Developed in Lyon by Hugues Tardif and Pascal Dubois, who later joined Arkane Studios (Dishonored, Prey, Deathloop etc.). Tardif is the Technical Director of Arkane.
@chazumaru Hmmm I wonder if they have any copies still, ha ha
@exodus French people have a tendency to never ever throw away old stuff, or so I’ve heard.
To add one to the list that I've been sitting on for a bit, consider Monster Truck Madness. (ctrl+enter posts - woops)
Enemy vehicles are 2d sprites, but your truck is fully modeled, and notably becomes polygonally deformed as you crash into stuff during the race.
At first when playing it seems to be doing a simple scaler trick for the ground, but I'm nearly confident that there is real 3D going on here. The video above doesn't do it, but you can drive backwards and the track rolls back as if there is a 3D model involved, not some 'playing tape' style prerendered slope. Also includes vertical walls on the sides for some stages.
Generally plays fine! I hadn't given it a second thought for a while but it really does have a slightly different rendering look from other 3D titles on the system.
I was joking with an Italian guy a few weeks back about how whenever you see some weird 3D game on the gba that you've never heard of its inevitably Italian (or sometimes Spanish) - and here we are, an Italian game again!
@exodus not 3D but a point n click, The Fish Files for GBC , super italian
@treefroggy Well dang it. IC forums once again shows me a game I never knew existed.
Huh - not official, and also very old! but certainly interesting.
@exodus Need for Speed Underground
@hellomrkearns all things considered it really is impressive for the platform
@exodus I was surprised when I pressed play. I just assumed it would be some short-low-quality sample of the song.
@hellomrkearns yeah, I figured “Static-X” would really live up to their name coming out of the GBA
dont @ me I love the way the gba sounds!
I love everything about this from the Ford Focus (?) to the slighty-better-than-hitclips audio quality.
Mode-7-type GBA soccer spinoff of Shiren the Wanderer
https://youtu.be/jxcJh8EcOYI?t=217
@MDS-02 Star Wars: Flight of the Falcon
I just played this really blown up on a TV for the first time and can say with some confidence that the 3D perspective was definitely programmed by someone (1) about a foot away from a monitor or (2) planning on the game being played on a movie theater screen. The FOV has got to be like 70+ degrees. Actually looks pretty darn good when huge (as long as you can cope with the framerate)! Somehow managed to beat the second stage (don’t forget to hold R in all straightaways).
Barbie Horse Adventures has a nicely modeled and animated horse. The music is somethin else. The main gameplay also looks chill as heck.
Putt’er on the list!
@MDS-02 that‘s a good horse! We are only counting real time 3D though so I wouldn’t put it on the list here
@exodus Do you think it’s all prebaked? I think that thing is rendered on-the-fly; there are too many frames of animation at different angles (see the action on the slopes and jumping at around 29:00-30:00).
@MDS-02 I guess I can‘t be sure! having now watched some other videos I don’t reeeeeeally know. The animation jumping between states makes me think even more that it's just a huge number of frames, but I could be wrong!! All the ramps and etc are the same angle so they basically just needed everything from “straight” and one diagonal.