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Were 3D Games a Downgrade?

115K views · Dec 17, 2025 · Gaming

Fenrick

12K subscribers

Comments · 965

@Fenrick · 7 months ago (edited) · pinned
I have been getting a lot of comments questioning the absence of any mention of first-person shooters, flight sims, and other genres. Well, I wrote that part, and deleted it because I had been getting a lot of comments complaining about the length of my videos. This led me to cut a lot to keep the length of this one down. Looking back, those people would complain no matter what (they're still complaining!), and I should not have listened to them at the expense of my video. Here is the excerpt I deleted on that subject: Where 3D shone most brightly early on was in genres that were specifically aiming for it to begin with. Genres that were a natural fit, like first-person shooters and flight simulators do require some acknowledgment. Genres that were extremely influential even back then, although they did not achieve true 3D until a bit later. These were genres hugely dependent on 3D. First-person shooters are clearly an optimal gameplay form. This was known before the technology to make true 3D games was available, with numerous games using trickery to fake the appearance of a 3D environment while actually being various 2D projections. In summation: there's a reason you couldn't look down in Doom. By the time the third dimension caught up with first-person shooters, they were ready. The groundwork was already prepared for 3D to land with a level of grace that such games as 3D platformers were not so lucky to enjoy until after many years of trial-and-error, and this is why the distinction between 3D gameplay vs graphics means such a great deal. In games that simulated 3D with 2D graphics, there was not this need to learn all these hard new lessons, because FPS developers were not on unfamiliar footing. 3D was exactly what they'd been preparing for the whole time. It's the same with flight simulators and real-time strategy games: they were innately suited for 3D. There was no revolution. These types of games simply pushed further along the same trajectory. Doom begot Quake, Flight simulators advanced in the obvious direction, Starcraft and Diablo added 3D models to do the exact same things that sprites had achieved before. Being able to look up and down and actually gauge distance in these games might matter a lot, but it did not require any fundamental reinvention, merely the proper adoption of what was already being simulated to begin with. It was nothing compared to the platformer and adventure game side of things, where this new dimension changed everything, demanding a revolution in every direction as game technology moved beyond the pace of fidelity and developers were caught unprepared. There's a reason the first generation of 3D platformers, while beloved and recognized for its role in advancing the industry, is also remembered for a certain clumsiness, especially with regards to the camera. Meanwhile, 3D immediately became the standard for FPS games because that was what they were trying to achieve from the start, and 2D FPS games were pretty much entirely obsolete overnight. The fundamental design principles remained the same in this genre
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@ketzerapathetic1414 · 8 months ago
Kinda surprised that Metroid doesn't get a specific mention for famously skipping the N64 era because they didn't think the hardware could do the franchise justice.
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@EatWave · 8 months ago
Crash Bandicoot split the difference by being one half corrodor based 3-D platformer with a fixed camera and one half 2-D side scrolling platformer.
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@IsoYear · 8 months ago
i got an n64 for christmas and i vividly remember thinking ocarina of time looked incredible
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@ただのやつ · 8 months ago (edited)
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lePSeVyd5As&t=350">05:50</a> On CRT TVs these restrictions were far less noticeable. This only started to become an issue with the age of the internet and widespread use of modern non-CRT displays. You have to at least somewhat look at the context of the time. I wouldn't argue that Mario 64 on native hardware looks good on CRT displays. But back then it did look good. On CRT's most people didn't even notice that so many assets within Mario 64 were 2D.
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@RushedAnimation · 7 months ago
People forget Duke Nukem used to be a 2D sidescroller
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@MD-jn5yf · 8 months ago
I kinda liked the pre-rendered backgrounds in OOT at the time. They were used in pretty specific areas (usually places without combat), and it fit some of the areas they were used quite well, like the outside of the Temple of Time. Better looking than the edges of Hyrule field. They looked like paintings and had more of that textured beauty we used to have from something like Yoshi's Island.
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@honorandpowergaming · 8 months ago
I feel like this is missing the PC side of the 3D game transition. There were games such as Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake, that really did a lot for gaming at the time.
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@JohnRatliff1981 · 8 months ago
I remember one of my friends playing Mario 64. He would spent an hour just jumping around outside the castle as Mario. For an early 3D game, the controls were AMAZING.
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@thelukestar619v2 · 7 months ago
No mention of Sonic AT ALL in this video, or that Castlevania did in fact revisit 3D with the Lord of Shadows franchise is a surprising omission
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@flameofthephoenix8395 · 5 months ago
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lePSeVyd5As&t=580">9:40</a> To be fair, the whole painting business is the explanation for the levels floating. It's not made super clear, but the explanation is there!
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@DonnyKirkMusic · 8 months ago (edited)
I think people feel this way because the SNES era was just the NES era, but everything they did wrong they corrected and every game/franchise was made much bigger and better in every way, so the early 3D stuff feels so much more like a hitch. For racing games, it was a full upgrade to go from 2D to 3D imo, that one genre got immensely improved especially due to the analog stick. That is the one genre I can think of other than fps, which barely existed yet but has a couple 2D examples if you look hard enough.
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