![\"\"](\"https:\/\/mathpirate.net\/log\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/Tomytronic3D.jpg\" "\\"Tomytronic3D\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\nThe earliest example of stereoscopic gaming that I own ((Although, not necessarily the earliest overall.\u00c2\u00a0 Finding out what 3D game was the first would involve something called “research” which I can’t be bothered with)) is the TomyTronic 3D handheld from the early 80s.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s a cross between a ViewMaster and one of those simple handheld LCD games.\u00c2\u00a0 You look into the eyepiece, where you’re treated to a pair of LCD screens in front of a painted backdrop, all backlit by the frosted plastic window on the top of the unit.\u00c2\u00a0 You hold the game like a pair of binoculars as you play, and control the game using buttons on the top of the device.\u00c2\u00a0 Pictured here is my Thundering Turbo game, which is apparently some sort of cosmic racing game.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, mine is broken.\u00c2\u00a0 I can put batteries in, but it won’t turn on.\u00c2\u00a0 As such, I’m unable to describe the gameplay or talk about the quality of the 3D effects.\u00c2\u00a0 All I can see is the swirling cosmic rainbow backdrop.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh well.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Vectrex 3D Imager<\/h2>\n
Around the same time, there was a 3D attachment released for the Vectrex.\u00c2\u00a0 In case you haven’t heard of it, the Vectrex is one of the odder systems out there, in that it comes with its own TV.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s right, the console has the display built in, or rather, the console is built into the display.\u00c2\u00a0 This makes the system somewhat portable, if you don’t mind lugging around a 10 inch CRT TV with you.\u00c2\u00a0 At any rate, Vectrex released a set of 3D glasses for use with some of its games.\u00c2\u00a0 These glasses preceded LCD shutters.\u00c2\u00a0 Instead, they used a spinning disc inside the glasses.\u00c2\u00a0 Half of the disc was black, and the other half was evenly divided into several colors.\u00c2\u00a0 The effect was two-fold.<\/p>\n
First, the black half would completely block one eye.\u00c2\u00a0 When the black part blocked the left eye, the system would display the image for the right eye, then, as the disc rotated on, the right eye would get blocked and the left image would be shown.\u00c2\u00a0 Since each eye would only see one image, the brain would reconstruct the pair of images from each eye into a 3D image.\u00c2\u00a0 The same effect is employed by the active shutter glasses used\u00c2\u00a0by some 3DTVs today.<\/p>\n
Second, the three colored sections would give the effect of some color to the image, instead of the pale blue lines the Vectrex display was limited to.<\/p>\n
I also have to imagine that there was a third effect: Brain splitting headaches.\u00c2\u00a0 Having a spinning disc strapped to your head and alternating between blackness and a trio of colors could not possibly have been good for you.\u00c2\u00a0 I also have to wonder if a rapidly\u00c2\u00a0spinning disc in front of your face would have a gyroscopic effect which would make it difficult to turn your head while it was running…<\/p>\n
I don’t have a picture of the Vectrex 3D Imager because I don’t have one, and I don’t have one because those things are crazy expensive and hard to find.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
SegaScope 3D<\/h2>\n
Later in the 80s, technology had advanced to the point where 3D gaming no longer meant wearing rotating colored discs in front of your face.\u00c2\u00a0 Instead, as Sega showed with its SegaScope 3D accessory for the Sega Master System, 3D gaming meant putting on a pair of oversized sunglasses.\u00c2\u00a0 The SegaScope used\u00c2\u00a0active shutter technology, where the lenses in the glasses would alternate between\u00c2\u00a0black\u00c2\u00a0and transparent.\u00c2\u00a0 The game would alternate frames in sync with the shutters (So the games will appear to be rapidly jumping left and right to anyone not wearing the glasses).\u00c2\u00a0 The result was full color 3D gaming with a high framerate.<\/p>\n And a headache.<\/p>\n The framerate may have been high, but it wasn’t high enough.\u00c2\u00a0 The flicker of the shutters is noticeable, and after just a few minutes of play, you’ll start to feel it.<\/p>\n The glasses themselves are also fairly heavy and their weight will tend to be irritating after just a short period.<\/p>\n It’s a shame, though, because the 3D effect is excellent.\u00c2\u00a0 For example, Maze Hunter, pictured here, is a top-down multi-level\u00c2\u00a0maze crawler.\u00c2\u00a0 When you jump, you fly out of the screen, and as you advance, you work your way down, further and further into the screen.\u00c2\u00a0 And it’s all done without color distortion or ghosting.<\/p>\n A total of eight games were released with SegaScope support.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe someday I’ll pop a few aspirin and spend an\u00c2\u00a0afternoon playing through them.\u00c2\u00a0 ((Except for Outrun\u00c2\u00a03D, which I don’t have.\u00c2\u00a0 Yet…))\u00c2\u00a0 Or, better yet, I’ll find a way to get the frame sequential 3D mode of my 3DTV to work with the SegaScope games, and I’ll be able to play without the clunky shutter glasses.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Nintendo also dove into the 3D market back in the late 80s.\u00c2\u00a0 Who could forget pressing Select and playing Rad Racer in 3D?<\/p>\n Well, actually, I never owned Rad Racer back then, but I always wanted it because it was 3D and therefore awesome.<\/p>\n Rad Racer used anaglyphic glasses, the stereotypical\u00c2\u00a0color-distorting red and blue\u00c2\u00a0glasses that people think of when they think of “3D Glasses”.\u00c2\u00a0 I recently played Rad Racer in 3D and the 3D effect didn’t work.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t know if I had the wrong color glasses, or if the NES Clone I was playing on didn’t like the 3D output, or if something else was wrong, but no matter what I tried, I kept seeing two of everything.<\/p>\n Thing is, Rad Racer wasn’t supposed to use those red\/blue style glasses.\u00c2\u00a0 Neither was 3D World Runner, another game released around the same time (And also developed by Square, of Final Fantasy fame).\u00c2\u00a0 Those games were originally developed for the Famicom 3D System which was only released in Japan.\u00c2\u00a0 The Famicom 3D System was similar to the\u00c2\u00a0 SegaScope 3D, in that it used shutter glasses, although the Famicom ones look more like ridiculous\u00c2\u00a0futuristic VR goggles than wrap around sunglasses.<\/p>\n Nintendo never brought the 3D System across the water, which means you’ve never played 3D Hot Rally.<\/p>\n Then again, neither have I…<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Several games used the Pulfrich effect for 3D gameplay. \u00c2\u00a0The Pulfrich effect is based on some psychological visual trick that I’m not going to pretend to understand.\u00c2\u00a0 It occurs when what one eye sees is slightly darker than what the other eye sees.\u00c2\u00a0 Objects will appear to be closer or further away by virtue of the direction and speed in which they’re traveling.\u00c2\u00a0 Go to the right really fast, for example, and the object will appear very close, while slowly to the left will make it appear farther away.\u00c2\u00a0 While this would work on any TV and provide full color 3D\u00c2\u00a0games, using only\u00c2\u00a0cheap paper glasses with one slightly darkened lens (And won’t distort the image at all for viewers without glasses), there was one rather significant drawback: The Pulfrich effect requires constant motion to work.<\/p>\n That means that you probably won’t get a headache from Pulfrich games.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ll just get nauseous instead.<\/p>\n I have two games which use the Pulfrich effect.\u00c2\u00a0 Orb 3D for the NES is a strange bubble popping variant of Pong.\u00c2\u00a0 At least that’s what level 1 is.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t know if there’s more to the game or not because I found it far too tedious to keep playing.\u00c2\u00a0 Jim Power: The\u00c2\u00a0Lost Dimension in 3D is a generic action platformer for the SNES which ends up doubling down on the motion sickness by having multi-layer parallax scrolling backgrounds that move in the wrong direction.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, and it’s really frickin’ hard.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The first go-big-or-go-home, swing-for-the-fences multi-game dedicated 3D system wasn’t Nintendo’s Virtual Boy.\u00c2\u00a0 It was, of course, a complete failure.<\/p>\n It wasn’t because of the 3D effect, which was excellent.<\/p>\n It wasn’t because of the games, most of which were pretty good.<\/p>\n There were two things which contributed to the downfall of the system.\u00c2\u00a0 First was the form factor.\u00c2\u00a0 It was too big to be portable, but it didn’t connect up to a TV, so no one was quite sure what to make of it.\u00c2\u00a0 In order to\u00c2\u00a0play, you sat the device on a table and stuck your face into it, much like those eye exam machines at the DMV.\u00c2\u00a0 This is not a comfortable way to play a video game.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m convinced that most of the headaches people reported from playing this system were not eyestrain related, but instead were caused by holding your neck in an unnatural position for an hour while you played.\u00c2\u00a0 The second problem is that it’s red.\u00c2\u00a0 Very very very red.\u00c2\u00a0 All of the games are red.\u00c2\u00a0 For cost and clarity reasons, Nintendo used an array for red LEDs to produce the graphics, instead of a pair full color LCD panels.\u00c2\u00a0 After all, they’d had phenomenal success with the monochrome Game Boy.\u00c2\u00a0 But red?\u00c2\u00a0 Red is not a good color for video games.<\/p>\n By the way, the controller for the system is AWESOME.\u00c2\u00a0 I wish Nintendo had kept the basic design for its later systems.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It's a dragon, I swear!<\/p><\/div>\n Yep, those Magic Eye stereogram SIRDS 3D things that were all the rage in the mid 90s.\u00c2\u00a0 At least one game, Magic Carpet,\u00c2\u00a0had this mode built in, and I’ve seen people release OpenGL\/DirectX drivers to do this to other games.<\/p>\n It is, of course, an entirely ridiculous idea.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve never played Magic Carpet, but I’ve seen Quake in stereogram form, and it was a staticy mess that was terrible to play.\u00c2\u00a0 But hey, it’s 3D.<\/p>\n Now, just look through<\/em> the screen until the dots merge and…\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, sorry, took too long.\u00c2\u00a0 Game over.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Some games, notably Descent, had support for VR headsets.\u00c2\u00a0 Unfortunately, users of the VR headsets were often sucked into an alternate reality run by some megalomanical hacker that had taken over the virtual realm, so they\u00c2\u00a0didn’t really\u00c2\u00a0take off.<\/p>\n I don’t have a VR headset, so I don’t have pictures of any…\u00c2\u00a0 Yet.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Anaglyphic has continued to be option that games use for 3D images.\u00c2\u00a0 Sly Cooper 3, for instance, had several sections that could be played with raccoon-themed red\/blue glasses.\u00c2\u00a0 Even more recently, the Game of the Year edition of Batman: Arkham Asylum had a Purple\/Green anaglyphic mode, instead of a true 3DTV compatible mode like I was expecting when I bought the game.\u00c2\u00a0 Now I’m stuck with a copy of Arkham Asylum that I didn’t really want.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\nNintendo Anaglyphic 3D<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\nPulfrich Effect<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nVirtual Boy<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nStereograms<\/h2>\n
<\/a>Ridiculous Futuristic VR Goggles<\/h2>\n
Anaglyphic, Part 2<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n3D TV<\/h2>\n