Introduction

Sometimes, the best stories are the ones from the past that have been forgotten. If Nintendo was less cocky, they would have had the Sony Playstation under their own brand. The Soviet MiG-15s that ruled the skies over Korea (initially) would not have existed if the Rolls Royce company did not sell the plans to the jet engine (after the head was hustled in a game of pool.)

Recently, while cleaning out my hardware closet, I was reminded that the 3D graphics industry is also rich with many stories that have not yet been told.

Some stories you know, such as our world exclusive NVIDIA NV2 article, our feature behind the fall of 3dfx, a look at what happened to the original Hercules, and even the true story of the Bitboys. Some stories will remain untold for a few more years… some stories need storytellers, but today, we'll go back and take a look at the graphics products that deserve a spot in the history books.

We'll be looking at products from PowerVR, S3, Matrox, ATI, and NVIDIA -- we've already written everything we know about 3dfx.

Today, ATI and NVIDIA dominate the graphics industry. It wasn't always like this -- in fact, it was the complete opposite. In this article, we're going to go back... going back to the heyday of 3D graphics and looking at the forgotten stories of the era and see how they ultimately shaped the gaming industry today. Think of it as a window back in time or a techie vesion of E! True Hollywood Story.