The story of the 3dfx Voodoo 3D is a classic case of being the right company with the right tech at the right time. 3dfx launched its revolutionary Voodoo Graphics chipset just as fully polygonal 3D graphics hit the mainstream and PC gamers wanted an easy and accessible way to get them.

In late 1996, Quake and Tomb Raider had just been released, the Nintendo 64 was out in Japan and North America, and the Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn were still in their first year. Reliant purely on CPU horsepower, and with little in the way of dedicated 3D hardware on even the best graphics cards to back it up, the PC was beginning to lose its place as the king of gaming platforms.

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