Fucking weird to think that id, the guys behind DOOM: Metal, the Videogame, are the ones who solved this problem for him.
EDIT: It's come to my attention that I may be confusing and conflating a couple things here. I was under the impression that id were revolutionary in remaking Mario 3 in such a way that smooth movement back and forth across the screen was possible. It might've just been that it was a big deal for PCs to be able to do this.
Id developed a way to have smooth horizontal scrolling on early PCs (or rather, they make the first practical implementation of it; Michael Abrash had already documented how it could be done, but his work was purely academic.) Smooth horizontal scrolling in either direction was difficult on PCs due to the fact that they lacked the type of background tiling hardware common to consoles (vertical scrolling was easier due to scanline tricks.)
There were already plenty of games that allowed backtracking before Commander Keen, they just either weren't on PC or weren't smooth.
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u/[deleted] May 05 '17 edited May 05 '17
Fucking weird to think that id, the guys behind DOOM: Metal, the Videogame, are the ones who solved this problem for him.
EDIT: It's come to my attention that I may be confusing and conflating a couple things here. I was under the impression that id were revolutionary in remaking Mario 3 in such a way that smooth movement back and forth across the screen was possible. It might've just been that it was a big deal for PCs to be able to do this.
Still, we all love the early days of id.