As a member of the Sketchfab Community Team, I spend a lot of time browsing models and I see a lot of interesting and funny content every day.
After visiting an exhibition on the history of videogames in the Netherlands recently, I started paying more attention to models of retro consoles and handhelds. They’re rather popular as they fit perfectly into the style of scratched and beaten up objects, made popular by the rise of Substance Painter and similar powerful texturing applications.
Anyway, many of these games brought back memories and I decided to spend a little time to find my favorite models here on Sketchfab.
Video game evolution by hinxlinx
The very first console video game I played was Pong. While the game was advertised as containing different sports like tennis, football, etc., they were of course all just the same thing—but we had great long afternoons filled with matches anyway!
I couldn’t find a good model of the ‘console’ (if you could call it that) here, but I did enjoy this compilation of early video games by hinxlinx. I especially enjoyed the appearance of Donkey Kong, one of my all time favorite games.
ATARI 2600 by Rusty Hardy
We used to play Space Invaders in the local hifi/video store after school—waiting for your turn to play, only to be killed within seconds and get back to the end of the queue. The insanely coarse graphics didn’t bother us one bit as we didn’t know any better and our imagination would fill in the rest.
Donkey Kong Game & Watch Nintendo by twitte_king
These ‘LCD’ games were all the rage when I went to school, and this Donkey Kong was the first one I owned. Many of these types of games, which could only show a limited number of ‘states’, were based on the same game logic and simply had a different screen attached to them. Nonetheless, we had this firm belief that something ‘magical’ would happen if we hit certain conditions or scores. It never happened, of course.
I still own this game—see my 3D scanned games collection!
Nintendo Gameboy Advance SP Zelda by shrednector
Fast forward a few years and I got myself a Gameboy Advance (after having a regular Gameboy Color to play Tetris on, of course). I immensely enjoyed playing Zelda on it, and puzzled for hours how to advance the story. It’s interesting how the main mechanics of Zelda haven’t changed, even though the game has shifted to an ‘open world’ paradigm now.
Nintendo Switch by Virtual Studio
I thought I should finish this list with a more current device, if only to show the progression these games have made over the years.
I bought my Switch when we were in Los Angeles for SIGGRAPH with Sketchfab. I had promised my kids that we would play Zelda on it together, so I needed to wait until I was home to turn it on for the first time…
My favorite game? Still Zelda. I also enjoy Mario Kart, except when playing against James.
What’s your favorite memory of video games? And can you find a related model here on Sketchfab?
About the author
Bart Veldhuizen
Community Lead at Sketchfab. 3D Scanning enthusiast and Blenderhead.
