Game studios hadn't gotten the memo yet that when you target your games at the bleeding edge users, you are going to severely limit your sales because most of your potential customers are going to be a lot further back in the pack in their system configurations. That's why games today have so many rendering options that you can turn on or off depending on how much of a drain they put on your system resources and still get acceptable gameplay even if your system is not capable of running the game with everything turned on ultra.

Case in point:

Topic 15028

From above link:

Nice, he responded. (heh, I forgot that he can't access this forum).

Dosfreak, […]
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Dosfreak,

The Hi-Color DAC version did actually work but only in 160x200 mode,
which
is the reason we didn't include it in future releases: the res was just
too
low for the game to look good.

Hell yeah I play old games! In fact, my wife LOVES Inner Worlds and
v0.70
broke it! 😁

- Rome.ro

-----Original Message-----
From: Dos Freak [mailto:d0sfreak at yahoo.com]
Sent: Sunday, April 01, 2007 12:25 AM
To: John at rome.ro
Subject: DosBox and Doom Pre-Beta 0.5

John,

I was going through the Alpha\Beta versions of Doom
and noticed the Hi-Color DAC and HiRes option in the
Prebeta 0.5 build of Doom.

I've posted some information at the official DosBox
forum here in this thread:
Post 104581

I was wondering if you could provide some information
on why this option was included in this build and not
implemented in future builds?

Was it ever really functional? (A poster in the above
linked thread states that it never worked).

I read website often and I noticed that you recently
played Dark Forces in DosBox. It's nice to see Game
devs still playing old games!

Thank you for your time!

DosFreak

Morrowind released mid 2002:

Minimum : Pentium III 500, 128MB (256MB for 2000/XP), 32MB D3D card (TNT2/G400/RAGE 128)
Recommended: Pentium III 800, 256MB, 64MB VRAM (GeForce 2/3/Radeon 8500)

Honestly, the minimum requirements should have been the recommended ones.
Even fast Pentium 4 machines (1.8-2.0GHz) with 512MB RAM and a GeForce 4 had a rough time with this game. It seemed to be way more taxing on the CPU and RAM than on the GPU.

Ultima IX released late 1999

Minimum : Pentium II 266, 64MB RAM, 8MB VRAM (Voodoo 2/Riva 128/G200)
Recommended : Pentium II 400, 128MB RAM, 16MB VRAM (Voodoo3/TNT2/G400)

The game was super buggy upon release and only worked properly with Glide. D3D was still a mess after a few patches and the game remains sluggish.

Outcast released mid 1999

Minimum : MMX 200, 32MB RAM
Recommended: PII 300, 64MB RAM

These seem generally ok, however this is a strictly software rendered game thanks to its voxel technology. So anybody who thought they could skimp on a better CPU and just buy a powerful GPU got the short end of the stick. Maximum supported resolution was 512x384 and you'd need far more powerful CPUs than those available at the time of release. Tried it on a Coppermine 1GHz once and it still had frame drops, so I'd say Tualatin 1.4GHz and 128MB RAM to truly max this, otherwise, gem of a game.

F2bnp wrote:

Outcast released mid 1999 […]
Show full quote

Outcast released mid 1999

Minimum : MMX 200, 32MB RAM
Recommended: PII 300, 64MB RAM

These seem generally ok, however this is a strictly software rendered game thanks to its voxel technology. So anybody who thought they could skimp on a better CPU and just buy a powerful GPU got the short end of the stick. Maximum supported resolution was 512x384 and you'd need far more powerful CPUs that were available at the time of release. Tried it on a Coppermine 1GHz once and it still had frame drops, so I'd say Tualatin 1.4GHz and 128MB RAM to truly max this, otherwise, gem of a game.

I bought this game in 1999. Big mistake. I had a PC that matched the minimum requirements, but it was unplayable. I believe there are homemade mods that increases the resolution up to 1280x768. I guess that takes some CPU power to run 😀

EDIT: Found this video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgIrvt9zJ8k
Q9550 CPU and still not fluid framerate in some areas.. 🤣

Yeah, there are some patches that allow you to raise the resolution far higher than before. And while they make the game quite a bit more demanding, an average or faster C2D should be fast enough to max it out. Unfortunately, I've noticed that the framerate takes a hit with AMD cards. I've seen this happen with Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad and Phenom II CPUs. Probably has to do with some kind of Vsync effect that the drivers impose, the feeling is pretty similar. Nvidia cards are fine on the other hand. I beat the game on a C2D 6550 at 720p 😀.

Absolutely stunning game, however I feel that releasing it in mid 1999 with no 3D support was kind of retarded. That soundtrack though...

vetz wrote:

Cybertroopers: Virtual On for PowerVR released mid 1997. […]
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Cybertroopers: Virtual On for PowerVR released mid 1997.

Minimum: Pentium 166, 32MB of RAM
Recommended: Pentium 200 MMX, 64MB of RAM, PowerVR card

The software release of this game had similar requirements along with MMX. Even at the recommended specs the game does not run very well, you need a Pentium II to get this game at its full potential.

I have the MMX, software-rendered version of this game. It came with my Presario 4840, which having only 32MB of RAM, took forever to load levels.

My PII-300 runs it quite well in high-res/large screen/30fps mode, but it struggles when smooth motion (60fps) is enabled. In fact, I've even seen my Katmai-550 struggle a bit with some of the more chaotic scenes in 60fps mode. My next step up, a PIII-900, runs the game perfectly. The game looks awesome on my old 36" WEGA. 😀

Jedi Knight Dark Forces II, lists itself as playable on a Pentium 90 when it first came out.

This game gets like 6-15FPS (unless you look at a wall, or sky which doesn't count 🤣) at 320x240 on the first stage, in software render mode, it doesn't do any better on a P90 with a 3d card to help it either!
Engine is completely CPU bound at this point, the MIN req should of been a Pentium 200++

Falcon 4.0 and Grand Prix Legends were 2 games that would in fact run at minimum spec with all the lowest settings, but which needed *far* more horsepower to deliver on their ultimate potential. This isn't really a dig at all - both games remained modder favorites for years and years given the 'furture proofing' of their designs.

F4 called for a P166, but until you got up to a P3-500 or so you couldn't experience it a full power - with mods and patches this game only improved with double and triple that.

GPL quoted a minimum P90 [with a 3D card], P166 [without], but dear lord this sim didn't reveal the inner truth of it's physics model for years until it could be run at high resolution, full AA at over 60+ fps.

It was a credit to the designers that they were able to make playable and enticing games for systems of the day with such colossal performance potential.

I think Flight Unlimited needed a pretty beefy system at the time to play. It was supposed to run on a 486 DX2-66 (I think) but needed a P90 to shine. If I recall correctly it had a software renderer and was limited to 1024x768 or 1280x1024. At the time those seemed like impossible resolutions, and given that it was a CPU soft render no way were you getting anywhere near that with a P90. I think you could run at Mode X vga and 640x480 ok, as long as you didn't try cranking the detail too much. I also want to say it supported 16 bit color but can't recall for sure.

F2bnp wrote:

Morrowind released mid 2002: […]
Show full quote

Morrowind released mid 2002:

Minimum : Pentium III 500, 128MB (256MB for 2000/XP), 32MB D3D card (TNT2/G400/RAGE 128)
Recommended: Pentium III 800, 256MB, 64MB VRAM (GeForce 2/3/Radeon 8500)

Honestly, the minimum requirements should have been the recommended ones.
Even fast Pentium 4 machines (1.8-2.0GHz) with 512MB RAM and a GeForce 4 had a rough time with this game. It seemed to be way more taxing on the CPU and RAM than on the GPU.

This still chokes my i7-4930 occasionally.

Another one is Magic Carpet:
Minimum: 486DX 100MHz
Recommended: Pentium 75MHz (which wasn't even released yet)

I only ever played the demo, but my pentium 3 had a hard time keeping up with all graphics settings maxed out.

AlphaWing wrote:

Jedi Knight Dark Forces II, lists itself as playable on a Pentium 90 when it first came out.

This game gets like 6-15FPS (unless you look at a wall, or sky which doesn't count 🤣) at 320x240 on the first stage, in software render mode, it doesn't do any better on a P90 with a 3d card to help it either!
Engine is completely CPU bound at this point, the MIN req should of been a Pentium 200++

I think you're wrong here. Lucasarts used to show this game off with a Pentium 166. Should have been quite playabe on such a CPU at 320x200/240. And by that I mean, 22-24fps, which was very acceptable back then!

Total Annihilation (1997)
Minimum CPU Type: Pentium
Minimum CPU Speed: 100 MHz
Minimum RAM Required: 16 MB
Minimum Hard Disk Space: 40 MB
Graphics Type: SVGA
Graphics Resolution: 640x480
Color Depth: 256 Colors

Those listed requirements aren't that bad, but the actual game will play like crap on those requirements. It really needs a 400mhz+ CPU and 64mb+ Ram to have a good time with a decent unit count and map size.

And it's still an epic game to this day.

Wing Commander III and US Navy Fighters were 1994's Pentium demanders.

I recall Interstate '76 vaguely demanding for a Pentium 200-class machine when the demo out in early '97. It even had an ad campaign for TV news outlets which made the high requirement as a selling point, IIRC. There was no Pentium II at the time, and the game wasn't really smooth on the P200 either.

Sorry I can't bring up the exact specs and stuff in the format demanded by the thread though 🙁

Hioctane was quite demanding for its time. I could only run it playable on a PII in hires mode.

leileilol wrote:

Wing Commander III and US Navy Fighters were 1994's Pentium demanders.

I recall Interstate '76 vaguely demanding for a Pentium 200-class machine when the demo out in early '97. It even had an ad campaign for TV news outlets which made the high requirement as a selling point, IIRC. There was no Pentium II at the time.

Sorry I can't bring up the exact specs and stuff in the format demanded by the thread though 🙁

I could only squeeze max framerates on US Navy and derivates on a PII-PIV in 800x600 or 1024x768. Ditto for Interstate '76. They could've at least taken advantage of the MMX technology at the time, but didn't.

There wasn't MMX when it came out either, and MMX can't exactly apply to a indexed color software renderer with good results. It works best with sound processing. MMX for graphics is just hype. It can be done but it's not as beneficial as one would think it'd be.

leileilol wrote:

There wasn't MMX when it came out either, and MMX can't exactly apply to a indexed color software renderer with good results. It works best with sound processing. MMX for graphics is just hype. It can be done but it's not as beneficial as one would think it'd be.

It needed 16-bit colour mode to apply to software rendering, didn't it? Didn't I76 come out in 1997? That's when the MMX first came out too, right? I know it wasn't the time the first USNF came out.

F2bnp wrote:

AlphaWing wrote:

Jedi Knight Dark Forces II, lists itself as playable on a Pentium 90 when it first came out.

This game gets like 6-15FPS (unless you look at a wall, or sky which doesn't count 🤣) at 320x240 on the first stage, in software render mode, it doesn't do any better on a P90 with a 3d card to help it either!
Engine is completely CPU bound at this point, the MIN req should of been a Pentium 200++

I think you're wrong here. Lucasarts used to show this game off with a Pentium 166. Should have been quite playabe on such a CPU at 320x200/240. And by that I mean, 22-24fps, which was very acceptable back then!

You maybe right, I did the test on a my PC chips Top gun mobo that the Cyrix is back in.
Kinda interested in confirming so I Just fired up the first level on a P55C @ 133mhz (functioning turbo switch in this system) getting 20-30fps on avg @ 320x240 in software, but thats still a bit faster then a P90. I don't have that P90 in a system right now to test with 🤣.
Still the loss of 43mhz 6mhzfsb and half the cache should effect it negatively, putting it close to that region.
10-20 maybe, def single digit dips, when under fire.

I am wrong with the hardware acceleration tho affecting it, the tnt is having no problem adding a ton of performance @133mhz.
I think I may of had a virge\dx in the system at the time I was testing with the P90, hence no noticeable effect to performance.
Wasn't mainly interested in testing that game at the time, it was just on the system so I don't have notes just what I remember 🤣 .

3rd edit 🤣.
Ok my turbo switch doesn't work correctly in windows I have it plugged into the multipler jumpers 2x one state 3.5x the other.... Oddly enough it works fine in dos but in windows it stays at whatever it was set at power on. not sure why this is a new system to me 😀 . So it was running at 233mhz for the first run, rebooted and now at 133mhz.
The first area with the 3 ree-yees the area with one above 12-20fps during that firefight @ 320x240 software, so a P90 def would do worse. Idle with the camera going around kyle is 18-22fps infront of the big crate. All first level. The demo has this level too.

IIRC, Strike Commander (1993) was one game that pretty much NEEDED a 486 at a time when 386s were still considered adequate for games. While it claimed to run on a 386, it would play like garbage. A just-released Pentium was preferable still. In fairness, it did have a pretty advanced engine for its time.

Doom 3 was also notoriously ridiculous with its min system specs when it came out. I forget what they were offhand, but there were a bunch of pissed off people.

- John

Well, Morrowind (2002). Even a top config from 2005 would often struggle rendering the game at open areas when played with maximum settings + maximum drawing distance. I remmeber how I got my Core 2 Duo and x1800GTO in 2006 (not top, but close enough) and expected Morrowind to run at full speed. Well, guess what, it didn't 😁 Reducing the drawing distance helps a lot btw.

Oh, this has already been mentionned 🤣