Quote Originally Posted by sapator View Post
Of course Wolfenstein 3D but i meant, as you've said, in terms of publicity and impact.
I think Doom certainly got the publicity, but for impact, I think Wolfenstein 3D had the greatest because the impact was on the perspective of game developers. That might not have impacted the pure numbers that Doom did, but it sure impacted game development like little else. I still remember my amazement the first time I played that game. I started reading everything I could find on how it was done.

And to blend it into a response to Niya, I would add that sprite based 3D games were the last time I had a realistic hope of being able to do any reasonable game graphics. Once things got to true 3D rendered objects, I knew that my surrealistic lack of understanding of perspective would keep me from ever doing anything satisfactory in that realm. However, I think the novelty that is lumped under the term 3D is more based on the first person perspective rather than how the game world is rendered. The 2D games with a first person perspective were SO hard due to the fact that the world became infinitely thin when perched on edge like that.

Actually, the only first person games that I can think of prior to Wolfenstein 3D were games like Eye of the Beholder which was totally turn based static images without any real motion at all. Smooth motion games existed, but they were all side scrollers of one sort or another that all used 3rd person perspective. 3D was originally used to refer to what amounted to a first person perspective, 2D, side scroller. These were still called 3D, though, even though there was no Z axis to the motion. What Doom brought to the table was a pseudo-Z axis motion. Still, the name 3D was used from early on, sprite or not.