Descent. The first time I saw it, it blew my mind. I became obsessed with it for ages afterwards. I'd never seen anything quite like it. For those who don't know, it was a sci-fi shooter. Mining robots throughout the solar system had gone crazy and started attacking miners. You, the Material Defender, had to fly a fighter craft through the mines, rescue the hostages, and then destroy the reactor and escape before the mine self destructed. Played from a first-person perspective, you had a full 6 degrees of freedom. Want to fly through the levels upside down? No problem. Lots of secrets and memorable enemies, it came out in 1994, but still holds up today.
That was a great game. Not very long after the Wolfenstein/Doom revolution, and similarly game-changing (pun somewhat intended).
Just amazing what those games did, with the limited HW they had available to them.
In my mind, keyboard was the only way to play it.
Anyone have a place where someone could try this game? It sounds cool!
You can buy it and the first sequel on gog.com for $10. It's also available on Steam for a little more. The demo version is probably still floating around the internet, but since it was a DOS game originally, you'll probably have to work a bit to get it running. The Steam and GOG versions should just work out of the box. Here's a gameplay video to help you decide if you want to spend the money: The source code was released a few years ago, and a version's been created that handles higher resolution and transparency effects, so it looks a little nicer. Not sure if any of the sold versions come with it, but I remember it being easy enough to set up.