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Of the top of my head, a brief 20 years before Crysis (NOTE: strong system demand isn't indicative of game quality):

87- Starflight
88- Flight Simulator 3.0
89- Mechwarrior
90- Wing Commander and Links
91- Falcon 3.0
92- Ultima Underworld
93- Strike Commander and Doom
94- Wing Commander III and US Navy Fighters
95- Mechwarrior 2
96- Quake
97- Jane's Longbow 2 and Armored Fist 2 and Extreme Assault
98- Unreal
99- Outcast and Quake III Arena
00- Giants Citizen Kabuto and Deus Ex
01- Black & White and Tribes 2
02- Morrowind and UT2003
03- Deus Ex Invisible War and Planetside
04- Doom3 (by reputation) and Half-Life 2 (by sheer unoptimization)
05- First Encounter Assault Recon
06- Gradvanced Warfighter
07- Crysis

F-22 Lightning II comes to mind.

One of the most demanding games of their era.

It was released in September 1996. During that time, the fastest mainstream CPU was Pentium 200, and most people --at least most people I know-- still used Pentium 133. Its textures and polygon details are way more complex than that of US Navy Fighters , and it doesn't support 3D acceleration, which means your 3dfx Voodoo Graphics does nothing to run the game smoother. Good luck trying to run it in 800x600 with all details set to max.

I think any hi res (640x480 and above) 3D texture mapped games that do not support 3D acceleration tend to be the most demanding games of their era.

IIRC Tie Fighter was quite demanding and really needed a good 486 at a time when many still ran 386s.

leileilol wrote on 2022-12-28, 01:40:

Of the top of my head, a brief 20 years before Crysis (NOTE: strong system demand isn't indicative of game quality): […]
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Of the top of my head, a brief 20 years before Crysis (NOTE: strong system demand isn't indicative of game quality):

87- Starflight
88- Flight Simulator 3.0
89- Mechwarrior
90- Wing Commander and Links
91- Falcon 3.0
92- Ultima Underworld
93- Strike Commander and Doom
94- Wing Commander III and US Navy Fighters
95- Mechwarrior 2
96- Quake
97- Jane's Longbow 2 and Armored Fist 2 and Extreme Assault
98- Unreal
99- Outcast and Quake III Arena
00- Giants Citizen Kabuto and Deus Ex
01- Black & White and Tribes 2
02- Morrowind and UT2003
03- Deus Ex Invisible War and Planetside
04- Doom3 (by reputation) and Half-Life 2 (by sheer unoptimization)
05- First Encounter Assault Recon
06- Gradvanced Warfighter
07- Crysis

You know... most of that seems bang on, except Quake III by every recollection I have. I guess it did require a graphics card, with no software rendering supported. But I recall it having buttery smooth gameplay, with the settings tuned down enough, on nearly every system you'd realistically play it on. If you had a Pentium II and a graphics card, you'd probably be better off in Quake III than Unreal which released the year before. It was a mainstay at LAN parties for us in the 2000-2002 period because people could bring their family potato Dell over and could still have a blast in Quake III, unlike many, many other games.

I can say, subjectively, that Quake III benchmarks better on my K6-2 with a Geforce 2 MX than Unreal does. I threw it at a Pentium III with a Riva 128 on a lark, and it did fantastic. Unreal on the other hand...

leileilol wrote on 2022-12-28, 01:40:

Of the top of my head, a brief 20 years before Crysis (NOTE: strong system demand isn't indicative of game quality):

Very nice writeup and pretty much spot on.

I would possibly add Max Payne to 2001 and Splinter Cell to 2003. While those games aren't extremely demanding at their lowest settings, playing them at something like 1024x768 with all eye candy features turned on (e.g. shadow projector stuff maxed out for Splinter Cell and topped out Anisotropic Filtering for Max Payne) could boggle down even the most powerful machines of the time.

Namrok wrote on 2022-12-28, 18:28:

You know... most of that seems bang on, except Quake III by every recollection I have.

Q3A played a very strong role in maturing GL ICDs all across the vendors at least. Also it's easy to thrash any <32MB card with r_picmip 0 /r_texturebits 32. Q3's only smooth on max if you're actually at the top of the line then.

I actually forgot one - 01 or 02 for Aquanox as that was the graphics game when it came out, but its hype got superceded pretty fast by Morrowind. It's mostly fill anyway

I don't think a discussion about most system-demanding games of their respective era would be complete without mentioning this game:

Good luck running this at the highest resolution using the CPUs available when the game was released.

System Shock Enhanced CD Version. Released in December 1994, it features 640x480 resolution and above. Meanwhile, the fastest CPU during that time was Pentium 100, which is hardly sufficient to run the game in high resolution. I've never tried it on Pentium 200, but according to Phil's Computer Lab, the game's frame rate is still far from optimum when running at 640x480 on Pentium 200. I remember having to settle with low res VGA to play the game with acceptable frame rate on my P100.

Also, like most Origin games, System Shock's in-game music is a considerable part of the game's immersion factor --an interesting assortment of techno soundtrack, with heavy synthesized percussion. As such, System Shock does not only demand a fast CPU, but an adequate wavetable synthesis as well, since FM synthesis just doesn't cut it. (This is unlike, say, Privateer 2: The Darkening, whose in-game music still sounds decent with FM synthesis.)

This is a game that needs DOS-capable Pentium II or Pentium III machine, with VESA video card and good wavetable synthesis, to run at maximum enjoyment. And while the latter two were already available during the game launch date, the CPU was only available about three years after the game was released.

Toonstruck?

It's a DOS game from 1997, but with all features enabled (FMV, high graphics details, VBE 2 etc), it feels like it almost needs a Pentium II or something.

Jo22 wrote on 2022-12-29, 13:33:

Toonstruck?

It's a DOS game from 1997, but with all features enabled (FMV, high graphics details, VBE 2 etc), it feels like it almost needs a Pentium II or something.

To be fair I've never played Toonstruck, but based on my own experience, I've never found early Pentiums (or late 486s) that fail to smoothly play the features you mentioned, for example:

1. WarCraft II and Heroes of Might and Magic are both high res (640x480) games, but being 2D, they play smoothly on 486 DX4-100.
2. Privateer 2: The Darkening's FMV cutscenes run smoothly on Pentium 100.
3. TIE Fighter - Collector's CD-ROM for DOS (1995) plays very smoothly on Pentium 75, perhaps because the game, despite being hi-res (640x480) 3D, has no textures. Perhaps that's the reason it runs very smoothly.
4. Games that normally run choppy on lower-end Pentiums, like Dawn Patrol and Jane's US Navy Fighters, become very smooth once you disable (or reduce) their textures. Even F-22 Lightning II becomes very smooth once you disable textures.
5. On the other hand, heavily textured 3D games which run on 320x200 resolution, like Doom, Pacific Strike, and Strike Commander, run very smooth on lower-end Pentiums. Same goes with System Shock if you play it at 320x200.

Thus, it is always my suspicion that games with high CPU demand during such era are non-accelerated 3D texture-mapped games, that run on 640x480 or above. And when you disable the texture and/or reduce the resolution to 320x200, they become smooth. On the other hand, FMV doesn't seem to pose a problem, and neither does high resolution 2D graphics. Even hi-res 3D games run smooth if they don't have textures. A-10 Cuba!, anyone?

I see early SVGA 3D games (1993-94) more as jumping the gun than demanding. Vesa LFB hadn't been a thing yet and ISA video was still everywhere. Things be slow for bandwidth starvation and less direct writing.

Pentium Pro was 1995, and P2/P3's extensions mean nil to the 94-95 crowd... also magic carpet looks better and runs better than shock

Under a Killing Moon. 1994.

Had a 640x480 option, which I remember being very slow even on a VLB 486 DX 50-mhz at the time. The game world was a FPV, rendered 640x480 fullscreen before Duke Nukem and before Quake.

Shponglefan wrote on 2022-12-28, 00:33:

Thinking along the lines of the "will it run Crysis" meme, I'm curious what people regard as the most demanding games of their era?

So for me it's not literally this as I've always had my own vision of what I wanted to play and also stuff like what settings I deemed sufficient (I'm generally speaking ok with 30fps in older games, even if it can have some slowdowns in some situations).

For me some of the important games to run and what I saw as some kind of benchmark were Unreal, TA (and especially on huge skirmish maps with 9 bots and a higher unit limit etc) and BF2/BF2142 (and perhaps also FEAR 🤣).

Grand Prix 2. Was slow on a P200 when released in 1996. You couldn't play it in 640x480 / 25fps with all details on until 1999 (needed a PIII@750mhz)
Not bad programming, just too demanding for 1996 hardware.

Cyberpunk 2077 - 2020?

that was more about being broken on release. It's why I left out Ultima IX on my list. Crysis had a working playable game to its heavy demand at launch.

Azrael's Tear

I remember a racing game (maybe Street Legal?) from the early 2000s that was very poorly optimized. Same to a lesser digree for GTA III and IV. Saints Row 2 is also a famous one.

leileilol wrote on 2022-12-28, 01:40:

Of the top of my head, a brief 20 years before Crysis (NOTE: strong system demand isn't indicative of game quality):

04- Doom3 (by reputation) and Half-Life 2 (by sheer unoptimization)

I don't remember HL2 being unoptimized at all. Back in 2004 with maxed out graphics you needed a high-end PC, but it wasn't unreasonable. My 2.4GHz Celly with 9600 Pro was far from high end and the game ran well. Doom3 was more troublesome to run and aside of lighting, it looked worse.

leileilol wrote on 2022-12-29, 15:03:

I see early SVGA 3D games (1993-94) more as jumping the gun than demanding. Vesa LFB hadn't been a thing yet and ISA video was still everywhere. Things be slow for bandwidth starvation and less direct writing.

Pentium Pro was 1995, and P2/P3's extensions mean nil to the 94-95 crowd... also magic carpet looks better and runs better than shock

The reason I hardly consider Pentium Pro in my post is because it didn't seem to be a mainstream CPU at that time, with prices ranging from US $900 to US $1,300, while the original Pentiums were between US $400 and US $500 around launch time. There is also perception that Pentium Pro, being marketed as 'Workstation CPU', won't to a very good job running 16-bit DOS games, which is enforced by the CGW benchmark below:

Source: CGW issue 148, November 1996, page 161.

I don't think gamers those days believed Pentium Pro will make Duke Nukem 3D run smoother in 640 x 480. In fact, DN3D frame rate on Pentium Pro 200 is worse that that on Pentium 166, even with FastVid enabled on the former. Although to be fair, Quake and Jane's ATF run significantly smoother on Pentium Pro than on Pentium 166. But then again, Pentium Pro's prices may be considered prohibitive by mainstream gamers. Also, GLQuake came pretty soon, which made 3dfx more attractive than Pentium Pro.

While Pentium II came, 16-bit DOS games hardly mattered anymore (albeit PII's 16-bit performance is better than that of Pentium Pro nonetheless). Also, unlike Pentium Pro, it was marketed as mainstream CPU, so, unlike Pentium Pro, it is what majority of gamers bought during that time. And while PII's extensions don't do anything to 94-95 SVGA games, its raw performance do.

Riikcakirds wrote on 2023-01-09, 17:08:

Grand Prix 2. Was slow on a P200 when released in 1996. You couldn't play it in 640x480 / 25fps with all details on until 1999 (needed a PIII@750mhz)
Not bad programming, just too demanding for 1996 hardware.

Indeed, because the game is not 3D accelerated. Ironically, 3D accelerated games run smoother on slower CPU as long as you have fast GPU.

Tetrium wrote on 2023-01-08, 17:05:

Shponglefan wrote on 2022-12-28, 00:33:

Thinking along the lines of the "will it run Crysis" meme, I'm curious what people regard as the most demanding games of their era?

So for me it's not literally this as I've always had my own vision of what I wanted to play and also stuff like what settings I deemed sufficient (I'm generally speaking ok with 30fps in older games, even if it can have some slowdowns in some situations).

30 fps was considered fast back then. Diamond Monster 3D was highly praised for being able to run MechWarrior 2 with frame rate ranging from 27 to 30 fps.

For jet sims (where dog fight doesn't happen often), 30 to 40 fps still do fine for me.

liqmat wrote on 2023-01-09, 19:04:

Azrael's Tear

Much to my surprise, Azrael's Tear ran quite smoothly in DOSBOX on my lowly Pentium M laptop during that time. Yes, I wasn't surprised when people ran Blood or Duke Nukem 3D smoothly in DOSBOX on Core 2 Duo CPU, but I didn't expect Pentium M is fast enough to run 640 x 480 texture mapped games in DOSBOX.

While we're at it, I'd like to mention this game:

Hi-Octane. Not exactly demanding but it has a different problem.

Hi-Octane runs pretty choppy on the original Pentiums (P54), but runs way too fast on my Pentium II system. Eventually I found DOSBOX to be the most ideal platform to run the game, since you can fine-tuning CPU cycles to run the game with ideal speed.

RandomStranger wrote on 2023-01-11, 07:01:

leileilol wrote on 2022-12-28, 01:40:

Of the top of my head, a brief 20 years before Crysis (NOTE: strong system demand isn't indicative of game quality):

04- Doom3 (by reputation) and Half-Life 2 (by sheer unoptimization)

I don't remember HL2 being unoptimized at all. Back in 2004 with maxed out graphics you needed a high-end PC, but it wasn't unreasonable. My 2.4GHz Celly with 9600 Pro was far from high end and the game ran well. Doom3 was more troublesome to run and aside of lighting, it looked worse.

Oh yes, same here. I remember reading Tech Report's GPU reviews, where HL2 was used as one of their benchmark tools. Sure, it needs pretty powerful machine, but I never remembered HL2 being perceived as demanding as Crysis, for example.