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Back in 89 the graphics on an EGA video card were no better than the graphics on an old video game system like a Coleco. 16 colors. Palette of 64 colors. Poor screen control. The better action games were CGA for speed. Systems like the turbografx 16 with the 256 colors on screen made the PC seem like it would never get out of the business world. My first IBM was EGA and I could only afford a grayscale monitor. Sure it was high definition. But it took me 6 months before I got an EGA color monitor for $125.00 In 1990 it still didn't look good for games. But we know the times changed. Think back to when this would have been the best action game on a PC
CGA text was capable of doing 16 colors but it was only ASCII text. The higher resolution (320 x 200 :) mode was only 4 colors and they were preset colors. Scott Miller wasn't the first to use the shareware concept. But I think he might have been the first to write a really great game and offer it free while writing several great sequels and having people pay for them. He also started distributing the programs on bbs's all over the country and on the online services like CompuServe and prodigy. He did this so well he started doing it for other programmers and so the beginnings of apogee were started. If it wasn't for shareware visionaries like Scott Miller and ID software the PC would have never made it as a game machine.
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