(re: What did Sierra do first?) > Alkalabeth was created by Richard Garriot as part of his
> Computer Science curriculum and did not hit shelves until
> July 1980
OK, thanks, I didn’t know that. So Mystery House is probably the first commercial computer (that is not console) game with graphics. Still, the first computer game with graphics (non commercial) dates back 1958. Here’s an interesting timeline:
Link: http://www.infoplease.com/spot/gamestimeline1.html(http://www.infoplease.com/spot/gamestimeline1.html)
> you also have to remember that VGA was lightyears ahead
> of EGA in terms of resolution
Well, not much actually. VGA does 640×480 in 16 colors (with a palette of 262144 colors), whereas EGA does 640×350 in 16 colors (with a palette of 64 colors). Still, the EGA card requires 256KB of video memory to be able to display this resolution, and a specific monitor is also required (a CGA monitor can only display 200 lines, so most games only used the 320×200 resolution).
> As a note of trivia, Sierra’s VGA games ran at a
> resolution of 360×300.
I may be completely wrong, but I’d say it was the standard 320×200 resolution.
> I believe Sierra didn’t switch to 640×480 resolution
> until the Windows 95 version of KQVII was released.
CD-ROM versions of King’s Quest VI, Gabriel Knight and Leisure Suit Larry 6 featured some 640×480 graphics (at least for the objects and the dialog close-ups).
Vincent.