I'm going to say that the hardware implementation wasn't a hack job at all. Their "competitors" at the time had far worse implementations, even if it was a sin

I'm going to say that the hardware implementation wasn't a hack job at all. Their "competitors" at the time had far worse implementations, even if it was a single VGA output (who cares?). This way 3dfx could focus on 3D, and leave 2D to people that cared. 3dfx voodoo1/2 did one thing and did it damned well. They are basically responsible for the 3D revolution in gaming, as before 3dfx you had absolute shit like Matrox and Trident with "3d accelerators" which may as well have not existed. It was as close to a hard requirement as anything at the time for gaming. Voodoo3 was the beginning of the end for 3dfx, and I wouldn't doubt that part of that was having to switch focus to 2d performance as well as 3d. Time to go pull out my old V1/V2/V5500's from storage :)