Isometric 3D games.

[Ikagura]

Back when full polygonal 3D couldn't be viable to do consistently (thanks to hardware limitation, even the SNES struggled with the SuperFX and Sega CD could only do pseudo-3D via layering) devs made a sub-genre of 3D with a 3/4 angle to simulate all 3 axis.

It worked the best for RPGs and Strategy games but it worked less well with platformers (because of the lack of proper depth to judge distances).

What are your favourite games using this kind of trick? Personally I enjoyed Snake Rattle and Roll, Sonic 3D Blast, Mario RPG, Landstalker, Solstice/Equinox, Fallout 1&2, The Sims 1, Bastion (although that one isn't "retro" yet but still retro styled indie) and many others I forgot about.

 

[Waffles]

Yeah, the Fallout games looked hella advanced for the time and successfully tricked me into believing there was far more at play than there really was.

Banjo-Kazooie: Grunty's Revenge on the GBA put up a valiant effort on that regard.

 

[DunkeyKong]

BOKTAI BABY! Basically it's a stealth or a "Tactical Espionage" game since…you know? SUNLIGHTTTTTTTT

Scurge Hive is really impressive, one of the most technically impressive game on the GBA

 

[Ikagura]

Banjo-Kazooie: Grunty's Revenge on the GBA put up a valiant effort on that regard.

I forgot that there was a GBA game because I often assumed that post-2001 Rare was no longer a thing for Nintendo.

BOKTAI BABY! Basically it's a stealth or a "Tactical Espionage" game since…you know? SUNLIGHTTTTTTTT

A game I always wanted to try but sadly the light gimmick isn't immersive on emulator.

 

[DunkeyKong]

I forgot that there was a GBA game because I often assumed that post-2001 Rare was no longer a thing for Nintendo.


A game I always wanted to try but sadly the light gimmick isn't immersive on emulator.

Yeah, fortunately I don't mind the immersion, I just played it because…stealth

 

[Karnik]

I will name the progenitor of the genre, also available for nes, gb and others: Marble Madness.

 

[palkiamage]

super mario RPG i don't know if it counts but it blow me away

 

[Dyne]

Final Fantasy Tactics

 

[ATenderLad]

I'm sure I could think of some deeper cuts, but Black Isle CRPG's are where I've spent the most time.

 

[Ikagura]

Yeah, fortunately I don't mind the immersion, I just played it because…stealth

Also it makes someone living near the equator more advantaged that someone living close to the poles or in a region that has more rain.

I will name the progenitor of the genre, also available for nes, gb and others: Marble Madness.

View attachment 4359

Ah yes, turning you mad in the process.

It was ported to everything possible.

 

[RageBurner]

I forgot that there was a GBA game because I often assumed that post-2001 Rare was no longer a thing for Nintendo.


A game I always wanted to try but sadly the light gimmick isn't immersive on emulator.

Well it's better to lose immersion in this case, you ask me. The alternative would be getting a heat stroke LOL.

More on topic, Landstalker is the best example I can think of, but isometric platforming is a terrible idea. Still some genres can work. The GBA version of Jet Grind Radio is surprisingly playable.

 

[Ikagura]

Well it's better to lose immersion in this case, you ask me. The alternative would be getting a heat stroke LOL.

More on topic, Landstalker is the best example I can think of, but isometric platforming is a terrible idea. Still some genres can work. The GBA version of Jet Grind Radio is surprisingly playable.

It's the kind of game you'd rather play at summer heh.

Proper isometric platforming is hard to do yeah, unless you have a proper shadow or even making it so you don't have ambiguously placed platforms it's not the best.

The grid-like structure in Solstice helped.

GBA also had THPS in iso right?

 

[ATenderLad]

GBA also had THPS in iso right?

...and it was weirdly fun, too!

 

[Noon]

there not exactly retro but Kaerosoft’s simulation games are in that style, they’re always charming looking.

it’s not all 2D but i always loved digimon world 3’s isometric 2D graphics.

Edit: oops I misread the thread title I thought it said 2D :/

 

[Parasite_Steve]

I will name the progenitor of the genre, also available for nes, gb and others: Marble Madness

This is gonna sound like a joke, but Marble Madness is legit one of my top ten favorite games of all times. It was one of the first games I ever played period and it was endlessly fascinating.

I also have a fondness for tactical rpgs like FF tactics advance, Tactics ogre (and its gba spinoff) and Onimusha tactics. The latter is very mediocre for the genre but it's still enjoyable and I just like the cosmos of the Onimusha games.

 

[Leifang]

In addition to first two Fallouts and Diablos, OG Baldur's Gate and its Infinity engine is known for isometric* perspective with pre-rendered 3D models turned into sprites, it's still good, still great to play them, especially enhanced editions.

Baldur's Gate 1 & 2
Planescape Torment
Icewind Dale 1 & 2

*it's technically a different perspective but I forgot how it's called, true isometric is worse because you cannot judge elevation properly, many games abused it by having fake heights too, it's interesting if you're into geeky stuff on how games work.

 

[Parasite_Steve]

*it's technically a different perspective but I forgot how it's called, true isometric is worse because you cannot judge elevation properly, many games abused it by having fake heights too, it's interesting if you're into geeky stuff on how games work.

It's been more than a decade since my failed one semester of architecture, but iirc few of the "isometric games" actually follow the mathematical definition of the perspective. There are a couple of different projections being used in maths and especially architecture drawings, that look quite similar, isometric being only one of them. The word just kinda stuck as a generic term in video game lingo, although in many cases it's technically incorrect.

This is usually the kind of minute silly thing I would obsess over, but I honestly don't recall my drawing lessons enough to be pedantic about it

 

[Leifang]

It's been more than a decade since my failed one semester of architecture, but iirc few of the "isometric games" actually follow the mathematical definition of the perspective. There are a couple of different projections being used in maths and especially architecture drawings, that look quite similar, isometric being only one of them. The word just kinda stuck as a generic term in video game lingo, although in many cases it's technically incorrect.

This is usually the kind of minute silly thing I would obsess over, but I honestly don't recall my drawing lessons enough to be pedantic about it

Yeah a lot of games used to do it, but Fallout and Infinity Engine had a more unusual projection that didn't put buildings at right angles, I looked up "Baldur's Gate projection" and all I got were discussions of BG3 camera, but googling "what projection Fallout uses" led me to this interesting post:

Loading…

www.reddit.com

IIRC Disciples 1 & 2 were fully isometric and the way the did hills and plateaus is by having cliff edge tiles that make it LOOK like it's going up or down, it was a lifesaver on some old engines that couldn't do real elevation.

View attachment disciples-sacred-lands-v0-76idxagohgec1.webp

See the cliffs and waterfalls on screenshot? It makes it look like flags are going up a slope, but the land is fully flat, it's an optical illusion, I noticed that when I was messing with level editor and the cliffsides were just tilesets with transparent edges placed on top.

I think bird's eye front view games used similar techniques, but this topic is about pseudo-3D and basically all strategy games except Total War used it for a long time because computers weren't powerful enough to render a lot of units in 3D well, Warcraft 3's full 3D graphics were the exception.

 

[Ikagura]

Yeah a lot of games used to do it, but Fallout and Infinity Engine had a more unusual projection that didn't put buildings at right angles, I looked up "Baldur's Gate projection" and all I got were discussions of BG3 camera, but googling "what projection Fallout uses" led me to this interesting post:

Loading…

www.reddit.com

IIRC Disciples 1 & 2 were fully isometric and the way the did hills and plateaus is by having cliff edge tiles that make it LOOK like it's going up or down, it was a lifesaver on some old engines that couldn't do real elevation.

View attachment 4400

See the cliffs and waterfalls on screenshot? It makes it look like flags are going up a slope, but the land is fully flat, it's an optical illusion, I noticed that when I was messing with level editor and the cliffsides were just tilesets with transparent edges placed on top.

I think bird's eye front view games used similar techniques, but this topic is about pseudo-3D and basically all strategy games except Total War used it for a long time because computers weren't powerful enough to render a lot of units in 3D well, Warcraft 3's full 3D graphics were the exception.

Thanks for the link, I'll read them later.

I find it interesting that Zelda 1's projection is called Frankenstein.

 

[dropsmegamega]

Other than all of these already mentioned, LBA comes to mind.

 

[Ikagura]

A neat Solstice-like

Yet another graph

From: https://nitta.sakuraweb.com/eab/isometric.main.html

 

[Moreno909]

Skeleton Krew, obscure Mega Drive game. Nice graphics and crazy music, but a bit stiff and too difficult to play.

 

[Riveler]

Spot Goes to Hollywood (Mega Drive, Saturn PSX).

Haunting Starring Polterguy

 

[Lee__Kanker]

I never got the hate, aside from being very technically impressive it controls very well for what it is! Its got a sense of momentum you can buffer your jumps to bounce around without ever stopping it's just the right lenght it debuted the homing attack as a power up which is what Id like it to be in a 2d game: Sonic Classic Heroes has it as a power up! Having it in Sonic Megamix makes the game too braindead and kills having to learn how to bounce and position and how to control your momentum
It's a neat game overall!
And by the way SCOTT THE WOZ Mario RPG did what this game did because it had an expensive mapper chip, this was on the stock megadrive which by was a 1989 console!

 

[Ikagura]

Sonic 3D blast

I never got the hate, aside from being very technically impressive it controls very well for what it is! Its got a sense of momentum you can buffer your jumps to bounce around without ever stopping it's just the right length it debuted the homing attack as a power up which is what Id like it to be in a 2d game: Sonic Classic Heroes has it as a power up! Having it in Sonic Megamix makes the game too braindead and kills having to learn how to bounce and position and how to control your momentum
It's a neat game overall!
And by the way SCOTT THE WOZ Mario RPG did what this game did because it had an expensive mapper chip, this was on the stock Megadrive which by was a 1989 console!

I think the main issue is that 3D Blast, while being impressive for a game of the hardware, felt like out of place for Sonic, a series known for fast paced level progression. Especially when X-treme got canned so they made a quick port on the Saturn to say "here, a Sonic game for the hardware" despite not being representative of what the console could do (unlike Nights into Dreams or Burning Rangers).

Of course if you don't mind open ended level with finding things instead of a fast paced platformer it can be fine as a spin-off.

I also think that with a circular pad it's much more manageable than with a D-pad.

At least with the DX hack it got fixed in many aspects.

Sonic Classic Heroes is, aside from having a 3-players mode or even being able to swap between all 3 characters, a really impressive hack that combines two games in one full experience (especially when Sonic 1 is quite short). Megamix is maybe a bit too easy imo.

Scott reviewed it?