In 80s-90s there were no 3d cards but games in general had multiple graphics modes for different graphics cards. 4 color fixed palette CGA looked very different from 16 color EGA and that was pale in comparison with 256 colored glory of MCGA/VGA. Even after the digital video became obsolete there were huge differences in hardware still. An 8 bit ISA DRAM VGA card was orders of magnitude slower than a VLB SVGA with fast dual ported VRAM. E.g. in early- mid 90s you'd see animations played anywhere between 3 and 30 fps depending on your video card. And in late 90s, when first hardware 3d games appeared, no CPU could make the difference between the HW and SW modes.