Wolf3D wasn't very demanding for 1992. Ultima Underworld on the other hand...

I would swap the 2000 spot with Giants Citizen Kabuto

Why GTA4? Where's GTA3, the first true 3D criminal sandbox?

I think he's making a listofgamesthatmakesyourealizeyourcomputersobsolence list. Add Wing Commander III to 1994 and Outcast to 1999 while you're at that.

Strange that Doom and Falcon 3.0 are absent from the list.

eFatal2ty wrote:

Write here some PC games, that were revolutionary or start new era/standard or were really HW demanding in each year and also "w […]
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Write here some PC games, that were revolutionary or start new era/standard or were really HW demanding in each year and also "why"
Something like this:

1990 Prince of Persia
1992 Wolfenstein 3D
1996 DukeNukem 3D
1999 Quake 3 Arena
2000 No One Lives Forever
2002 Mafia
2004 Doom 3
2005 FEAR
2007 Crysis
2008 GTA IV
...

My version:
1990: Wing Commander
1992: Ultima Underworld
1996: Jane's Advanced Tactical Fighter, Jane's Longbow, F-22 Lightning II
1998: Delta Force. It's voxel, so 3D accelerator wouldn't do jack.
1999: Falcon 4.0

leileilol wrote:

I think he's making a listofgamesthatmakesyourealizeyourcomputersobsolence list. Add Wing Commander III to 1994 and Outcast to 1999 while you're at that.

Strange that Doom and Falcon 3.0 are absent from the list.

1993 and 1991

It's hard for me to separate the world at large from what games were significant to me personally. But I'll give one.
Quake was the first FPU intensive game I ever played, and suddenly made my Cyrix 6x86 feel old. Up until then I'd been quite happy with it.

It's not anywhere on my favorite games list, but technically it was significant.

Maybe I am too young, but sorry I dont understand Cyrix-buyers, in that time.. 😁

Well if we aren't requiring hardware demanding games:

Rogue\Zork (PC) 1980
Ultima 1981
Elite\King's Quest\Tradewars 1984
Maniac Mansion 1987
Wasteland 1988
Populous 1989
Commander Keen 1990
Ultima Underworld/Wolfenstein 3D 1992
Doom 1993
System Shock 1994
Mechwarrior 2/Warcraft 2 1995
Diablo/Tomb Raider 1996
Fallout 1997
Baldur's Gate/Half-Life/Thief/Unreal 1998
Deus Ex 2000
Max Payne 2001
Morrowind 2002

Started adding best games of year and then removed them.

1984 King's Quest I (first of Sierra's Quest adventure game series)
1988 King's Quest IV (oldest game I've played with MT-32 capability)
1993 7th Guest (one of the first games to be released only on CD)
1993 Myst
1995 Mechwarrior 2
1996 Tomb Raider (never played a game with Lara's acrobatic puzzle solving before)
1997/1999 Dungeon Keeper/Dungeon Keeper 2

I'll add Ultima 7 (1992) as a candidate to the list. It required a 386 to run, which many people didn't have at the time. Origin wrote something in the documentation which seemed to acknowledge how controversial the requirement would be. The real reason for the requirement was because of the unusual way U7 accesses extended memory. The technique doesn't work on a 286 processor.

My family had a 386SX/16MHz, which was the slowest thing that could possibly run it. The computer was only about 1 year old, but low end, and the game crawled. I was patient though, and the detail of that game world was too awesome for me to let 0.3fps gameplay deter me. I'm just immensely grateful that we did have a 386, and not a 286 as it easily could have been. They were still selling those in 1991.

eFatal2ty wrote:

Maybe I am too young, but sorry I dont understand Cyrix-buyers, in that time.. 😁

It was a good buy at one point, up until the FPU became an issue, the turning point being Quake in my case.
I wrote a longer post here about why Cyrix made sense: Re: Cyrix appreciation thread.

I tolerated Quake though, and didn't upgrade until a later game. But Quake is when the system went from fast to slow.

DosFreak wrote:

Morrowind 2002

Hell yeah, after 12 years still enough to choke some low-end stuff 🤣

What about Incoming by Rage from 1998? That game had amazing graphics for the time and you needed a super computer to play it back in the day. 🤣

eFatal2ty wrote:

Maybe I am too young, but sorry I dont understand Cyrix-buyers, in that time.. 😁

Cyrix isn't too bad when paired with a Voodoo2. Can play plenty of stuff that's not called Half-Life.

1998 Half-Life 2

I guess you meant HL1

Besides, Mirror's Edge, Mass Effect 3 and Bioshock are just plain UE3 games...... No way that could be considered really hardware demanding..
On the other hand in 2009 and in 2013 Arma 2 and 3 came out. Those are two damn heavy games.

Age of engine itself isn't very relevant, they are lasting longer and longer and rarely limit gamedev ambitions. Bioshock maybe wasn't most demanding, but I can't think of better nominee for that year.
And I would add:
2001 Operation Flashpoint (if even ARMA is considered...)
2004 Farcry (nature > another indoor shooter)
2010 Dragon Age: Origins (just because unlike AvP it was actually good game)
2013 for me Tomb Raider/Assassin's Creed IV >> Bioshock: dumbest edition