Games that feel like they were a generation ahead

[cambertian]

They could've had a high budget. They could've been created by an acclaimed developer. They could've just been late in the console's library, who knows! Talk about games that are so advanced for their time, they fit right into the next generation.

Here's some examples (note that I haven't really played any:)

• Elite, for several different home computers. The game wasn't made by a huge company, but it featured wire-frame 3D graphics and could make intricate galaxies for the player to explore, even on lower-power machines. Good video on it here.
• Phantasy Star Online, Sega Dreamcast. To tell you the truth, I think Sega was way too ahead of their time. There probably were plenty of MMOs on PCs, but I like to think PSO paved the way for both the modern internet-based console and other great (and probably more popular) MMOs.
• Dezaemon 2, Sega Saturn. You can create shumps on your Saturn, and pretty darn impressive ones on top of that - technically allowing for all sorts of genres other than the traditional "shoot guy on end of screen."

What can you think up?

SPOILER: Click to show

I was actually inspired to start this thread by my complete lack of appreciation for consoles like the NES.
If you can post some good NES/SMS titles, I would really appreciate it.

[Snarboo]

The Mercenary series definitely counts. Released between the mid 80s to early 90s, they're basically what we would call open world games today! The last two games are fully 3D, too, which is pretty impressive.

The series can be played on modern computers natively via ports thanks to the efforts of fans. Here's where you can find them.

[caoslayer]

Shantae always have looked and felt like a gameboy advance game.

I would say that Shadow of the Colossus was made with a more powerful hardware in mind considering how crappy framerate it has.

[alphex]

Omnikron was one of the very first open world titles. Back then it reminded me of Shenmue, but looking back, it's nowhere near as linear.

Street Fighter Alpha 2, SNES. Technically speaking, it's an incredible port of a CPS2 game on a 32MBit module. It's not as fun to play as SF2T, since the SNES still shows signs of being overpowered by the game, but holy crap, did they push with this one.

Ultima 7's depth of detail also goes beyond most games of the whole decade it was released in. Of course, it's still aged quite a bit (rule of PC rpgs?), but it still features one incredibly detailed world.

Fatal Fury 1 featured a feature that allowed you to dodge attacks by blocking at the very last moment. It wasn't until Third Strike and Garou that this idea was used again.

And I still feel that Another World looks incredibly advanced for its time. Especially the cutscenes.

[The Great Klaid]

Can I be a cynical asshole and mention Halo? Because that got to largely define what was popular this generation.

The original Phantasy Star. I still forget that was an SMS game.

And PSO was a ways into the first MMO boom. It's still pretty refreshing compared to the Everquest/WoW model. And I'm nearly positive it was the first console MMO. It predates Everquest on PS2, and even Final Fantasy XI.

[Snarboo]

Halo was beaten to the punch by Perfect Dark, and to a greater extent, Goldeneye on the consoles, and on PC, there was this little ol' game by the name of Tribes that Halo lifted pretty liberally from.

[zerker]

Which in turn lifted from Terra Nova.

Which brings up Looking Glass Studios. I'd say just about everything they put out was ahead of its time.

[GamerL]

Jun 1, 2014 20:11:07 GMT -5 Snarboo said:

Halo was beaten to the punch by Perfect Dark, and to a greater extent, Goldeneye on the consoles, and on PC, there was this little ol' game by the name of Tribes that Halo lifted pretty liberally from.

yup, Goldeneye is the granddaddy of all console FPS that are primarily meant as something to do while smoking pot


anyway I dare anyone to top Jurassic Park Trespasser as a better example of this, that mother fucker has a semi-open world complete with a physics engine and bump mapping in 1998, it's literally insane how ambitious that game was, but that ambition was it's downfall as it was simply too advanced for 1998 and was thus basically broken 

the only other example that comes to my mind though and it's a comparatively mild one, is No One Lives Forever 2, which I was surprised to learn has graphics almost as good as Half Life 2's over two years before that game and since Half Life 2 is considered one of the games that started the "7th generation", that's impressive 

[wyrdwad]

Jun 1, 2014 20:11:07 GMT -5 Snarboo said:

Halo was beaten to the punch by Perfect Dark, and to a greater extent, Goldeneye on the consoles, and on PC, there was this little ol' game by the name of Tribes that Halo lifted pretty liberally from.

And Goldeneye on N64 was greatly influenced by what I believe to be the very first N64 FPS title, Turok: Dinosaur Hunter (unless that was predated by Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire?).

Which didn't have multiplayer, but was still pretty damned impressive for its time (particularly in the visual department!) and helped set the bar for later N64 FPSes.

Also, the de facto "game that feels like a generation ahead" was of course Dragon's Lair in the arcade, since... you know... it was an FMV game before the FMV acronym even existed.

Out of This World/Another World was also pretty groundbreaking for its time, and still holds up to this day as a really impressive feat of programming. It also bears a striking similarity to a lot of the indie titles that are being made NOW, which means it was REALLY ahead of its time!

And if game genres count (as opposed to technologies), I'd like to give a shout-out to a little-known PS1 title called Addie no Okurimono ("Addie's Present"), which basically had the general blueprint for a Professor Layton game loooooooong before Professor Layton came along:



I really, really love this game, and highly recommend it to anyone who can read, like, second-year Japanese.

-Tom

[coaxial]

Rescue: The Embassy Mission on NES stood out to me as something different we'd see a lot more of. I didn't realize it would be so many generations away. I think the Flintstones Dino & Hoppy game was better than any of its successors and seemed next level to me, at least from the games I was used to. The others just lacked something. The simple key to its platforming was being able to climb or hang. Later on it was great to have that ability reappear in Flashback. Such a simple concept was overlooked in a lot of games, it took GTA three to do it. Pinball Quest was a bit ahead of its time too. A nod to it in Sonic Spinball maybe but definitely in Mario Pinball Land.

On TRS-80 Downland was getting its Mario on in a pre-SMB era but still used static screens and instant death by anything like Smurf on Coleco. Wildcatting was a cool tycoon precursor too. Utopia was really unique on Intellivision basically paved the way for SimCity/Age of Empires/Civ type games.

The first level of Shadows of the Empire took me to the next gen. The music and sound effects matched by the visuals and gameplay. It was great while it lasted (until the next level). Even though Starfox 2 was cancelled it was a lot more ambitious than Starfox 64 and definitely pushed the boundaries beyond what I imagined it would. You know a game is a generation ahead when you cancel it to pimp a new console instead of risking the double dip with such a huge install base and a huge nearly finished game.

Before Halo there was Tribes. Of course the ps2 generation was all about consoles catching up to computer games. Aerial Assault being a port of Tribes 2 basically was one of the first games that bridged the gap. To go from a console with no online to a game like SOCOM or Modern Combat where I never played the single player until years later... Tribes was representative of that shift. Another for ps2 would be Red Faction - Frostbite engine anyone? Black, even though I didn't care to play much of it, was quite impressive. I consider it the PS2's Perfect Dark as far as last ditch releases.

Some general suggestions for you cambertian. NES: Gemfire, Eliminator Boat Duel, Ducktales, Batman Revenge of the Joker, Jackal, Cabal, Double Dragon I/II, The Lone Ranger, Chip & Dale Rescue Rangers, Super Dodge Ball... and one for SMS, Zillion.

[strizzuth]

Alone in the Dark plays like a more primitive version of Resident Evil to the point where my first impression of Resident Evil was "it's just like Alone in the Dark". Looks a hell of a lot more primitive too. Were these two games seriously released only 4 years apart? I guess a lot happened in that time.

Robinson's Requiem. Holy shit. It's an open world first person survival adventure game. You have to worry about hunger, thirst, body temperature, blood pressure, disease, infection, resources, tool crafting and more. You can break limbs, lose limbs, amputate limbs, crows can peck out your eyes, you can collapse from exhaustion or be unable to sleep from high tension. Jesus christ, this game is deep! It was made in 1994, long before "open world" was a thing and it broke all kinds of genre conventions in the name of being the most amazingly complicated thing I've seen in a computer game to date.

MIDI Maze is another one. It's a FPS in what looks like 3D with 16 player deathmatch. From 1987. On an Atari ST. Yeah... The Gameboy port is pretty damn impressive too.

[wyrdwad]

Oh, yeah, what about Ultima IV? That's the first RPG I can think of that really had no villain, and actually made you aware of (and punished you for) things like stealing from villagers, killing indiscriminately, ripping off shopkeepers and running from battle. That's... still really progressive, even by today's standards. There are very, very few RPGs that have even attempted anything similar to that, much less achieved it.

-Tom

[dskzero]

The easy answer is System Shock. 1994 was not the time for it to shine. It was not only pretty ahead of its time with all the inventory management, the way the plot unfolds, the atmosphere it creates, it was also pretty ahead technically, with an arguably more advanced engine. Sadly, way too hard, way too complicated, and way too "out there".

[Feynman]

System Shock was basically the successor to Ultima Underworld, which was crazy ahead of its time. It came out like before Doom did, and features:

- A full 3D world viewed from a first-person perspective
- The ability to jump
- A sprawling labyrinth with a nonlinear structure
- Robust environmental interactions (for the time)
- All the RPG elements you would expect from a game in the Ultima franchise
- An incredibly well-made automap system that even allows you to make digital notes on the in-game maps (and offers numerous virtual blank pages for more detailed note taking on top of that)

Aside from the super awkward controls (a malady that System Shock also inherited, unfortunately), the game remains astonishingly well-designed even by modern standards.

[alphex]

For a PC game from 1997 (that runs on a 486 cpu), Ecstatica 2 looks crazy good.


Too bad its gameplay is rather anachronistic, with LOTS of trial & error, randomized enemy placement and an unforgivable difficulty level.

Descent also offered true 3D gameplay and polygonal enemies when other games were busy copying Doom.