Games that were ahead of their time

[mamenewb100]

I normally avoid MAME racing games when looking for new titles to play because I don't have proper analog controls or a steering wheel. However I ran into the arcade version of Virtua Racing and was floored to find out this game was made in 1992. There are some games from 2000 that didn't look and play this good. I thought the 32x version of the game was pretty solid for it's time but the Arcade version destroys it. Only the PS2 version of the game looks slightly better to date than the arcade but it's nowhere near as good.

So what other games would be considered "ground breaking" for the time it was released?

[Haze]

Sega had a knack of doing that.

Power Drift always comes to mind too, actually the majority of their 80s sprite scalers if you consider what else was around when they were released.  Even the Saturn ports of these things released many years later weren't perfect (lower framerates etc.)

Arcade games of the 80s / 90s were typically 'ahead of their time' tho, pushing the boat out with no cost spared, although some haven't aged well at all.

Taito's driving game evolution is the most curious one, they went from producing some really playable games like Continental Circus to absolute tripe in the shape of Racing Beat and Ground FX which were on far newer hardware, but looked and played much, much worse.

[UFO]

Hard Drivin' for me... the physics and all the other things like force feedback, manual gear shift and the key!

Was bowled over by it!

[gildahl]

For 3D polygon graphics some coin-op games that come to mind are 1979's Tail Gunner (3D wire frame.  I recall back in '79/'80 it was always the first game I'd play when arriving at the arcade), 1983's Cube Quest (laserdisc with amazing CGI backgrounds plus realtime 3D shaded polygons), and 1983's I, Robot (fully realtime 3D polygon graphics).