The granddaddy of all isometric games

It may be surprising, but games like Baldur’s Gate, Oceanhorn, Icewind Dale (nearly any isometric game) have its roots in the 48k Spectrum and a game called Knight Lore.

From Wikipedia :

Knight_lore_3

I know the NES had a couple isometric games, but probably after this one. A much later one I remember enjoying (despite it being “Nintendo Hard” in many places) was Snake, Rattle, and Roll which I think also shows off some of the NES’ weird technical limitations. (You just kind of lived with graphical glitches for tiles on the edge of the screen at times. I think this is due to the weird “mirroring” modes NES roms used.)

If you want to go back even further, Zaxxon came out in 1982. That’s the first isometric game I remember.

They didn’t really seem to catch on until the 90s though with stuff like Baldur’s Gate and Diablo.

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There’s a lot of isometric games now that I think about it. I feel like they covered a lot of genres, too.