Retro Games That Somehow Utilise Ray Tracing

Many video game outlets are incorrectly reporting that the upcoming Crysis Remastered will include ray tracing on its Switch Port. Seeing how the hardware is incapable of utilising the technique, we've gone down memory lane to chronicle some classic retro games that also manage to pull off the impossible.

Now, we're not saying that the websites who reported this factually incorrect news are somehow trashier than ourselves — the kings of embarrassing, fraudulent journalism —  but we are suggesting that those mediocre outlets check themselves before they wreck themselves, as they could wake up to their domain name being called www.eraerror.com if they're not careful. Trust me, you don't want that!

After about 15 minutes of researching fictitious stories on video games, we have compiled a comprehensive list of the best retro video games that utilise the modern graphical rendering technique long before RTX cards were invented.


1. Red Alarm — Virtual Boy (1995)

Not many people realise this fact, but Red Alarm on Virtual Boy is the first video game in history to incorporate ray tracing. The Virtual Boy harnesses power from the unused second D-pad on the controller to render the wire-frames which are given their vibrant, red appearance thanks to ray tracing. Unfortunately due to processing power limitations, textures had to be withheld.

 
 
2. Gargoyle's Quest — Game Boy (1991)

After further research, it appears that Capcom's Gargoyle's Quest on the original Gameboy was in fact the first game to ever utilise ray tracing. The monochrome display receives extra pop thanks to the implementation which is only possible thanks to the extra RTX chip produced inside the cartridge.



3. E.T The Extra-Terrestrial — Atari 2600 (1982)

Well this is getting a little embarrassing. It was brought to my attention after writing the previous two entries that there was an even earlier game to utilise ray tracing. I've already written this much, and I'll be damned if I'm going to delete any of my previous work, as the owners of this company are a bunch of penny pinching fuckwits who don't pay close to a living wage. E.T was a fucking shit game — one of the worst games ever in fact — but guess what? Ray tracing. Yep! The effect only works on CRT TV's (Crappy Regular Televisions) made before 1975 though.

 

4. Rifts: Promise Of Power — N-Gage (2005)

No one has ever actually seen real game-play footage of this game in action, but it's Wikipedia page claims that the game uses ray tracing and that's good enough for us.



5. Chaos Break — PS1 (2000)

Warping is a common graphical issue on the PlayStation 1, marring the vast majority of its catalogue. What many people do not know is that warping can be converted into ray tracing if the game's engine is calibrated to harness it. Developer Taito managed to do just that by forcing their developers to work on the game in 100 hour straight increments without sleep or bathroom breaks. No one knows how the feat was achieved as the source code was lost forever when the company was purchased by Square Enix.



6. Tomb Raider 2 — PS1 (1997)

Lara Croft's infamous pointy titties weren't achieved through regular means.



7. Scientific Calculator — Casio FX-85MS (2002)

An American middle school Mathematics student managed to pull off the technique while writing 80085 thanks to the calculator's solar panels. His teacher was incredibly impressed and gave him an A+++.


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If you know if any other retro video games and systems that utilise ray-tracing, please let us know in the comments.