How were video games in the late 80s/early 90s animated before huge digital advances were made? Additionally, how was music added?
In: Technology
Earlier games like Pong and Elite used vector drawn lines to create the scene, but in the late 80’s early 90’s, a lot of games were made on custom workstation PC’s that were purpose made for graphics workloads. Sprite editors were pretty far along by then though, so not all game graphics required these advanced workstations.
As to music, prior to digital sound and the CD-ROM based multimedia revolution, most music used MIDI files. FM synthesis was also used by most sound cards of the time period for sound effects and some music, but MIDI was easier to work with.
So to answer your real question, the types of computers the developers of those games used were not the same as the ones the final game ran on. They were a lot faster and purpose built for the task of creating graphics, or music.
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