I've always been impressed by the graphics of these two games, although I never had the chance to see them in person.
My main question is for someone who has more technical expertise than myself and is purely for self interest. How did they accomplish the gradient background effect?
Being 1982-83 releases, it really seems innovative to have the smooth gradient backgrounds to set these games apart from their competition at the time. However, they seem to be the only games utilizing this type of hardware/software technology.
I don't see any artwork files associated with these games, so I'm making the assumptions that the gradients are created in video hardware.
Was their specialized hardware to display this type of smooth gradient? Was it a high cost?
I'm mainly asking as it adds a lot of depth (along with the parallax scrolling) to relatively simple games and you really didn't see this type of effect in that era outside of these two games.
If anybody knows anything about it more than me, I'd appreciate hearing your thoughts.
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