RenderWare Engine Games

RenderWare is a game engine middleware developed by Criterion Software, a British subsidiary of Criterion Games. First released commercially in 1993, it became one of the most widely used third-party 3D engines in the video game industry during the late 1990s and early 2000s, particularly on the PlayStation 2, Xbox, and GameCube.

The first version of RenderWare targeted DOS and then Windows PCs, at a time before consumer 3D acceleration hardware existed. The engine operated entirely in software rendering mode, handling rasterization, depth buffering, and texture mapping entirely on the CPU. This approach was standard before the arrival of dedicated 3D cards like the 3dfx Voodoo in 1996.