and projectiles it throws at you, Idk), Zombie Raid and the unique thanks to free turning and movement Gunbuster (basically Wii FPS controls 14 years early) are really quite well made. The Steel Gunner games are kinda like super scaler Gunblade NY/L.A. Machineguns.
 
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This is retroactively changing history, yes Wolfenstein 3d was first but it wasn't that well known at the time, it was their next game, Doom that changed everything, i had never heard of Wolfenstein 3d before Doom arrived and it was only mentioned in magazines like PC Zone and gamer quite a while later, and i didn't go back to play it after Quake, Heretic and Hexen etc
I lived in the alternate history. Wolf3d was huge at the time for PC gamers in my circle. Heck, I played Blake Stone before I got my hands on Doom. Doom didn't even run past 10 fps on my 386. I had to get the real experience at my friend's house who has a 486.

I might just be a little older than you. 286/386 gaming era just doesn't get enough love. I remember Wolf 3d being demoed on Tandy computers at RadioShack. I remember the employee at Electronics Boutique and I talking about shareware and Spear of Destiny.
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
I lived in the alternate history. Wolf3d was huge at the time for PC gamers in my circle. Heck, I played Blake Stone before I got my hands on Doom. Doom didn't even run past 10 fps on my 386. I had to get the real experience at my friend's house who has a 486.

I might just be a little older than you. 286/386 gaming era just doesn't get enough love. I remember Wolf 3d being demoed on Tandy computers at RadioShack. I remember the employee at Electronics Boutique and I talking about shareware and Spear of Destiny.
386 you had to make the window the smallest it can go. A friend of mine played through both games that way on his, now that's truly hardcore, especially on 13"-15" monitors at the time.
 

Laptop1991

Member
I lived in the alternate history. Wolf3d was huge at the time for PC gamers in my circle. Heck, I played Blake Stone before I got my hands on Doom. Doom didn't even run past 10 fps on my 386. I had to get the real experience at my friend's house who has a 486.

I might just be a little older than you. 286/386 gaming era just doesn't get enough love. I remember Wolf 3d being demoed on Tandy computers at RadioShack. I remember the employee at Electronics Boutique and I talking about shareware and Spear of Destiny.
Yeah maybe before i got my Pc, i got my first PC in 1995, a pentium 75, so yours is older, it was all Doom then and the FP Shooters were called Doom clones if Wolfenstein 3d was big in the past it certainly wasn't reported in the mags, they just said it was the first
 
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Thaedolus

Gold Member
I lived in the alternate history. Wolf3d was huge at the time for PC gamers in my circle. Heck, I played Blake Stone before I got my hands on Doom. Doom didn't even run past 10 fps on my 386. I had to get the real experience at my friend's house who has a 486.

I might just be a little older than you. 286/386 gaming era just doesn't get enough love. I remember Wolf 3d being demoed on Tandy computers at RadioShack. I remember the employee at Electronics Boutique and I talking about shareware and Spear of Destiny.
I remember seeing Wolf3D at a friend’s house before DOOM and being blown away, both because of the graphics and the violence and nazi imagery…it was almost like the first time I saw a playboy.

Then one Christmas my dad swapped out our 386 at home for his 486 from his office complete with a a multimedia kit, CD drive and we got a demo disc with shareware games like DOOM on it…it was a whole new damn world
 
This is retroactively changing history, yes Wolfenstein 3d was first but it wasn't that well known at the time, it was their next game, Doom that changed everything, i had never heard of Wolfenstein 3d before Doom arrived and it was only mentioned in magazines like PC Zone and gamer quite a while later, and i didn't go back to play it after Quake, Heretic and Hexen etc
No. Doom was bigger, but wolf was big.
 
Yeah maybe before i got my Pc, i got my first PC in 1995, a pentium 75, so yours is older, it was all Doom then and the FP Shooters were called Doom clones if Wolfenstein 3d was big in the past it certainly wasn't reported in the mags, they just said it was the first
The game was heavily written about in PC Mags. I used to grab magazines just for the shareware. It was so popular in it's time it got a Mac port and even a SNES port. And a sequel almost immediately. It still doesn't compare to the influence of Doom though. A lot of kids didn't have access to PCs until after Doom came out... So even though Wolf3d was big in PC gaming, it was relative. PC gaming was more niche then.
 

Laptop1991

Member
The game was heavily written about in PC Mags. I used to grab magazines just for the shareware. It was so popular in it's time it got a Mac port and even a SNES port. And a sequel almost immediately. It still doesn't compare to the influence of Doom though. A lot of kids didn't have access to PCs until after Doom came out... So even though Wolf3d was big in PC gaming, it was relative. PC gaming was more niche then.
So Doom overshadowed it when it came out which was my time a bit after yours,fair enough, i was on the Amiga back then and wouldnt have heard of it, the Amiga section was as large as the PC one in the shops i used but i never looked at the games, you cant have Doom without Wolfenstein 3d, but i didn't think it was as popular as it was, yeah it was more niche agreed, my first Wolfenstein was Return to Castle Wolfenstein i loved that game that
 
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CamHostage

Member
Hmm, I get why DF singled out Gunbuster out as an interesting and novel entry into the genre at a particular point in time, but I don't think it really had much impact or influence on gaming in its time. Even as a Japanese FPS, I haven't seen it championed as important to that territory; I think it was just one of many novelty games at the time trying whatever would get gamers to put quarters in, and technically it ended up being part what would be a foundational wave that moved us from 2D to 3D, but I could see it as being just another arcade game among many with weird graphics effects to enjoy, whereas Wolfenstein and eventually Doom at home felt like something really was happening.

Personally, I'd point to Midi Maze / Faceball as the game which really hinted that a revolution was to come. It was simplistic visually, and probably most people looked at it as like Battlezone set in a room rather than the seedling of a "FPS" revolution. However, I do remember the idea that you could look and move in "first-person" was exciting, and then the ability to do multiplayer (including an elusive/impossible 16-player Deathmatch link-up ability on the Game Boy version) was really intriguing in the midst of other multiplayer experiences, offering a different type of play from traditional racer or sports play.

 

CamHostage

Member
Come to think of it, there is no "Mode 7 FPS", is there?

It makes sense that it wouldn't really be the technique for that type of gameplay (the walls would be flat since it's all a background tile, and SNES didn't have the ability to track/scale a bazillion sprites like a board such as SEGA SuperScaler or this Taito board to place blocking objects in your view the way Gunbuster does. SNES had a few deathmatch-type games via its Battle Mode features in racing games, and also there was its version of Faceball 2000, but they never had a way of putting the SNES's awesome version of "3D" together with the other 3D experiments at the time to make a definitive SNES FPS.

Too bad it never worked out that way, I imagine there could have been something cool like Last Survivor might have been really cool on SNES if the system could handle both effects at the same time.


http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/last-survivor/

(*The SNES version of Wolfenstein 3D technically used Mode 7, but not like you'd think it would; instead, they rendered the graphics using one technique at the best resolution they could on the meager SNES, then they zoomed the entire game viewpoint as a big blocky Mode 7 background. Weird!)
 
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StereoVsn

Member
I lived in the alternate history. Wolf3d was huge at the time for PC gamers in my circle. Heck, I played Blake Stone before I got my hands on Doom. Doom didn't even run past 10 fps on my 386. I had to get the real experience at my friend's house who has a 486.

I might just be a little older than you. 286/386 gaming era just doesn't get enough love. I remember Wolf 3d being demoed on Tandy computers at RadioShack. I remember the employee at Electronics Boutique and I talking about shareware and Spear of Destiny.
Yeah, Wolfenstein 3D was huge. Their shareware was everywhere too and all the various PC magazines had reviews.

Most of my buddies with PCs played it. Doom just blew ID up to crazy levels, but Wolfenstein was quite big for the time.
 

93xfan

Banned
They forgot to mention Zelda a link to the past where they set the formula for countless future entries.
 

Optimus Lime

(L3) + (R3) | Spartan rage activated
This is retroactively changing history, yes Wolfenstein 3d was first but it wasn't that well known at the time, it was their next game, Doom that changed everything, i had never heard of Wolfenstein 3d before Doom arrived and it was only mentioned in magazines like PC Zone and gamer quite a while later, and i didn't go back to play it after Quake, Heretic and Hexen etc
None of this is true. Wolfenstein 3D and Spear Of Destiny were both absolutely massive games. Doom was nuclear, but very much in the context of it being the next game by the creators of Wolfenstein 3D. It was one of the big games that cemented the Shareware model as viable, along with the classic Apogee lineup.
 
This thread is why I joined this board. The old heads like me, 45 and have been pl
None of this is true. Wolfenstein 3D and Spear Of Destiny were both absolutely massive games. Doom was nuclear, but very much in the context of it being the next game by the creators of Wolfenstein 3D. It was one of the big games that cemented the Shareware model as viable, along with the classic Apogee lineup.
aying games since 83! I stil remember getting wolf3d.exe up and running the first time on my uncles
 

stranno

Member


Brutal Wolfenstein has been updated recently. It is basically Brutal Doom + Wolfenstein/Spear remastered levels. It runs on GZDoom + Doom II tho.
 
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Laptop1991

Member
None of this is true. Wolfenstein 3D and Spear Of Destiny were both absolutely massive games. Doom was nuclear, but very much in the context of it being the next game by the creators of Wolfenstein 3D. It was one of the big games that cemented the Shareware model as viable, along with the classic Apogee lineup.
No they wern't MASSIVE games, it was a niche market as Sid of Bee already pointed out, and it was true from 1995 onwards, it was alll DOOM!, how about i call you a liar back, if you don't agree, fine, i don't care.
 

Dr_Ifto

Member
I lived in the alternate history. Wolf3d was huge at the time for PC gamers in my circle. Heck, I played Blake Stone before I got my hands on Doom. Doom didn't even run past 10 fps on my 386. I had to get the real experience at my friend's house who has a 486.

I might just be a little older than you. 286/386 gaming era just doesn't get enough love. I remember Wolf 3d being demoed on Tandy computers at RadioShack. I remember the employee at Electronics Boutique and I talking about shareware and Spear of Destiny.
It was huge in my circles as well. This was well before Doom. The hype for Doom was huge because we played Wolf3D
 

Optimus Lime

(L3) + (R3) | Spartan rage activated
No they wern't MASSIVE games, it was a niche market as Sid of Bee already pointed out, and it was true from 1995 onwards, it was alll DOOM!, how about i call you a liar back, if you don't agree, fine, i don't care.
No, they were massive games. Everyone with a PC at that time was aware of them, or wanted to play them. They were a huge, huge deal. And, you weren't there, so you wouldn't know.
 

Laptop1991

Member
No, they were massive games. Everyone with a PC at that time was aware of them, or wanted to play them. They were a huge, huge deal. And, you weren't there, so you wouldn't know.
Total rubbish, how old are you, you sound like a very immature middle age man or a younger gamer trolling, which is it
 

nkarafo

Member
This is retroactively changing history, yes Wolfenstein 3d was first but it wasn't that well known at the time, it was their next game, Doom that changed everything, i had never heard of Wolfenstein 3d before Doom arrived and it was only mentioned in magazines like PC Zone and gamer quite a while later, and i didn't go back to play it after Quake, Heretic and Hexen etc

Weird. I didn't even have a PC back in the day and i was well aware of Wolfenstein 3D. It even got a SNES port that i knew it was inferior.
 

nkarafo

Member
Well i didnt, i had heard of Doom though

You do understand there was time before DOOM, right? You say Wolf3D wasn't mentioned in magazines, have you tried magazines published before 1993? Yes, DOOM pretty much erased it from the map but prior to late 1993, Wold 3D was very well known and was covered pretty extensively, including it's console ports.
 
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Trogdor1123

Gold Member
I lived in the alternate history. Wolf3d was huge at the time for PC gamers in my circle. Heck, I played Blake Stone before I got my hands on Doom. Doom didn't even run past 10 fps on my 386. I had to get the real experience at my friend's house who has a 486.

I might just be a little older than you. 286/386 gaming era just doesn't get enough love. I remember Wolf 3d being demoed on Tandy computers at RadioShack. I remember the employee at Electronics Boutique and I talking about shareware and Spear of Destiny.
Same here. Everyone knew Wolfenstein and doom just kept that train going
 

Laptop1991

Member
If you read the whole thread then you would know i said exactly that more than once, but Doom was far more popular and influential in all those fps games being made in thelate 90,s which i bought and played at the time, i said it was mentioned in magazines as well

I forgot to click reply Nkarafo
 
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nkarafo

Member
You said this:

if Wolfenstein 3d was big in the past it certainly wasn't reported in the mags, they just said it was the first

Which is false. Maybe it applies for magazines in 1994 and afterwards but Wolf3D was released in 1992 and during that time it was covered extensively with previews, reviews, features, etc. It was one of the most popular PC games before DOOM was released. Of course you won't see any magazine in 1995 featuring Wolf3D because DOOM made it completely obsolete by then. But magazines existed way before DOOM.
 

Laptop1991

Member
You said this:



Which is false. Maybe it applies for magazines in 1994 and afterwards but Wolf3D was released in 1992 and during that time it was covered extensively with previews, reviews, features, etc. It was one of the most popular PC games before DOOM was released. Of course you won't see any magazine in 1995 featuring Wolf3D because DOOM made it completely obsolete by then. But magazines existed way before DOOM.
It wasnt reported in the mags after 1994/95, apart to state it came first and i agree Doom overshadowed it, i said so earlier, as for before then yeah it would of been but PC gaming was much smaller then with Amiga section being just a big in shops with Atari ST being half the size of both, a couple of years later the PC had taken over with the Pentium chips and then the 3D accelerator cards, i agree with you, i never said magazines didnt exist before 95, but Doom was the most influential
 

nkarafo

Member
as for before then yeah it would of been but PC gaming was much smaller then with Amiga section being just a big in shops with Atari ST being half the size of both.
Depends on what country you lived i guess.

And sure, the Amiga (and home computers in general) was bigger than PC gaming for many years, especially in Europe. But the PC scene started growing after the VGA became a standard and a ton of Point & Click adventures started taking advantage of it. And by 1992 it was already established ans big enough, i remember during that time how every adventure game on the Amiga was a downgraded port of a PC original version, almost all the time. By that time PCs were already slowly surpassing the Amiga (which was also already surpassed by the consoles) and Wolfenstein 3D was released during that time and i even remember some saying how it proved PCs can move graphics fast enough and also do action games and not just nice looking static screens. It was a very big deal.
 

Laptop1991

Member
Depends on what country you lived i guess.

And sure, the Amiga (and home computers in general) was bigger than PC gaming for many years, especially in Europe. But the PC scene started growing after the VGA became a standard and a ton of Point & Click adventures started taking advantage of it. And by 1992 it was already established ans big enough, i remember during that time how every adventure game on the Amiga was a downgraded port of a PC original version, almost all the time. By that time PCs were already slowly surpassing the Amiga (which was also already surpassed by the consoles) and Wolfenstein 3D was released during that time and i even remember some saying how it proved PCs can move graphics fast enough and also do action games and not just nice looking static screens. It was a very big deal.
Yeah the PC took over and became a lot better, i'm in England and in 93/94 i ended up just playing Championship Manager 93 and 94 on the Amiga and the Amiga games started dwindling and they announced the move to PC, so i decided to switch and started to hear of this Doom game here and there without any internet back then and when i got a PC, one of the first things i did was buy and play Doom, i had not heard of Wolf 3D unlike you though, and the PC mags i bought afterwards didnt mention it much either, too many new great FPS games were coming out, so maybe it is location, afterall Core Design and Rockstar were in England back then
 

Optimus Lime

(L3) + (R3) | Spartan rage activated
Total rubbish, how old are you, you sound like a very immature middle age man or a younger gamer trolling, which is it
Literally everyone in this thread is telling you that you're wrong, so you might want to cool it with the abuse.
 

Laptop1991

Member
Literally everyone in this thread is telling you that you're wrong, so you might want to cool it with the abuse.
You can tell me what you like and i will still disagree, i'm not wrong you are. but it's all opinions in the end, and you just want to argue, grow up
 

MarkMe2525

Member
This is retroactively changing history, yes Wolfenstein 3d was first but it wasn't that well known at the time, it was their next game, Doom that changed everything, i had never heard of Wolfenstein 3d before Doom arrived and it was only mentioned in magazines like PC Zone and gamer quite a while later, and i didn't go back to play it after Quake, Heretic and Hexen etc
?? Wolfenstein wasn't Doom big, but it was still damn big. Your anecdotel experience or blindspot doesn't say anything for the gaming community as a whole. Hell, I have an anecdotel experience that speaks the opposite of yours. The first time I played Wolfenstein 3d was on my "pure country" uncle's computer. This guy didn't game at all and somehow had a copy.

Edit: it looks like some here allready corrected you.
 
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Laptop1991

Member
?? Wolfenstein wasn't Doom big, but it was still damn big. Your anecdotel experience or blindspot doesn't say anything for the gaming community as a whole. Hell, I have an anecdotel experience that speaks the opposite of yours. The first time I played Wolfenstein 3d was on my "pure country" uncle's computer. This guy didn't game at all and somehow had a copy
Doom was far bigger than Wolfenstein 3D and far more influential but yes it came first, and was big in the 386 era and circles, which was smaller than the later PC gaming market, now that's my opinion and it won't change, you say i'm blind i say your making the game out to be bigger than it was.
 
Gunbuster? Apart from the id games Ultima Underworld is the game I always hear developers talk about as inspiring them to do 3D.
 

MarkMe2525

Member
Doom was far bigger than Wolfenstein 3D and far more influential but yes it came first, and was big in the 386 era and circles, which was smaller than the later PC gaming market, now that's my opinion and it won't change, you say i'm blind i say your making the game out to be bigger than it was.
Well, the whole revisionist history claim you are making is coming from a misrepresentation of DF's statements. Yes Doom was bigger, no one said different. Wolfenstein being a big deal and Doom being a runaway breakthrough success are not mutually exclusive.
 
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