On Tuesday, January 21, 2003, at 03:01 AM, John Romero wrote: [Snip]
From a game developer's viewpoint, when or what things made the IBM PC the platform of choice over the Apple IIs, C64s, etc.? I know that on the business side of programming the common wisdom is that 640K RAM was the key (VisiCalc vs. Lotus 1-2-3). Was it the ubiquity of the PC clones? VGA graphics? Reaching the limitations of 8-bit platform or an intersection of all three?The Apple II version of King's Quest was one of the early double-resolution 16-color games and subsequent Sierra adventures used that graphics mode. Double-res on the Apple II was 160x192 with 16 colors. Mixed-mode graphics on the C64 was 160x200 with 4 colors (from a 16-color palette) per 4x8 character block. It was just a logical decision to use the same assets and resolution as the other popular platforms.
In a way the PC seemed to be a step backward for games in the mid '80s to about '90 because of the lack of decent sound. Though, for example, Sierra pushed the various sound cards and external units, most of the people I knew didn't buy sound cards until the time of Wing Commander or Doom.
--
Edward Franks
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