i’ve started to write a script for a web-series episode about “the beginning of VR and 3D in video games”.

I’ve listed the following systems or games to talk about :

– arcade game “SUBROC-3D” (1982)
– “TOMYTRONIC 3D” (1983)
– vectrex “3D IMAGER” (1984)
– “SEGASCOPE 3D GLASSES”(1987)
– “FAMICOM 3D SYSTEM” (1987)
– “Wanderer 3D” on Amiga (1988)
– Virtuality 1000CS and 1000SD arcade games (1991)
– “arcade games “TIME TRAVELER” and “HOLOSSEUM” (1991)
– “Jim Power: The Lost Dimension in 3-D” on SNES (1993)
– Virtuality 2000SU and SD arcade games (1994)
– VIRTUAL BOY … of course (1995)
– the Atari Jaguar VR Headset Prototype (1996)

if you have any other ideas about systems or game from the 80’s and the mid-90’s that i can talk about, please let me know.

You have Amiga stuff in there, but there were also quite a few MS-DOS games with native stereoscopic support (e.g. Magic Carpet, Descent, Duke Nukem 3D, and a 2D platformer about a miner/spelunker I can’t recall the name of), not to mention a pretty big homebrew VR “movement” based on DOS software like Rend386 and homemade/modified hardware, like serial-port Power Glove adapters, VGA adapters for VFX-1 and CyberMaxx HMDs, etc. See: Gradecki’s “Virtual Reality Construction Kit” and Jacobson’s “Garage Virtual Reality”. You might want to mention VRML browsers, too, although that’s not really games-specific.

Also, Orb-3D on the NES is interesting, because it uses the Pulfrich effect (one eye covered by a dark lens).

EDIT: I found it! It’s called “Dig It!” by Pixel Painters. It’s in the “A-M” section of this great list of stereoscopic DOS games.

The NES games The 3-D Battles of WorldRunner and Rad Racer both had Red/Blue glasses modes.

From a homebrew perspective, the NDS EMU S8 allows you to play the Sega Master System 3D games in Red/Blue as well.

Neither of those are “VR”, yet still interesting to talk about.